The Right to Learn
“What made you want to become a teacher?”
I get asked this question maybe half a dozen times a year or so. I know it’s a perfectly legit and innocent question, especially for someone who has just learned that I’m a teacher, but I hate answering it, because there only two options open to me: either I try to answer it honestly, which takes a very long time and ends up delving into aspects of myself, my life, and my profession of which most people would prefer to remain blissfully unaware; or I try to answer it conversationally, which means I oversimplify the truth to the point that it hardly resembles the truth at all.
Over the years I have developed several stock answers that fit into the second category that represent elements of the whole truth, some quicker than others. One of my longer-winded (but still conversational) responses is that I read a book when I was in college called The Right To Learn, and this is what made me want to be a teacher (but can you spot the half truth already? Why the hell would anyone read a book called The Right to Learn unless she was already interested in teaching to begin with? I was already on the path; all TRtL did was seal the deal and determine where I was going for graduate school). Galvanized by the book, I googled its author, Linda Darling-Hammond, to find out where she taught, because I was determined to attend graduate school there. I’d been having trouble figuring out how to pick a school anyway, and knowing there was a professor there that believed what you believed and had done a bunch of research on it seemed like a better reason than most. (I think I cursed a little when I found out she was at Stanford, because I didn’t think I’d get in; on the other hand, at least she didn’t teach somewhere like Minnesota or Illinois, because after five years in Ohio I was sooooo done with below-freezing, snow-laden winters.)
[From The Wikipedia: Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University, where she serves as principal investigator for the School Redesign Network and the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute. Her research, teaching, and policy work focus on educational policy, teaching and teacher education, school restructuring, and educational equity.]
The Right to Learn basically covers everything mentioned in that last sentences. From what I understand, LDH wrote the book primarily for legislators & other policy makers, hoping to educate them on a hot-button issue that is much more sophisticated and complex than most people (even teachers & school administrators) understand. We all know that the system doesn’t work; unfortunately, the nature of politics and bureaucracy often leaves us searching for someone to blame for the dysfunction, be it teachers, parents, administrators, lawmakers, or society at large, the logic being that if we can figure out where the system is breaking down, we can fix it and move on. And so “reform” (such as it has been) comes piecemeal, usually top-down, fails to work, and we find ourselves again at square one. Linda’s approach is unique because her research thinks bigger than that. Our system does not work; instead of pointing fingers, she delves back in history to investigate how and why the system has been allowed to develop in the way that it has to begin with, then examines the characteristics of the current system that do not allow it to change. And, she backs it up with decades and decades of research. (Seriously; the bibliography is 40 pages long.)
(Back to the part about this being only a half-honest answer to The Question; I think I stumbled across TRtL because I was in the midst of writing a term paper for a seminar called Principles of Education on why standardized testing generally sucks. Heh.)
So I’d done a very little teaching at this point and a good bit of math tutoring, mostly college students but also a few high school and elementary students as well, done several school walk throughs and classroom observations, and also had plenty of experience being the kid for whom the established system doesn’t really work. Which made me think I knew sooooo much, OMG, about how schools work, what good & bad teaching are, and how to fix it all. (I think maybe that’s why people become teachers, really, because if you actually had any *real* idea about what you were walking into, you wouldn’t.) Also, by the time I read TRtL, I’d also already done a lot of other reading for my standardized testing paper and was starting to get more of a sense of why things were so screwed up in the land of public education in terms of policy & bureaucracy (but not really, or, as I said before, I never would have gone through with it). So, when I finally read the book, a lot of things resonated with me, mostly from the standpoint of having been a public secondary school student who hated probably something on the order of 75% of it.
Wow, it wasn’t just me, I remember thinking. Linda doesn’t think public schools work very well either. Apparently, as a disgruntled (& vocal) high school sophomore, I was on to something.
But TRtL is one of those books that you love not because it fills you up and makes you happy when you read it; you love it because it makes you angry, because it sets your gut on fire and makes you want to do something.
So I did something. I went to Stanford and got my teaching credential & masters in math education (in spite of the fact that Linda was on sabbatical that year, *sigh*), spent the next hellish year learning what teaching in a traditional public high school is really like, and finally landed in a school that was actually designed using the blueprint that Linda lays out in TRtL, where I’m now beginning a school leadership training program that starts with — wait for it — everyone reading The Right to Learn! And better yet, participating in a seminar/book discussion about it, facilitated by LDH!
Okay, so if that didn’t make you as excited as it seems to have made me, imagine your favorite rock star. And then imagine that you’re a rock star, and it was listening to your favorite rock star’s breakthrough album that inspired you to become a rock star, and now you’re going to get to jam with him/her. It’s kind of like that.
So, four years after I originally read it, I’m reading the book again, which is an amazing experience, because I understand things in completely different ways. I look at some of the things I underlined or put stars by and go, “Duh, big woop.” Or I look at some of the things I put question marks by and think, “OMG, I totally get this now.” And, most especially, I read some of the quotes by teachers about what teaching is, what it is like and how it works on a day-to-day basis, and have to stop and catch my breath because I’m thinking, Yes! Yes! It’s just like that! That’s what I always want to tell people or explain to them and can never put into words! Now having lived through lock-step curriculum and worthless testing mandated by lawmakers, I read things written or said by other teachers, and I get it, it means something to me in a way that it couldn’t have back when I was writing papers about curriculum and testing in college.
A part of me wants to refuse to discuss teaching or the public school system with anyone until they’ve read this book. That’s how good it is, how poignant and well-written and -researched. Any time anyone says anything ignorant or ill-informed to me about what I do or how or why, all I want to do is hand them the book and say, Here. Read this. And then we’ll talk. And if you don’t care enough to read it, you’re not really that interested in this conversation.