Missing the classroom discussions from teaching days

It’s been a while since I’ve been in the classroom and around students regularly, and I hear things have changed quite a bit since then. No doubt they have, but some good things still remain—or at least I hope they do.

What I miss about teaching English and journalism and working with students in other educational endeavors are the discussions and activities with a diverse student body to learn and find some consensus about different issues: the way good literature mirrors society and records culture; the way good journalism teaches how to present news in a fair and accurate manner, etc.

Studying journalism gave students real-life experiences. An issue came up one time at a school where I was teaching about the lack of soap in the student restrooms, and the prolonged lack of resolution prompted some students to contact the media. The local television news station came out to interview them. I didn’t know the students had called or that the TV crew was there for an interview that the principal wouldn’t allow to take place at the school.

A couple of my students came running up to me after school, explained the situation, and asked what they could do.

“Go across the street,” I said. “Just get off school property.”

Which they did. They talked to the TV reporter and learned about the First Amendment in ways that I could only talk about in class.

From high schools, college and conferences, I’ve worked with many young people from around the world and from different cultures, religions and experiences. I often learned as much as they did about life and how different we are and how much we are all alike.

One time, I accepted a teaching position at the start of the second semester to replace a popular African American teacher who had taken an administrative position in the district. One of her classes was African American literature. I showed up for that class and faced 30 or so Black students and one White student (who dropped the course).

My cowboy boots probably didn’t help, but there I was, a middle-aged White man with a Southern Illinois dialect, replacing a teacher from whom they were looking forward to learning about the literature of Black writers. For the first few days, it was a bit of a standoff—almost hostile, even, from start to finish. Sorry to say, I’d never read most of the literature to be covered for the semester. So we all read and discussed the literature, as would any class. Good literature, good discussions. It ended up being one of the best classroom experiences I ever had, and I thought the students appreciated it and learned a lot about life from the literature.

 After school was out, I saw one of the students at a gas station. “We didn’t treat you very well when you first took the class,” he said. “Sorry about that.”

I told him thanks, but I understood. What we all learned, not counting the literature that reflected various Black experiences, was that we can all get along and do what we have to do, regardless of our differences.

I remember another time when one of my English classes was reading John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” about the Dust Bowl years in the southern plains in the 1930s and the desperate, mass exodus of people out west with what few belongings they could take with them. Several students said they didn’t think they could just pick a few of their belongings and leave their homes forever—as the families did in the novel, and in reality, during those hard times.

There happened to be two Vietnamese students in class who did, in fact, have to leave their homes with their families in the middle of the night to get on boats and leave Vietnam forever. One of those students raised her hand and said, “My father came into my room at midnight and said, ‘Pack a bag, we’re leaving.’” That certainly offered a different and realistic perspective for the other students—and for me, as well.

At its best, the school classroom serves as a safe—sometimes, even fun—space for exploring new ideas and experiences, as well as an incubator for developing empathy and critical thinking skills. As a teacher who was fortunate enough to help create that environment and see it in action, it was very gratifying and gave me hope for the future. And when you’re away from it, it’s worth missing.

I hope teachers working in classrooms today, and those in the future, will always have the opportunity and the freedom and the support to create that kind of experience for our young people. I believe it makes for a better society.