With a new school year looming—I’ve spent the summer getting fit and hoping my optimism for the job will replenish itself—I can’t shake the memory of an evaluation that made me want to quit. It was near the end of April, so chaotic. My teacher’s desk was a mess. Unshelved books, half-empty jars of tea leaves. I’d scribbled on every scrap of paper. My office mate said to her Advanced Placement Language and Composition student, “Your paper is now at about a B-plus.” The student, even with a top college acceptance in hand, was continuing to claw and scratch for the A.
The bells had been ringing or not ringing because we were administering end-of-course tests. The state was checking to see how my sophomores read and write in comparison with the other sophomores around Missouri. Giving the test, I saw some of the headphones didn’t work. One student couldn’t submit her work because she was locked out by technology. My seniors were revving up for the prom with AP testing around the corner. Many spent their last week in high school taking those expensive tests. The College Board earned billions.
Meanwhile, I signed my contract to teach another year. But I thought it would be my last because I was so angry. The anger stemmed from a pop-in mini-observation where the administrator focused on how (1) kids were sneaking a look at cellphones by the window, (2) one student used his laptop to check in on the Masters golf tournament, and (3) another dozed while sitting straight up in his seat. The administrator wrote, “Many of your students are missing out on good teaching as they are disengaged, either with phones, video or heads down (some appear to be dozing off).” Before I say more about how American education is failing—and so, clearly, was I—let me add the mini-observation occurred during the last class on a Friday.
Administrators don’t have the guts to ban cellphones but expect teachers to spend every day swinging wildly at the slithering AI tech we’re supposed to embrace.
But no excuses. I should have been whirling around the class snatching iPhones. Better yet, I should have had rules in place for cellphones from day one. Actually, I did. After a few months, students and I gave up on placing phones in a plastic holder by the door. In fact, we didn’t know what happened to the plastic holder. It disappeared. My student who was watching video of the Masters, I’d talked to him about that three times before the administrator arrived and I should have confiscated his laptop … again. My student with the headphones on in the front of the room—that was a special arrangement for only Fridays if he didn’t have them on during class all week, and they weren’t even playing music, just serving as protection against the world. The headphones were more a coping mechanism for reasons I won’t get into here—yes, he put his head down. I nudged him but also knew he was working on “Willy Wonka,” the school show, and wasn’t getting sleep. Strike that, reverse it. I hadn’t been getting much sleep because tornadic winds blew most of the roof off our home and the insurance adjuster said they would cover $8,500 in damages and the first estimate to fix the roof was $25,000.
There was another student with headphones on—I often caught him playing chess during class. I should have threatened him and his grade, but he was a top student, and I kind of enjoyed trying to catch him. He speaks fluent French and shook his head Non! when I shared my college French with the class.
What was the lesson the day of the mini-observation? The curriculum demanded I teach “the Bible as/in Literature.” I’ve learned to like teaching the stories from the Bible as they relate to the literature we’ve studied. That was the setup the administrator missed. Holden Caulfield of The Catcher in the Rye has a favorite character in the Bible: Legion, who cuts himself with stones because he’s possessed by demons. Richard Wright’s epigraph to Black Boy comes from the Book of Job: “His strength shall be hunger-bitten,/And destruction shall be ready at his side.” Tim O’Brien, the author of The Things They Carried, has a character who refers to Vietnam during the war as the Garden of Evil: “Over here, man, every sin’s real fresh and original.” Macbeth is compared to the brightest angel that fell. Anyway, we were learning about Samson, his power and his hair. I’d just shown my class a film clip of David using his slingshot against Goliath when the door at the back of the classroom opened.
Was any of it sticking to the brains of my 16-year-old students? When and how does education happen for any student? How do you measure it? I had another student in the class that day who was sleeping—sitting up. I tried to wake him in the way Jesus managed to get Lazarus out of his tomb, but I knew that student was up until 1 a.m. or later every night working on his YouTube dreams of fame and perhaps fortune. I told him I wanted to write him a college recommendation, but he needed to get more sleep. I told him how science proves starting school at 8 a.m. is not a good choice for teenage brains, but he’s got to do better. I didn’t expect him to figure it out as a sophomore, though he seemed to understand. Maybe when I see him as a senior if I’m still teaching.
The American system of education is a wreck. Wealthy schools have a criminally unfair advantage. Students are conditioned to adopt a transaction mindset where they only know to peck, peck, peck for the grade. It’s not their fault. We test, test, test. We don’t acknowledge in any meaningful way that all students learn differently at different times, that they need to be nurtured, cared for, inspired, and understood. We’ve let their brains be wired directly into their iPhones.
Administrators don’t have the guts to ban cellphones but expect teachers to spend every day swinging wildly at the slithering AI tech we’re supposed to embrace. The unannounced drop-in mini-observation absolves administrators from taking any direct action other than scrawling notes about the surface of a problem that goes back to the first bite of a forbidden fruit. Teaching requires deep knowledge, forgiveness, patience, understanding, and yes, some Old Testament retribution—but maybe not in April on a Friday during the last class before a state test.
