by Eric Benzel

I am taking a course called Radical Philosophies and Education at Teacher’s College: two weekends of all day discussions. The environment is a mix of the energetic and intellectual, innovative and critical. It is a wonderful course, and I am being encouraged to rethink my own constructions of schooling in very real ways.

Likely, I will talk about this in later posts, but today, I need to write about a conversation I had with another student during our lunch break.

This teacher, Sargeant, teaches geometry to high school students in a fairly progressive school in the South Bronx. She just finished her first year of teaching while a part of the peace corps fellowship at TC. This means she was teaching and earning certification all at the same time. First of all, I think Sargeant has done some pretty incredible things in her classroom: focus on learning mathematics through writing, an innovative trial curriculum that focusses on developing geometry through symmetries, and she started an after-school math club. On top of this, she had a relentlessly supportive principal and a team of dedicated teachers. She had it made right?

It was her last week of teaching, and I asked, “So what are you feeling after the year?” Her answer was first of all, exhausted: it was obvious that she spent everything on those kids.

What has stayed with me though, almost hauntingly, was this thing she said…

I feel like I should be hopeful. But most of my students are failing. I wasn’t good enough for them… I could see how after five years of this, a teacher would be able to say that the students aren’t able to learn, because I’m not sure how long I can feel like I’m not able to teach. Hope? Right. It’s hard enough to have imagination.

Wow. Hope was not enough. Innovative curriculum was not enough. Dedicated, beyond-sleep, work past every contract, blood and tears teaching was not enough. I don’t know how much we recognize teachers like Sargeant. Most measures will probably not reflect the imagination that she is investing into her students… the raw energy devoted to the learning, teaching, planning, and loving.

It seems given that a teacher should have hope and belief that every student in the class can and should succeed, but what happens when someone gets done with their first year teaching having a hard time even imagining this possibility?

It is hard to think about the coming year, knowing that I will not reach all of the students (maybe not even the majority) who are in my classroom. Maybe, Sargeant made a much greater difference than she can recognize. Still, I want to take the time now to start imagining what can be possible, the improbable, even the absurd so that when I finally have my own classroom (and reality has set in), I can remain hopeful. So I guess this is my strategy for now. First, imagine. Then, hope.