TUG OF WAR

Kimberley D. Corlett

For my entire teaching career, I've wrestled with the dilemma and tensions between what I've been taught to do (cover curriculum) and doing what I believe teaching and learning to be. It's been a tug of war between two paradigms, the constructive which reflects my beliefs, and the transmission style which I have been taught....If I teach traditionally, I don't see the students learning anything of value. I hate what I am doing. I am bored and the drills offend me. If I teach with an open curriculum, the room is active and exciting. However, there is a constant nagging concern about "getting the student's ready for next year,"... I believe that part of my dilemma would be resolved if I had the permission from the system to be someone other than the trained professional who implements programs (KC, Journal: May, 1996).

Sometimes, I feel like I am in a game that I cannot get out of. I am being pulled hard. My feet are dug into the ground and I am trying not to lose my leverage, yet I am slowly being dragged forward. I am pulling back, but nothing is happening. I am stuck. Suddenly, I am on the other team, pulling hard, digging my feet in the ground, trying not to lose my balance, pulling and pulling. Then abruptly, I am back on the other team again and the game continues. The tensions that are created by the external pressures to teach in a transmission style and my beliefs about my role as a teacher that fosters meaningful learning, feel a lot like a tug of war. As I attempted to understand my role as teacher and deal with the external pressures I face, I must examine those critical incidents which cause me to pull, dig my feet into the ground, and keep my balance.

