Same Destination, Different Journeys

(Thank you to my co-contributor, friend, and colleague, Valerie Wilhite)

It has happened more than once. That awkward moment when you realize you are wearing the same “teacher outfit” as one of your colleagues. I guess great minds think alike is a better way to spin it?

Well, yesterday it happened. Walking into our weekly department meeting, I spot her. Mrs. Wilhite, donning the same fashionable, yet conservative teacher dress.

We look amazing.

After school that day, I thought hard about teacher “sameness”. In some schools of thought there is a push for scripted curriculum, or the idea that good teaching looks like every 10th grade English teacher is teaching the same page at the same time on the same day. I sat down with Mrs. Wilhite and we reflected on the concept of “sameness."

The push for standardization may be detrimental to creative thinking.

Most schools are made up of many dynamic educators. They have varied strengths, come from different prep institutions, and bring with them their unique histories. Why does the default setting tend to move toward  molding them into one type of teacher? This is not to argue the merits of shared planning, or departmental continuity, but to dispel the expectation that there is only one way to write a lesson plan or only one way to assess students. There is often backlash when someone questions “the way it’s always been done.” How do we find the happy medium between teacher autonomy, the educator as creator, and scripted curriculum?

The danger of sameness is that there is no opportunity to think outside of the box.  If we are to teach our kids to think for themselves or to think creatively, how can we model that if  we are urged to become one voice, merely regurgitating information from a script? For some, the allure of teaching is the challenge, the creativity and the opportunity to breathe life into academia for a new generation of thinkers.  The challenge is how to teach a subject, even one that is not beloved by all, in a way that at least piques their interest.  The creativity is taking the content, twisting it, turning it, and then coming up with a way to present it that encourages students to make connections.  Canned curriculum can be stale and contrived.  Even if delivered by a dynamic educator, we may be risking the opportunity to reach a difficult learner or engage a student, by “sticking to the script.”

Teaching another person’s materials without making tweaks and additions can feel fraudulent. Mrs. Wilhite adds, “ Last year when I tried to align my lessons to the other teachers in my grade level, I had an existential crisis and considered quitting teaching.  I felt like I didn’t belong, like I had found myself trapped in someone else’s life.  I mean, really, I totally understood the Freaky Friday feeling. Sameness does not evoke passion.  Kids can see it when we are not passionate about what we’re teaching.  There’s no buy-in when they can tell that their teacher is just going through the motions.”

“Iteration is key to innovation”-Sebastian Thrun

Collaboration and iteration of lessons and materials is essential in this profession. Making accommodations, differentiating, and meeting students where they are the cornerstones of being an effective educator. These practices allow educators to take a novel- The Scarlet Letter,for example- and teach it one year with the parallel to bullying and social stigma, and then teach it the next year with a focus on brand names and social Darwinism. We, as educators, spend day in and day out with the people in our classrooms, and have to make adjustments to not only fit their needs, but to democratically give them their right to learn.

My students in 3rd period may not be ready to progress to chapter 4 of Hawthorne’s novel. We may need time to germinate our understanding of Hester’s plight. We may need to review symbolism, and social norms, and Puritan ideology, before jumping into the next section. Mrs. Wilhite, however, may have students who came with prior knowledge that mine lack, or she may have students who study American literary periods for fun. Whatever the case, they may breeze through multiple chapters in a class period, while I am remediating the definition of figurative language. This in no way makes the students any less deserving of loving and understanding foundational literature. What a disservice if I deflect their questions for the sake of “being on chapter 5." Mrs. Wilhite and I know the power of vertical and horizontal alignment, yet understand the dangers of blindly following a plan.

Effective educators are often reinventing themselves.

We have been not only through multiple iterations of strategies and best practices, but iterations of ourselves as educators. We understand and cherish the opportunity to bring our unique perspectives into the classroom, and to reach our students in the best ways that we can.

Though we may wear the same dress or cardigan from time to time, and though we may share many of the same philosophies, I am glad that our sameness ends with our passion and fashion. This allows our students  to get a genuine, quirky, madly creative teacher who creates and inspires, and remediates in her own genuine, quirky, madly creative way.