My first few weeks in Mr. Wiswold’s Advanced Placement English Composition class had the makings of a stomach ulcer. I found myself surrounded by the most intelligent minds in my senior class, many of them close friends, and I had the crushing feeling that I didn’t have the intellectual chops to learn beside them. One month in, old Wiswold drained all the color from my face when he started class by asking, “Noel, how would you like to teach the lesson today?” That day, under Mr. Wiswold’s careful guidance, I taught George Orwell’s, Shooting an Elephant to my intelectual betters. I don’t know why he asked me to teach class that day and I never saw him hand the reins to another student but that single, unexpected move cemented him as my favorite teacher of all time. Mr. Wiswold not only showed me that I truly belonged in his class, through a personal touch, he gave me the tools I needed to thrive and, more importantly, planted the seed for a lasting love of writing. Years later, as I step into a classroom of my own, I strive to similarly impact my students so that they may succeed as I did.
I know with certainty that the foundation for having a lasting influence on my student’s lives rests in our ability to cocreate a healthy and loving classroom culture. I recently worked with my class of second graders to elevate five words that would become the centerpiece of a semester-long project focused on personal character traits. Students who step into my classroom will be tasked with developing a contract that enshrines expectations and a larger statement of purpose. My thoughtful second graders, with minimal guidance, chose respect, empathy, responsibility, confidence and perseverance as admirable traits that both an individual and a community should strive for and I would proudly offer them as the cornerstone of my own classroom ethos. Visitors to my classroom may be surprised to encounter jubilation bordering on upheaval because I teach children and I believe they are entitled to some free agency, but if that visitor sticks around long enough they will soon see that this energy is balanced with cohesive rules and collective justice. After the wiggles have reached their crescendo and order is restored it’s time to get to work because that’s why we’ve come together in the first place. Visitors to my classroom will also surely notice that I am a six foot tall, middle-aged, white male, although I am committed to making sure that this is an afterthought. Historically, people who look just like me have overwhelmingly dictated and manipulated the course of our collective human experience and that reality has devastated and disenfranchised too many unfortunate people. I’ve had enough gradeshoolers ask me my height to know that I’m a veritable giant in their eyes but I am committed to being a humble and a gentle giant. I know that I’m imperfect and surely have my blindspots but I’m committed to maintaining hypervigilance in my goal of creating a safe and loving learning space. Not all of my teachers in life have helmed their classrooms with the grace and humility of Mr. Wiswold and as a sensitive child I have witnessed first hand how damaging a single, unfortunate interaction can be. It’s a fine line between facilitating healthy classroom management and nurturing the interpersonal relationships necessary to make a difference in a child’s life. I know that I need to hold each individual student in the highest regard and that while redirection and discipline are necessary at times, the scales must always be overbalanced with compassion and love. But hey, did you know that a cloud can weigh one million pounds? That a fully grown human can swim through the arteries of a blue whale? That the inventor of the Pringles can is now buried…in a Pringles can?! Yes, the classroom that my students and I create will strive for equity, it will teach the common core standards from past participles to equivalent fractions but it will also be fun! The world is weird and so are we and the hard work that we invest in making a safe and hospitable environment will be rewarded. Mr. Wiswold managed to break through to me at a time when I was feeling self conscious and wholly inadequate. He put writing on the back burner and taught me confidence at a time when I needed it the most and it made me a better writer and a better person. He used Orwell’s elephant to teach me about Burmese colonialism and decades later I booked a flight to Burma and encountered elephants on a remote, rainforest trek. Mr. Wiswold planted a seed. I want to open my fourth graders' eyes to the wonderful world around them and be the teacher that Mr. Wiswold was for me. |