It is December 3rd. All the classes are practicing for the Christmas Concert and beginning to decorate for the holiday. The grade 6 class I am teaching is known to be "extremely" needy and there are a number of students who might be called "behaviorally challenged". To most of them, this Christmas business is baby stuff. They mock other students in the school who have the holiday spirit. My most serious worry is that they hate the fact they will be singing at the Christmas Concert. Only three or four students actually sang in Music class or during practices. The music teacher is not able to engage them, and she is very upset. She begged me to sit in the music classes during my prep times so that the Scrooge like mockery will not ruin the practice for everyone else. The class promises that they won't perform in this "crappy concert" and I believe them.
I have no problem with the fact that these students are boycotting the holiday concert. It is not part of their world. I, on the other hand, love Christmas and believe that those few students who like Christmas too, needed some seasonal cheer. I ask if the class wants to decorate the room. Big mistake!! The two quiet girls who shoot their hands up before I finish speaking are tormented for days. So the next day, I invited the girls to stay after school to decorate my desk. I thought, since there is a little treat for each of them on the tiny tree, they will go easy on me and the two girls will be safe from torment. I also decide to read one Christmas story a day. If they don't like it they can plug their ears.
I know they will have a difficult time with the Christmas stories I have chosen, since the majority of them are picture books. At the time, we are doing a unit on the early Aboriginals in Canada. To introduce them to the Christmas stories I begin with The Huron Carol because I can push the boundary of their tolerance and say it is related to the unit we are studying. My plan is to open the doors to the other Christmas stories.
I read the title to them.
"What the hell are we reading this for?"
"Oh, what? Did Santa Claus fly a moose to the tipis?" (Much laughter from the class).
"What did they ask Santa for? A toy bow and arrow?"
"Hey man I am an Indian and we don't have no damn Christmas. Christmas is whitey stuff!"
I feel pretty down. They just don't want to do the Christmas thing. It is far too painful for most of these kids for many reasons I haven't shared. I almost decide not to continue with the story, but I do and I am not sure why.
When I finish reading the story, their reaction shocks me.
"That's cool. I like the word Gitchi Manitou."
"Hey that's just like the story of Jesus I learned about when I was in Sunday School. " (A few students laugh and make fun of this student).
"How did they decorate the forest? I mean they couldn't go to the store and buy stuff."
"Yeah like they decorate the forest. What do you think they plugged the stuff into? Come on....Think about it." (Much laughter and mocking).
"It's just a story. The writer made it sound nice that's all. It is just in the forest. A forest is green with snow."
I interjected, "Think about one of the coldest nights you can remember. What do you see when you look outside? Just white stuff?"
"When it's colder the snow shines."
"Your breathe makes bigger and whiter clouds."
"Yeah, that's Christmas. Not all this red and green crap."
"We go to our cabin every Boxing Day. It's so quiet."
In astonishment, I listen to their comments for about ten minutes. This is the sure sign that they are highly engaged.
The final comment is made by the student who appears to have the most disdain for the Christmas spirit in the building.
"Well I'd rather have a forest than all this glitter stuff around this dumb school!"
I asked, "So ...what do you want to do now?"
The students decide to decorate the room to become like the Huron Carol. They draw a map of the room and begin planning a forest. They assign jobs and volunteer stuff from home. My responsibility is to tell them that it has to be a class effort and everyone must commit to actually finishing the job they are about to begin. That is the last instruction or decision I make this month. For the next 3 weeks until Christmas break, I guide and encourage. I don't need to instruct because the students are finding their own meaning in this experience. I go down to the paper room to get supplies, I write notes to other adults in the building asking for materials, I take pictures and I hold things while the students glue them together. ( They still aren't singing in the choir practice).
The day before the Christmas concert, they put the finishing touches in the now forest classroom. The walls are striped of all the teacher posters. Book shelves that cannot be removed or turned to face the walls are emptied. Of coarse, the desks are pushed into the teacher prep room adjacent to the classroom on the second day of the project. Large forest murals are painted. Thirty or so tall cylinder birch bark trees run from floor to ceiling. A frozen pond is made out of paper, fake snow and saran wrap run down the middle of the classroom. An enormous bright yellow moon made from two hoola- hoops and tissue paper hangs near the entrance of the room. A wigwam made from paper, cardboard and thin wooden sticks sits in the far corner. A trail through the trees is simulated by real branches and twigs found at Christmas tree stands. Fireplace logs make a bridge over the frozen pond. Students wear parts of costumes they brought in from home or borrowed from friends and relatives. It is breath-taking.
They had finished what they set out to do. I asked them, "What do you want to do now? My intention was to determine how I could continue to support their engagement in this learning experience. (I certainly didn't know what to do next. I didn't plan for any of this).
"Nothing."
"We can just hang out."
"What do you mean just hang out?", I asked.
"We can have Christmas. You know, we can just be in the forest. Isn't that what they did? It's not like Santa Claus is coming." (Laughter from the class).
"We should sing the song in here tomorrow. I don't want to go to the concert. It's nicer in here." (Mass agreement).
"Yeah man, I am just going to bring my friend here tomorrow night. I am not going to that bogus concert either man!!"
"Yeah let's do our concert here!"
So we talk about it. What does that look like? Who will come? Where will we be while people are in the room? The students decide they are not going to sing the Huron Carol, but they will say it. They decide they will all be characters in the forest and begin assigning jobs to each other. They are talking about animal costumes and angels and hunters and....There I was, left standing there again, without a part in this.
My senses and sensibility catch up to me fairly quickly at this point. How can I as a term teacher go down to the administrator and say that my class has decided not to participate in the school holiday concert. I began to panic. I am not able to tell my administrator that my students will not participate in the concert. I cannot insist that the student participate either. I did not have the power at that moment to influence their decision. If I took away their control of the situation, I would NEVER regain their trust.
I stop the class and reaffirm my excitement and happiness with their accomplishment. I agree that they should show their Huron Carol to their families and friends. Next, I pause and they knew a "but" is coming, I could feel the resistance building already. I tell them they have a choice to make. They can either participate in the school concert and then bring their families up to the room or they can do nothing at all. I risk everything, taking the biggest gamble of my short teaching career. NOTHING. Nothing is said. Their faces are expressionless. I ramble on about fairness to their younger siblings so that their families can also see what they are doing and something else about being a part of the school. Finally, someone says, "OK." I don't know who said it but that settled the decision. Then they go back to talking about who is doing what.
The next evening, every single student comes. Each student brings at least two family members with them. They still refuse to sing in the school concert but they stand where they are suppose to and do not bug anyone through the entire performance. When family and friends come upstairs later to see the room, the students take their places and begin even before I get to the room. They do not start reading at the same time, so there are about three separate readings happening at once. It is magical and beautiful. I am so proud of them. I remember thinking as I am getting gently pushed out of the room by spectators, "I don't recognize my students. They are a part of the forest."

