I Wish My Teacher Knew Read online

  In retrospect, I am aware of all the benefits I had, even though I felt lost and angry growing up. I lived in a stable, supportive home. My parents provided me with all the resources I ever needed and all the love I could have ever asked for. I never worried about where my next meal would come from or how long I would be able to sleep in the same bed.

  I did not have a learning disability. I was able to cling to my academic success to pull me out of my troubled behavior. My experience in school was different from many students. Struggles in reading never made me feel inadequate and math problems never made me feel defeated. My parents had been successful in school themselves, so they understood the concepts I was being taught and knew how to help me with my homework. I wonder what my life would look like if any of these factors had been different.

  Perhaps if I had experienced any additional challenges or discrimination, I might have continued feeling irritated and isolated. I might have forever felt a lingering resentment toward the “good” kids. I might have thought of school as nothing more than a place where I disappointed and hurt people. If my family’s financial situation had been different, I might have seen college tuition as an insurmountable obstacle. My education might have been sacrificed in order to find a place where I felt valued.

  How many of the students that we teach have my story, but with a much different ending? How many of these students, with challenging circumstances, are slipping through the cracks?

  My Path

  I realized just how different my life could have been in 2008 when I moved to Washington, DC, to work with the education nonprofit City Year. As an AmeriCorps member I painted murals, scrubbed graffiti off school buildings, and served food to the homeless. I organized volunteer events that invited willing hands to build bookshelves for libraries and clean up city parks. In addition to those activities, I participated in a program called For Love of Children. I was partnered with an energetic kindergartener named Kaleb. He was bright, lively, and I absolutely adored him. Kaleb and I played word games and practiced writing his name in thick red marker. As the year went on, I realized what I really wanted to do was work toward giving kids like Kaleb a better opportunity to succeed in school.

  After City Year, I completed college and moved to South America to work in schools in Chile. When I returned stateside, I headed back to my hometown of Denver. I knew that kids there deserved dedicated teachers, and hoped to become one.

  I was accepted into the Denver Teacher Residency program. This program prepares teachers a little bit differently than conventional colleges and universities. I worked as a student teacher for an entire school year while also earning a master’s degree in education. The most meaningful component was working side by side in the classroom with a distinguished teacher named Rachel Bernard. Each day, I observed rigorous instruction that supported learners at all levels, and had the opportunity to experience the cadence of a full school year firsthand.

  This wasn’t just a few weeks of student teaching; we planned and taught lessons together. I benefitted from constant, meaningful feedback from a trusted mentor, a luxury for a novice teacher. The feedback I received from her was not biased, toned down, or full of educational buzzwords. I learned so much that never appeared in any teaching textbooks.

  For example, after I taught my first lesson, Ms. Bernard noted, “Next time, you need to address the four students in the corner who were having a sword fight with their pencils.” Reflecting on my practice as an educator became second nature, but the most important lesson Ms. Bernard taught me was that “learning does not happen in a vacuum; you have to create a community.”

  During the school year a new student transferred into our class. The child had experienced deeply traumatic events and had a great deal of difficulty participating in classroom life. I was focused on the challenge that this new student presented. But Ms. Bernard told me, “Kyle, you have to find one thing you genuinely like about each student. Even if everything else is hard to manage, you have to hold on to at least one thing you appreciate. If kids think you don’t like them, they will not learn from you.”

  Every day she took time to ask each student what was going on in their life. She celebrated their successes and consoled them when they were hurting. The community built in our classroom was strong. We knew each kid’s favorite activities and what they wanted to be when they grew up. Our students that year worked hard and learned so much, but I did too. I learned that my students will carry the relationships created in our classroom with them.

  Connection and Community in the Classroom

  It’s important to remember that the ability to build a connection with children, at any age, is not a fixed skill that some of us have and some of us do not. All educators can facilitate open communication, build strong relationships, and create a sense of community with the children they interact with. These objectives may not be written in curriculum manuals, but they are as essential to education as math and science.

  In this book, I offer a perspective on how teachers can create a positive learning environment for every student, in every grade. In the chapters that follow, I provide a look at systemic issues like poverty and student mobility that affect millions of students nationwide, alongside problems that affect individual children and families, such as coping with trauma and creating friendships. In addition to statistics and research, I provide real stories from students, teachers, and family members that shed light on how we can all help students tackle these challenges and grow as individuals. I’ll share strategies that have worked in classrooms across America as well as tips and techniques that have helped me create a community of third graders at Doull, year after year.

  The ultimate goal of my work as a teacher (and as the author of this book) is to show my students how to become active and generous members of their communities, both inside and outside their classrooms. I believe I share that goal with you, and every educator in America. When we teach students the value of community, we show them how to live and grow among others, how to be generous and compassionate, how to be a good friend, how to help others feel appreciated, and how to contribute to our global community.

