Thoughts on the week at Gerena

Thank you to all of you for the wonderful comments. Apparently I do know a few of you in the class, which is great.

This weekend is one of my Montessori weekends. I call it that because I was in school 4-7 tonight, tomorrow I’ll go back from 8-5, and then Sunday from 8-2. It’s draining and exhausting having to be a student after teaching. My priority is really in the classroom right now.

Two things are at the forefront of my mind right now. This afternoon I found out from one of my students that she is being sexually abused. When we told her mother, she claimed it couldn’t be true. I won’t relate the story because I don’t know how much of it should be made public, but the whole thing made me ill. I fear for her. I can’t believe that she has go home to this family member this weekend. I have to let it go and trust that the right people will do the right things now, the right forms having been filed and all that. Yet I can’t. Forms don't reassure me.

The second thing I’m thinking about lately is the marked difference between urban and rural schools. My son Drew is almost 8 and is in second grade in Hatfield. When we were at his Open House last night, the differences between his school system and Springfield were very obvious. I’d just been at my Open House the night before. My turnout was very high, by Gerena standards – 6 students were represented, and that constitutes over a third of my class, since I am down to 16 now. (The last student who left had moved schools in the middle of the week without telling Gerena.) In stark contrast, Hatfield's Open House was prefaced by a school assembly in which the students sang the school song and then, when we made our way to Drew’s classroom, it was absolutely mobbed. Almost all of the 21 students had their families there.

On my way out, I encountered the new reading teacher. He has worked with Drew, so I introduced myself. As he and I were talking, the school counselor, Molly – a good friend and neighbor of mine – came by and said to him, “I was thinking we would take a field trip and go observe at Gerena with Johanna!” The new teacher said something like “Oh, yeah right. Gerena….yeah, I’ve been there. They went…Montessori or something this year. ” His tone of voice was very negative. He sort of shook his head and chuckled a bit. I decided to pipe up then and say, “Yeah, so have I – I teach first grade there!” My husband later said he’d never seen anyone change gears so fast. He suddenly started saying how much he loved Springfield, used to work in one of its school systems, and wasn’t it great to work there. And yet his tune was much different before he knew I worked there. (The back story to all this is that I was in the running for a job at Hatfield and called to cancel my second interview because Gerena had hired me.)

It seems like among teachers, there’s a stigma that goes along with teaching in urban schools – especially with the administration in them. I was intensely discouraged from applying in Springfield by the teacher friends I had in Hatfield. What is all of that about? We have few enough teachers willing to work in city schools. Let’s encourage them when we can.

So…not to be discouraging myself, but I have lately been feeling completely unprepared for this job. As Lindsey says, I don’t know if you can be. I did as much with urban ed as I could at Smith – Sam’s course, the Urban Ed Fellowship, even a spring term independent study on the success of the Zanetti students. But I still could not have guessed what it was like to teach this class in this school. I suppose that’s true of all teachers to an extent. Still – I urge all of you to go to a classroom in a city and spend some time, especially if you think you want to teach in an urban area. Observation is great but it’s even better if you can really DO something, even something like a read aloud, where you get that experience of being in the teacher’s role. There is nothing that compares to that in its moments of great success and great challenge.