The experience was a gift. This grade Six class allowed me to experience what an independent, cooperative, student driven, active and meaningful learning environment could be. The experience not only confirmed what I thought I believed learning to be but would eventually extend and challenge that belief.

Ironically, after the Christmas break that year, the old class routine returned. Desks were brought back into the class and put into double rows. Textbooks returned to the shelves. My posters went back up on the walls. I gave the students assignments and decided what we needed to do next. Everything went back to the way it was, except for one thing. The students valued each other differently. They were more willing to work with each other and often expected this to happen. Every once in a while, the students mentioned the December experience. I thought about it all the time.

Slowly, during the remainder of the year, the students became more and more stagnant. Why aren't they getting this stuff? Why aren't they trying? Everyday was a struggle. Although I asked myself what was wrong with the students, I knew it wasn't them who needed to change.

At the end of the year, I felt I had learned something very powerful about my role as a teacher. At the time however, I struggled to understand what exactly it was I had learned and what I needed to do with that knowledge. I struggled to make sense of my experience when I wrote my year end Growth Statement:

This year I have appeared to be the farthest from my vision of a teacher yet at the same time, truest to myself.

A student's traditional connotation of "my teacher" changed entirely. I was needed in an entirely different way than ever I had ever experienced. In some ways, I feel our class became an extended family.

After struggling with the realization that I could not complete the "traditional" curriculum I had intended, I was able to become the caring teacher that I perceived myself to be.

The gift my class has left me this year is what they have taught me about myself, as a person and as a teacher. They have given me ideas on how to make the classroom more inviting, comfortable and safe.

Conroy (1991) implies, that it is the constant tension I felt for the rest of that school year, that forced me to rethink what my belief about my role as a teacher was. He stated that

... it is precisely because the matter did not resolve that has caused me to think about it, off and on... (p.70).

What did I believe? I knew from my experience working with preschool children and growing up in a family of four that learning happens differently for everyone in different ways long before I "learned" any of the theories in my undergraduate studies. I used to compare my experience with preschool children to that of a gardener. I would plant an idea for an activity and the students would add the water and sunshine to make that idea grow. All I ever had to do was suggest something and the children would tell me what equipment they needed, possible strategies to complete our task at hand, possible "rules" for our games, ways to share the activities, as well as other ideas that were related to the one I had given them. My role in their process was to give them some direction (an idea), get them whatever supplies they needed, help them work through their ideas so that they could be successful and help them work together and share. More importantly, long before that, I had learned everyone is capable of learning and wants to learn. I had come to understand this after years of watching my younger brother struggle through a school system that tried to dictate his future by suggesting alternative schools to meet his inabilities to learn in a regular transmission based high school. He was very interested in learning if they would have only listened to the things about which he knew and cared.

The two life experiences I've just shared are the foundations of my teaching philosophy. Firstly, I believe that everyone is capable and willing to learn, if it is meaningful. I can help foster learning by providing a means for students to engage in inquiries and supporting them. In later years, I would come across some literature that would validate the beliefs that I acquired long before I became a certified teacher.

..the teacher's job is no longer to "cover the curriculum" but to enable diverse learners to construct their own knowledge and to develop their talents in effective and powerful ways...

To foster meaningful learning, teachers must construct experiences that allow students to confront powerful ideas whole. They must create bridges between the very different experiences of the individual learners and the common curriculum goals. They must use a variety of approaches to build on the conceptions, cultures, interests, motivations, and learning modes of their students. They must understand how their students think as well as what they know. (Darling-Hammond,1993: 754)

But somewhere between completing my undergraduate work, becoming a new teacher, worrying about completing the curriculum and striving to be competent, I unknowingly became the kind of teacher I swore I would never be. For those few months following the December experience, I realized that the manner in which I was teaching was not congruent with my philosophy. I wanted to change but I didn't know how to. So I froze. I continued on, the way I had before December not knowing what to do.

