Living in the Tension—Living with the Heat

Sometimes stories from our educational lives capture tensions in our chosen profession. As teacher educators we certainly live amid plenty of tensions. Here are three such stories that seem to capture what we believe is a prominent and current educational dilemma: How do we prepare future teachers for our urban centers, in schools serving predominantly poor children of color with a history of low educational achievement? We begin with the stories. THREE STORIES One of us recently gave a talk at a small Midwestern liberal arts college on the role of the foundations in teacher education. In this particular small college town, public school teachers were needed who could address the longstanding division between affluent, White, college-bound students and poor, African American kids. For two or three generations the White kids have excelled academically while the Black students have not. College faculty, undergraduates, and public school teachers attended the event. The talk depicted the varieties of curricular and pedagogical stances available to teachers today. The ideas of Deborah Meier, E. D. Hirsch, Paulo Freire, Vivian Gussin Paley, Michael Oakeshott, Jane Roland Martin, and Lisa Delpit were all introduced. But it was the last--Lisa Delpit--who seemed to cause quite a stir. After the talk, the local teachers approached the speaker to register their heated and vehement rejection of any teacher education program that would support the direct instructional strategies advocated by Delpit. No, no, they argued--good schooling is progressive, integrates various subject matters, engages students in meaningful, active inquiry. When they heard the response that, in our analysis, Delpit was simply asking teachers and teacher educators to listen to "her" children's needs and to voices in urban communities, they rejected her proposals as simply and plainly bad instruction. The exchange went nowhere; lines had seemingly been drawn that somehow could not be crossed. At a recent farewell dinner with a group of young urban elementary teachers, two of whom were moving to the West Coast, the table discussion returned again and again to the difficulties these teachers encountered in their urban setting. This group of teachers was well intentioned, fully certified, culturally sensitive, and frustrated. They had tried informal small-group instruction, they had worked at integrating their curriculum, and they had attempted to be loving and approachable. According to them it didn't seem to work. When KIPP schools (1) were mentioned as an alternative model, another guest--a professional development facilitator with expertise in the Critical Friends model--initially reacted with emotional heat and resistance. Those models, she said, did not follow what we know about good learning, were much too direct, did not focus on the child, and were too rigid in their instructional approach. In short, they weren't very constructivist. The exchange in this second setting was more productive than the earlier interaction. But we left not really knowing what to make of the tension or the heated reactions. We all knew though that in 10 more weeks, after summer break, those teachers would have to find a way to deal with the tension and instruct their students in a distinctly different kind of heat. And then there was the graduate student, a math teacher of 10 years, who was intrigued by the KIPP and Amistad Academy/Achievement First models for middle school instruction. (2) She had explored the possibilities in numerous class paper assignments and found the response by her colleagues and some faculty curious. They asked: Why was she pursuing these examples? Didn't she know that they expected way too much of the students (going to school for long hours each day and homework to boot)? Didn't she know that the teachers in some of those schools were "on call" in the evening? Didn't she know that they didn't support constructivist learning? …