Changing Roles for Teachers?

In the Washington Post today is an op-ed by David Von Drehle--"It's Time to Think What Teachers Are For" (link to the piece).

In the essay, he notes the accelerating number of advances in technology that now make it possible, he says, for this: Students from inner cities to rural hamlets can now (or soon) experience the world’s most skilled instructors delivering optimal lessons — at the student’s pace, in the student’s language, at whatever time of day the student learns best.

Okay--this is the argument--often advanced by people who have never taught (or have not taught much)--that what will improve education is putting kids in front of computers (or smart phones or whatever), where they will sit and watch "master teachers" instruct them about, oh, indirect objects or Hamlet or whatever.

To be fair to Von Drehle, he does make the argument, too, that "on-site teachers" will still be needed as life coaches, role models, facilitators, therapists, motivators, demolishers of obstacles and openers of eyes. And he talks about one of his teachers who had a significant influence on him years ago.

But all of us who have spent time teaching in actual classrooms--as I did for about forty-five years--know the folly of this replace-teachers-with-online-experiences stuff. It just ain't the same. Not even close.

I had some wonderful teachers in my student career--and all of them "knew stuff" and were profoundly human, as well: Mrs. Stella Rockwell (4th grade), Mrs. Ruth Browning (high school English), Mr. Augustus H. Brunelle (high school English, Latin, German), Prof. Abe C. Ravitz (college English), Prof. Charles F. McKinley (ditto).

And as I think about those remarkable people, I try to picture them coming to me only via a screen, a monitor. And it just doesn't ... compute.

Mrs. Rockwell's hand on my shoulder, her smile when I'd done something well (okay, I didn't see it all that often!), her determination to urge us to love books (she read to us every day after recess); Mrs. Browning's insistence that we work hard, that we take our studies seriously; Mr. Brunelle's mastery of language, his vast reading, his sense of humor (he loved puns), his temper (oh, yeah!); Prof. Ravitz's cerebral engagement with American literature, his vocabulary (I often went back to my dorm and looked up words he'd used--like lycanthropy and noetic), his belief that you ought to read a writer's complete works and visit significant literary sites; Prof. McKinley's wry sense of humor, his wide knowledge of world literature, his ability to keep things personal, even in a survey course--these are the qualities that had a significant effect on me, that greatly influenced me (though, I confess, some of it arrived a bit later on--after it had ... stewed ... a little), that helped shape me into the teacher that I became.

I'm trying to picture what Von Drehle is picturing: "master teachers" on the screen, "on-site teachers" walking around the room, smiling, touching shoulders (well, not too much of that these days!), encouraging--like eager trainers at the health club?

Well, if so, that's not a profession that would interest me. No, I want to dive into the sea of literature and writing, dragging the kids behind me; I want to go see where Shakespeare lived, where Hemingway died, where Willa Cather wrote, where Sinclair Lewis lived, where Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald are buried; I want to drive the road that Faulkner wrote about in As I Lay Dying; I want to walk the beaches of Grand Isle, LA, where much of Kate Chopin's The Awakening is set; I want to tour the Missouri cave where Injun Joe died in Tom Sawyer; (a book Mrs. Rockewell read to us);  I want kids to write from their memories, from their hearts, from their minds; I want ...

... I want to return to my classroom and show the pictures I've taken, help kids see what I saw, share with them how all of this affected my thinking; I want to have them read--and have their own thinking changed, elevated.

One of the great building principals I was fortunate enough to work for in my teaching career was the late Mike Lenzo. He embodied what Von Drehle mentions near the end of his piece--those things that make us human to begin with: our capacity for connection, compassion, empathy and love. He was wonderful.

Anyway, one day Mike said in a faculty meeting--a meeting at which we were talking about technology issues and what tech can do for us--"Just because we can do something doesn't mean that we should do it."

That rang so true my eardrums are vibrating to this day.

And, of course, Mike (as always) had identified the key questions: What should we be doing? And why? And what will best benefit kids?

I'd love to hear those questions today, bellowed from the mountaintops--and so loudly that maybe even politicians would hear them.

PS: I'll write more on this issue tomorrow--or soon.