  Fortunately, I find myself in good company, working among millions of strong, dedicated, and generous colleagues, and families who share the same mission. Join us in building a community within each classroom that not only creates academic success for children, but also helps create a generation of future adults who seek to welcome and encourage others, who are passionate lifelong learners, and whose experience in our classrooms made all the difference.

  Every child deserves an excellent education. Every child deserves to feel cared about and heard. That starts by finding out what our students wish we knew.

  1.

  Welcomes and Farewells

  Building Community Even in Transition

  My Classroom Community

  “Ms. Schwartz, I have a big surprise for you,” a gleeful voice called out. With thick coke-bottle glasses magnifying his brown eyes, Ronaldo took pride in being the first student to line up each morning when the bell rang. “I read for two hours last night,” he told me, as he put his homework in the basket. Despite English being his second language, Ronaldo was reading a year above grade level. His dream was to be a scientist, and he was always ready to tell you a surprising fact about Venus or volcanoes.

  Then one fall day, Ronaldo’s life changed forever. He arrived at school and told me matter-of-factly that he wouldn’t be in my third-grade class much longer. I was told that his father had been detained by the police. The family fought his deportation, but when news came that their appeal had been denied, Ronaldo’s parents made the difficult decision to leave the life they had built in Denver, so that the family would not have to live divided between two countries.

  To Ronaldo, the idea of moving to Mexico brought mixed emotions. Of course, being reunited with his father was welcome, but doing so at the cost of leaving the only life he had ever known was intimidating. From
the information I had, Ronaldo had been born in the United States and was therefore a US citizen. Colorado was his home. He had attended our school since preschool and had formed tight friendships with his classmates; he was the darling of every teacher who had ever taught him.

  Before leaving for Mexico, Ronaldo made his last days at our school count. He never missed a single homework assignment, even though an official grade would never be recorded. As the days ticked down, he took it upon himself to come to school each morning with an additional assignment completed: a letter carefully handwritten on blue-lined paper. His first was for me:

  Dear Ms. Schwartz,

  Thank you for all you have done to teach me, thank you for helping me learn. I will always remember you. Do not forget about me.

  Sincerely,

  Ronaldo

  The next day he brought a letter for the principal. His former teachers, the school secretaries, even the lunch ladies all received farewell notes from Ronaldo. He penned letters to each of his friends, thoughtfully thanking them for their friendship and imploring each to remember him.

  If my life had been uprooted, my father taken away, and I knew I would likely never see my friends or teachers again, my initial response certainly would have been a flood of anger and resentment. Likely Ronaldo experienced these same feelings, but he also made a deliberate choice to display gratitude. Watching him approach such a trying situation with maturity beyond his years taught me a powerful lesson about grace under pressure.

  On his last day with our class, we took as many pictures as we could. Students presented their own letters to Ronaldo, recounting their memories, pledging their lasting friendship, and wishing him luck on his journey. There was some scuffling about who would sit next to him at his last lunch and who would get the privilege of playing with him during his final recess. The students signed pages of a book for him, and presented him with a plastic shark’s tooth necklace so he could be “strong like a shark,” which he showed off proudly for the rest of the day. As the bell rang on his final day with us, there were several students in tears due to their love for Ronaldo. An unspoken anxiety that a similar situation could arise for other families hung in the air.

  “Don’t forget me,” Ronaldo implored me more than once before he left. He need not have worried. Ronaldo is the type of student that will forever be etched in a teacher’s memory. If anything, I hope he remembers me. Such a child, brimming with potential and committed to learning, could certainly achieve great things.

  I hope that wherever Ronaldo is, he is learning and happy.

  America’s Mobile Students

  Like me, all teachers have seen students come and go from our classroom communities. When we look at these arrivals and departures nationally, they begin to tell a story of how common student mobility is in today’s classrooms. We can also begin to understand the causes of student mobility and the implications these movements have on a student’s education.

  “Student mobility” is a term educators use to describe the phenomenon of students changing schools for any reason other than grade promotion. The widely cited, and still continuing, Early Childhood Longitudinal Study has followed a representative sample of kindergarten students since 1998 and found that by the time this cohort entered fifth grade, 61 percent of students had made at least one school change. Another wide-reaching analysis of student mobility led by Dr. Russell W. Rumberger of the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that 16 percent of fourth-grade students had moved schools more than twice in the last two years.

  We now know that nearly all students will change schools before entering high school. A 2010 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found significant differences between the 70 percent of students who are “less mobile” (who changed schools two times or less before entering high school) and the 13 percent of students who were “more mobile” (who changed schools four or more times). Researchers found that “students who changed schools four or more times were disproportionately poor, African American, and from families that did not own their home or have a father present in the household.”