In the following school year, I discussed my dilemma with my administrator. She suggested reading materials, listened to my early years experiences and helped me compare and contrast them to my current experiences. I went on classroom visitations to see what other activity based, student-centered learning classrooms looked like. I shared my ideas and excitement with a close friend. I talked to my administrator about building a supportive classroom and what I needed to do to accomplish this.

These experiences and my reading finally led me to understand parts of what had happened in that month of December. The meaning of that experience began to turn into understanding (Conroy,1991). That class had a strong sense of community. Learning was meaningful to them when it became social. The December students succeeded because they depended on each other to support their learning by

...turning the classroom into a social setting for mutual support of knowledge construction, a setting that could eventually be internalized by the individual students. (Bereiter, 1985: 221)

Realizing this, I ventured on to reconstructing the atmosphere of the class community. That summer, I spent a lot of time arranging and rearranging furniture in a manner that promoted community instead of isolated and restrictive pods of student spaces. I removed the desks from the room and scavenged as many round and rectangular tables as possible. I wanted the students to be able to see each other comfortably so that they could share ideas and easily support each other. I made sure there were spaces for small groups and individuals to work as well as large meeting areas. I designated areas as centers and filled them with activities and equipment that would invite students to explore. I planned activities that encouraged students to work together to solve problems and share ideas.

When the year began, I knew I had to create situations that allowed for building trust and fostering a teaming relationship among the students. Students worked together to produce a class constitution, plan weekly class activities and recess games, as well as, create and assign class jobs. The students were excited about the possibilities they were able to create for themselves that is, their own small group of friends in the class. Within the first week of school, I quickly came to realize that community building would not come that easily with this new group of students. As a class, they had experienced a number of negative experiences that divided them socially and left some angry and rather vindictive. Gender issues, prior experiences of verbal abuse among the students, and a few consecutive years of having more than one teacher in the school year, left them bitter, disconnected, and distrustful.

All my attempts to create cooperative group activities were met with resistance and noncompliance. Students were more willing to opt out of experiences than they were to work with someone who wasn't in their clique. My hopes of a close knit class dissipated quickly as the days passed. My most immediate goal was to help them communicate in a socially acceptable manner and at least to accept the fact they were all different yet valuable human beings. Many weeks were spent role playing and modeling appropriate problem solving and communication skills.

For the time being, I abandoned the notion that cooperative activities would invite students to work with others to solve a common task. At the same time, I did not want to allow some of the cliques to continue to gain more inappropriate power and control. I knew I had to continue to try to influence the social climate in the classroom but in a less overt manner. Therefore, each morning, I placed each student's journal at a spot on the tables, carefully ensuring cliques were broken up, arch enemies were not sitting directly beside one another and that each child sat with different people every day. Surprisingly, students did not complain or resist my efforts. In fact, I do not think they viewed this as an attempt to build relationships, but rather saw it as some form of classroom management imposed by their teacher. Or perhaps, they felt secure knowing they would not be doing any activities together, except sitting at the same table for whole class experiences and would be able to join a group of their choice or work on their own for the bulk of the day. Within three weeks, placing the journals out on the tables became a student job. Each morning, a child placed the journals. I did not direct the students nor did I explain a process for doing this task. With a few exceptions, the students placed the journals in ambiguous places and lived with it.

After that, cooperative group activities gradually were accepted. "Fringe" students began crossing clique barriers. Problem solving discussions began taking place, and we celebrated. In mid November, I suggested the class could have a party to celebrate the work they had completed thus far, the only catch was that everyone must be involved in planning and running it in some way and that I was a guest rather than the director.

By December, I was able to draw names and put students into groups.

