For White Folks Who Teach in Suburbia
Y’all. I stopped reading For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood when I took the job in suburbia. My new school is the ethnic inverse of the Charlotte magnet school where I taught for one measly year.
Honestly, Suburbia IS easier, if only for the numbers game (85 vs 180 to keep track of at one time). If I’m honest, having a more-or-less similar cultural background to those in my class–and very few freshmen–has made me downright suspicious of how easy the transition has been.
But then I heard Dr. Emdin preach.
La Maestra Loca’s YT channel!
Y’all.
I.
Am.
Grover.
Singing right over Susan like it’s my job.
And I feel like all of my compliant little Suburbian kids are FNU–Dr. Emdin’s student who spent all semester just letting the teacher call him the abbreviation for “First Name Unknown” and just doing his work. For the most part, my kids have been doing almost every single thing I ask of them, when I ask it of them.
But I know they’re still just complying.
And I know there’s a song playing somewhere underneath, but I just can’t HEAR it!
First steps
The Monday after ACTFL, I was…
- still emotionally flattened
- also digitally flattened under a pile of pre-conference and sub-day grading
- and generally in need of a little human connection with my angels
So I re-ordered some videos I had held off on at the beginning of the year. “I see / I think / I wonder” was a popular protocol throughout the #ACTFL19 conference, so I found some scrap paper and made it my motto for the day.
BUT I also added Stacey Johnson’s intercultural awareness schema:
I felt like we got a little honesty out, and it made me question some of my own assumptions about monolingualism recall the monolinguals I love whom I regularly seek to accommodate with my multilingualism. Some seemed genuinely interested in reaching out to others after the discussion. One whole class period still admitted they just wanted the language credit.
But that can’t be all of their song.
Next steps
Maybe it was report cards. Maybe it was the three weeks out of four where I was either ACTFL-ing, turkeying, or on my flu-gripped deathbed for nearly half the week. I needed to build on that discussion, but it got away from me.
#1 CHECK-IN: So after rising from the dead, I scrapped the password a la @SenoraChase, and went for an L1 check-in. It was cool and all. Some little mini-celebrations and tiny epiphanies were nice. A few sad stonewalls I couldn’t figure out how to get through, too.
And I still feel like they don’t feel like I want to hear their song.
I wrapped up the semester with some TL check-ins, making sure I got whether they were really muy bien, solo bien, or no muy bien, and I think they at least felt a little more SEEN, if not heard.
#2 SURVEY: I think I have to actually carve out some space, like AnnMarie says, not just in writing, but during class discussion. I think I’ll introduce it with writing, though, with my old standby from La Maestra Loca, and survey them (I made a link you can copy from!) You guys, I got some pretty astounding responses from this from my crew at my old school, and last year in The Big City was way more positive than I anticipated.
Sure 97% of kids still think I like my job and that I’m “energetic” and “always smiling,” but the amount of kids saying I gave too much work, that nobody liked it, that this wasn’t an AP or even honors class…it got me down. Worse still was one of my most enthusiastic kids commenting that I needed to be more interested in kids’ lives outside of class and not let my bad days affect them. (It was anonymous, but this one let me know.)
I’m honestly still reeling–spiraling, actually–from the reality of that one.
#3 MOOD-METER: I had been meaning to pilot this since it came up in PD at my previous, urban school. I googled around and found this tweet:
I’ve experimented with an adapted version of this particular chart before break, having students jot down a number -5 to 5 for their energía and for their ánimo, designating a color, then picking an adjective. I am currently thinking of having them add it to their notebooks, and I’m just really torn as to what I want to have them do with it.
I didn’t get it figured out in time for this semester’s crop, but I plan to play around the first week of next semester with my new classes (yay block schedule!), maybe with some Peardeck or Nearpod, maybe some post-its or sticker dots or something. If we can get an overall reading each week (or at least every other week), maybe, we can assess what is working, what needs to change, and what kind of special treats and personal interests.
#4 Passion Projects: it’s been a minute since I dared go down the “genius hour” road (over 2 million minutes, really). I got frustrated with the inauthentic final presentations without meaningful audience, and with the glazed looks from mutually unintelligible topics. But I think 3 things can avert these disappointments now:
- The pre-focus on high-frequency vocabulary and verbs during all other class activities (this subverting the need for most translatoring 🤞)
- Shared group glossaries in the spirit of previous “fan club” efforts
- The joys of Flipgrid! And sharing said Flipgrids via Twitter, FB, and IG PLNs!
I mixed in a little FVR the last week of the semester, with positive results. I think as a break from the norm, free reading and “genius hour” style research and reflection can help me hear their song, make it clear that I WANT to hear it.
And maybe help add some verses in Spanish.