  We also know that student mobility does not simply affect individual students. It affects school communities as a whole. In the United States, there are “high mobility” schools, termed this way because they serve a disproportionate share of those more mobile students. The GAO study found that 11.5 percent of all schools serve a student body that consists of more than 10 percent more-mobile students. It was also found that schools with high rates of student mobility also tend to serve more students who live in poverty, qualify for special education services, and are learning English; they also have higher absenteeism than schools with low mobility rates.

  Students who are more mobile tend to go to schools where resources are already stretched thin in order to serve students with greater needs. This means that student mobility cannot be fully understood when looked at as a singular issue; it is interwoven with complex socioeconomic issues. In reality, mobility is just one symptom of many different factors that affect our students.

  Why Are Our Students Mobile?

  American students move for a multitude of reasons, but there are two basic categories each move can fit into: voluntary and involuntary. Voluntary moves obviously involve choice. A family might buy a new house and therefore change schools or consciously decide to make a school change. I changed elementary school every two years as a child, simply because the population in my suburb was growing so quickly that new schools were constantly being built to meet the demand.

  The difference between a voluntary move and an involuntary move matters because as Rumberger explains, “Voluntary moves are often planned in advance, they often take place between school years to minimize the disruption to students’ educational lives. In contrast, involuntary moves often occur during the school year and, hence, can be more disruptive to students’ educational experience.”

  In my classroom, families have reported to me that they chose to enroll or unenroll their children in my school for a variety of voluntary reasons. One father told me the last school had assigned an overwhelming amount of homework. Other parents have pointed to a perception of disrespect from teachers at the former school. Another family simply wanted their elementary-aged children to attend school near their middle school–aged child. One of my students, Licia, left our school because her older brother was accepted to a nearby arts school and she was able to attend as well. Even though Licia knew in advance that she would be changing schools, it was a source of worry for her. She would tell me, “I know it’s for my family, but I don’t want to leave my best friends. I like it here.”

  Involuntary causes of student mobility vary as well. Sometimes these moves can be the result of a family change such as a death or a divorce. Economic factors play a role as well. Many families move when there has been a job loss or the cost of living has increased. Housing instability can play a major role in some communities. When I was student teaching, my colleagues who had taught at the school for a number of years noticed a trend also noted by the Government Accountability Office. It seemed some students were changing schools on a cycle. We realized that the apartments near the school ran a “one month free” special on rent. Families would pay the first month’s rent, get the second month’s rent free, not be able to pay the third month, and then be evicted.

  A teacher I work with used to witness these evictions firsthand:

  I worked in the legal department of a property management company for one year. Most of my responsibilities entailed filing legal documents to evict tenants who had become delinquent on their rent. One day, I worked with the local sheriff to evict a family. Hours passed as I watched them stack all of their possessions into lopsided piles on the sidewalk. I remember clearly the expression on each one of their faces. The children looked scared and confused, but it was their mother’s distraught face that is burned into my memory. The family had nowhere to go. That day affected me profoundly. I was no lon
ger willing to contribute to the desperation I saw that day. The next day I signed up for a teacher-training program. That family is the reason I teach today.

  A student changing schools because of an eviction is an example of disruptive mobility. According to the National Center for Homeless Education, common causes of student mobility are poverty, migratory families, homelessness, immigration, and children being placed in foster care. And that’s not all; an individual student might be dealing with several of these issues at the same time. When there is a sudden, involuntary change in schools for a student, there are almost always challenging circumstances surrounding it that teachers need to be aware of.

  Ronaldo’s story is just one of many. In 2013, the Center for Public Integrity shared records from the Applied Research Center demonstrating that “between July 2010 and September 2012, more than 105,000 people claiming to have US citizen children were deported.” In my four years of teaching, there has always been at least one student in my classroom dealing with the deportation of a parent or a family member.

  Likewise, I have consistently taught students who struggle with homelessness. My students have told me they slept in their car the night before, they had moved into an aunt’s garage, or they were staying with another family until they could find a place of their own. Teachers may think all children who are homeless live in a shelter, but this is not true. Nearly three-quarters of homeless students live “doubled up,” meaning they stay with friends or extended family members. Teachers might not even be aware that a student in their classroom is struggling with homelessness.

  Sadly, the chances of having a student who is homeless in our classrooms rise every year. We now have more homeless students in our nation’s schools than ever before. According to a US Department of Education report, homelessness is on the rise with school-aged children. During the 2012–13 school year, there were 1,258,182 homeless students in American public schools. Of students who are homeless, 16 percent are children with disabilities and 14 percent have not yet acquired English.