By February, students were able to make up their own groups after being given certain conditions (for example, 2 girls and 3 boys, 1 friend and 1 person whom they know little about).

By April, the entire class was invited to one girl's house for her birthday.

By May, the class had a co-ed soccer team, complete with cheerleaders.

By June, at 4:15 p.m. I received four phone calls from parents, wondering where their children were. I went outside to look for them only to find a group of 11 students sitting at a table in McDonald's talking and laughing.

I watched myself intensely that year. I wanted to be able to describe what I had done that helped build community in the class. While I was immersed in it, I believed I was the agent of change that supported the students. The cooperative, team building and problem solving activities provided them with essential skills they needed to function more efficiently in a community. The strategic, proactive interventions and my expectations for their behavior towards one another also affected the way they interacted. However, looking back, I believe that these things were not the primary agents of change that created a social context in which the learners supported each other as they took risks to construct their own knowledge. The critical incident that allowed this to happen was my removal from the decision making process in November, when they were planning their celebration as I had in the previous December.

Again, I questioned my role as teacher. I knew I had to relinquished yet more of the control that I maintained with the class.

The next year, I was ready for change. I decided to move downstairs and teach a Multiaged grade 2/3 class. I worked arduously to ensure that I empowered the students. I provided as many choices as possible for students to explore themes in a meaningful manner. My evenings were spent gathering items that related to the class theme and putting together activity packages. I surveyed the class regularly to see what other activities they would like. In class, I tried to keep all the "Teacher Talk" to a minimum. I primarily worked with small groups and individuals. I walked around with a clipboard and post it notes jotting down incidents to help me kept track of who was doing what and what students needed to do next, or how to support their learning. The students were all busy and appeared to be engaged. For the first time in a long time, I felt comfortable with my teaching, knowing that my practice had begun to fit my beliefs.

Then June came.

Two teachers are sitting in the work room. Each have file folders, daybooks, and class lists. They are discussing student placements for the coming school year. One teacher is the 'receiving' teacher. She begins going through a checklist.

"Did you get through multiplication up to two digit?"
"Well most did."
"How about division, are you able to finish the chapter to the end?"
"No, not yet. But we are almost done. A number of students are having some difficulty with the process. They aren't finishing their work at home. I don't know if they will get it this year."
"Well, I guess I'll have to reteach that. It's going to be hard on the others having to do that all over again."

As I listen to this conversation, I feel relieved that I will not have to participate in a conversation like this. I thought about how that receiving teacher would react if she had been talking to me. What would I have said to her?

"No. No, we didn't do the chapter on division. But Mike, Jake, Josh And Jen can construct and work through the division process using blocks. Tannis and Pat are able to do decimal division. Matt and Mark know that if you have 5 chocolate bars and 6 friends that no-one will be able to have a whole chocolate bar but they probably could share all the pieces, providing it was a chocolate bar that had those things that let you break them into pieces."

As I walked away from that conversation, I felt relieved that I would not have to participate in that kind of a meeting this year. Most of the students from my class were going into my team teaching partner's class. We had the same philosophies and our two classes had worked closely in the past school year. Like myself, she did not need to hear what her students know (or didn't know), they would tell her. Feeling a sense of accomplishment that I had gone beyond that way of thinking, I returned to my class to get some things ready for the next day.

Unexpectantly, a conversation I had with a student from my previous class that fall came to mind.

One day, in mid-September after school, one of my students from the year before was walking down the stairs dragging her bag behind her. She had been crying.
"What's wrong Susan?"
"I had to stay after school to work on my Spelling."
"Oh, that's not so bad. What words are you working on?"

Last year, Susan had really enjoy poetry. She was captivated by similes and metaphors. She taught herself how to use the thesaurus and spent large amounts of time making lists of similes and metaphors. By the end of the year, she was beginning to incorporate many of the words she complied into her stories. She was able to use the words in the correct context and was using words traditional introduced in upper grades.

