For Andrew and Matt. Where ever you two are, if you ever find yourself wonder why you havn't changed the world yet, remember that you already have.
Prologue: It's funny when we realize that the things we have worked so hard to become experts at, leave us with weakspots that are obvious to a novice.
Act 1: The Ballad of Andrew Jackson,
Andrew was my archetype "idea student", B to B+ student who knows what it is like to "not get things" that also is good with others. I cherish these students as I can strategically put them with Marginal C students that after spending time with Andrew, suddenly make connections that can sustain them through the rest of the course.
One day while Andrew was hanging out with his girlfriend in my classroom, helping her with physics (of course he was) a student walked in and asked me, "What class should I take next year, Chemistry or Physics?". After warning her that she was asking the physics teacher she followed up with, "I heard their is a lot of math". I stopped her and suggest she ask a student...We directed the question to Andrew and I added the additional prompt. "How did you do in Algebra, Andrew?" To which he responded, "I failed it twice, before I Aced it last summer".
I was shocked. My favorite helper, an expert at explaining the math portion of the class, was a "bad math student". How was this possible? How glad was I that I didn't know this before I realized how valuable he was. What if I had treated him like a "bad math student" before he got the chance to reveal himself as a resource?
Act 2: The Blink of an Eye.
I was hired by a near by district to co-teach a physics course one period a day. The teacher that I would be teaching with (that I adore) mentioned to me in the spring that she had 4 students taken out of the course because she had them in chemistry and they were "lazy", "didn't try" or "couldn't do it". To which I told her, we need to put all 4 of these students back. What grace I have been provided kept me from seeing the list of students that had been taken out of the class and reinstated.
She also started to tell me which of the students in our course had the potential to achieve at a high level. It was with the memory of Andrew Jackson that suddenly got it...slow, and nearly too late...I looked away from the class list and simply said. "I don't wanna know anything about any of them. Good or Bad..."
In the blink of an eye, I preserved the beauty of knowing nothing about the group that I was to call my own for the next 10 months.
Act 3: The Power of Going Blind.
Three weeks have passed and I am slowly getting to know my students in that "I'm a secondary teacher and I only spent 56min a day with these kids" sort of way. I have discovered some early favorites, and pleasantly surprised by the positive contributions of kids that initially showed the lame attitude that high school students occasionally adopt. I still caught myself wondering...who are the 4? I was pretty sure I knew, I mean...seriously?...the weaker students deficiencies are revealed pretty quick.
And then back to school night happened...
While greeting people at the door the parents of one of my students said "We are Connors parents...we think you let him in out of pity". I didn't get it at first. Pity?...Oh wait...they meant to say that HE was one of the four. Connor. the charming capable kid that is super engaged with all the weird self directed stuff we have been doing. Came in before class to ask me if he could start an astronomy club if he promised to do all the paper work. The kid who decided to work on "number of planets in the universe capable of sustaining life" during our initial approach to Genius Hour. THIS was the kid that was almost left out...because he couldn't do it or was lazy?!!
I was shocked, saddened, angry, and eternally thankful all at the same time. The power of living blind was at work again as Andrew Jackson, yet again, found his way back into my classroom.
Epilogue: Biases, Prejudice, and Remembering What it Means to be Human.
If there is one thing Phillip Zambardo and the Stanford Prison Project taught us it's that its not the outliers that are dangerous. Those capable of extreme evil, bias, and prejudice in an extreme way. Its the circumstances that draw our the natural capacity within us all for these negative traits. The places and situations that turn us all into "bad apples".
Had I spent a year with these kids and somehow gotten off on the wrong foot, it would have been very hard for me to cheerfully welcome them back into my room for another year of predictable struggle.
We are human with brains that constantly work to make sense, sort, and organize all of the data we regularly take in. We cannot escape the patterns we have encountered in the past. If I learn that a certain type of student, from a certain type of background, that looks or acts a certain way. I am going to be drawn to the conclusions that my own experiences have told me are true.
So I have to engineer ways to go blind.
Be it ignoring the behavioral history of SIS files, having students write their names upside down on the bottom of homework assignments and tests, or finding ways to make work anonymous, I have to fight my own ability to avoid biases formed from my past history that comes with becoming an expert.
The stories I told are all true and left a significant impact. However the knife that cuts the deepest in my pride of a caring expert is this. I had students work in pairs on a practice test. Anonymously. On a Google Doc. When I realized I had no clue who I was giving feedback to...I realized often in the past I relied on my own view of the student when grading assignments. Please try this. It was both fun, hurt a little, and was entirely worth it.
Cheers.
