The Hidden Curriculum

"Was not Jesus an extremist for love?... The question is not whether we will be an extremist, but what kind of extremist we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?" ~ Martin Luther King Jr. "Letter from Birmingham Jail" 

Today was a bad day in the classroom... Not behaviour. Not lack of work. Not even poor uniform choices... It was lack of PASSION.

Sometimes I think that my students are like wind up toys that have been stuck in a box for a few decades. Like they are big kids at the edge of the diving pool, but then turn around and jump in the paddling pool...

Now I'm all for some lazy river action, but there are times I want the crazy tornado water slides...

Oh no, not these kids... it's like they can't see outside of their very limited twitter feeds.

Today I'd had enough. I don't think I yelled, but I was indignant. The thing is... I care about them waaaaayyyyy too much. They have suuuuuuucccchhhh potential and they just can't seem to grasp basics like time organisation or how to prioritise assignments or how to stop checking their facebook on their iphones in my lesson. One day... it's gonna happen in my classroom...

But besides phones and ipods and whatever else... I want these kids to feel something in their day to day lives. To be passionate about something. To "live deliberately" as H.D. Thoreau put it... To care about things and people and not just lived blinded by their own bubble. I want my students not just to care, though, if we're being really honest. I want them to be warriors. To be brave enough to go out into the unjust world and try to make it a better place, even if they fail, even if they are laughed at, even if it's soul-crushingly difficult. I want them, as MLK Jr. put it, to be "extremists for love".

I got home from work, made a sandwich, and slumped down on the couch, where I've had a copy of Jonathan Kozol's On Being a Teacher sitting untouched for a while. While I thought his book would be a memoir on his teaching experience, and I suppose you could say it is, it's basically a bomb to blow up the machine that is the public school system. He ravages against the mediocrity of "professionalism" that teachers have to adhere to and the "indoctrination" of children through "the system". It's pure genius! I'm glad I'm not the only teacher who feels like she has to hide her rebel soul in the staff room and recant data and information "on message" to inspectors and colleagues. I'm glad that he's been angry about this since 1981, technically before I was born, and that people have felt a deep dissatisfaction with the "traditions" of public schools since then.

Teachers seem to be people who want and expect more out of people... We will pour our guts out for you if you come along with us and improve. We will tirelessly improve ourselves in order to inspire you: "seldom rewarded in any way at all except perhaps in the one and only way that decent teacher ever find reward: in the gratification of a difficult job well done and in a very basic kind of dignity courageously upheld."

No, I don't think teachers crave fame and fortune, but we are miniature dictators in our own rights. If I think everyone should share, by God, they share in my room. If I hate your nail polish, off it comes. If I see your phone, it's mine, mine, mine (at least till the end of the lesson). But, to be honest, those aren't really the things I care about... I live for the moments when we discuss music on youtube, and debate current affairs ("Is Bin Laden really dead?"). I want them to prove me wrong about Percy Jackson by their intelligent comments on the text, and see that look in their eyes when they realise they've mastered a skill they couldn't do last year, or last week, or hell , yesterday ("Can anyone remember how to conjugate the present perfect tense? How about adjectival phrases to make complex sentences? Well done! They can also be called appositives!") I want to see them surprise themselves with the extent of their imagination and the skill of their rhetoric. I want to see them connect to characters and feel with them, writing passionately in their defence (even if I disagree). I want to see kids who never thought they could, try and try and try, even if they still don't succeed. I want them to grow into passionate, intelligent people of integrity and conviction.

The most valuable thing I learned in teacher training was that if I wanted to see something in my classroom, I had to teach it...

"The hidden curriculum... is the teacher's own integrity and lived conviction. The most memorable lesson is not what is written by the student...; nor is it the clumsy sentence published (and "illustrated") in the standard and official text. It is the message which is written in the teacher's eyes throughout the course of his or her career. It is the lesson which endures a lifetime." ~ Jonathan Kozol 

Here's hoping...