"I can't spell."
"What do you mean? You spell just fine. Are you forgetting to edit your work before you hand it in?"
"No. I can't spell the words from our spelling textbook. Mrs. Forman said I am behind in Spelling. My test said I can only spell like a grade Fourer. I am suppose to be in grade Six she said. I have to stay in now till I catch up. How come you didn't give us any Spelling last year. Mrs. F. said that you are suppose to. She said everyone is suppose to do the Spelling words."

At that moment I felt that I had done something terribly wrong. I felt I had failed that student, that class. They aren't ready for the next year. Immediately, thoughts of incorporating a traditional spelling program into our Multiaged 2/3 class routine flooded my mind. My stomach was tied in knots. I felt uncomfortable about doing this, but I needed to consider what would be best for the students.

After that conversation I was ready to abandon the independent vocabulary development activities I was doing with the class. I believed that the activities the students were doing were more valuable to them than weekly lists that have no real context in their writing. But I kept hearing Susan's voice. I can only spell like a grade Fourer...you didn't give us any Spelling...everyone is suppose to do Spelling. I knew Susan could spell well, yet maybe, I needed to reassess the value of the vocabulary building activities. Was I doing the right thing? The vocabulary activities fit with my philosophy, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe the students were not benefitting from the vocabulary building activities. I froze. For the month of October, I did not do any vocabulary activities. I did not do Spelling. My thoughts continued to ping pong back and forth.

Yet it is because of the basic concerns of a teacher - because of wanting to be sure that students understand - that one remains noncommittal, resists early acceptance of a student's understanding... (Duckworth,1986: 489).

My intuitive response as a teacher was to continue with the vocabulary building activities. I knew that the students were learning new words and using them correctly, but they couldn't do spelling. In the past, I would have abandoned the vocabulary activities because I wanted to be sure that they would be ready for the next year, I wanted, "to be sure students understand" (Duckworth, 1986). For the first time in this type of philosophical dilemma, I accepted the fact that students did have some understanding. I continued with the vocabulary building activities for the rest of the year because I knew it was meaningful even if others did not agree.

It was at that moment in June, I realized the meaning of the Spelling incident and the discomfort I felt after listening to the teachers talking about next year's class. I knew that real learning was happening in my class. I knew it. My team teaching partner knew it. The students knew it. But others did not.

Once again, I returned to the question, What is my role as teacher? How could I make the students' learning apparent to others? Duckworth (1986) talks about the duel role of the teacher. There are

... two aspects of teaching . The first is to...help them (students) notice what is interesting; to engage them so they will continue to think and wonder about it. The second is to have the students try to explain the sense they are making and instead of explaining things to students, to try to understand their sense. (Duckworth, 1986: 482).

The first part I was doing, or at least striving to do more successfully. Until now, I also believed the students were able to explain their understanding. In part, this was true because I was a part of the context in which they created meaning, therefore, I understood them. However, outside of our class community, the students were unable to articulate their learning so that others could understand. As a result, Susan cried because she didn't know how to spell and I froze because the apparent results of my teaching manner continued to conflict with the transmission based teaching beliefs of others, leaving me feeling skeptical and unsure of myself as a teacher.

As I continue to understand myself, feelings of guilt surface. These are feelings of guilt for not meeting the external expectations of those who do not share my beliefs about teaching. I realize that I no longer wish to engage in this tug of war. I must be true to my beliefs and take to heart the successes I have achieved. I have laid down the tug of war rope and hope to continue to foster the sense of community that grows when students take charge of their own learning. I also need to help them make the strength of their learning apparent to all.

Bereiter,C. 1985 Toward a Solution of the Learning Paradox. Review of Educational Research, 55(2): 201-226.

Conroy, Frank 1991 Think About It: Ways We Know, and Don't. Harper's Magazine, November: 68-70.

Darling-Hammond, Linda 1993 Reframing the School Reform Agenda: Developing Capacity for School Transformation. Phi Delta Kappan, June: 753-761.

Duckworth, Eleanor 1986 Teaching As Research. Harvard Educational Review, 56(4): 481- 495.