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School life is unpredictable. A teacher’s personality traits are constantly tested. What professional advice can you think of in the following situations?

All members of the teaching profession are certainly aware of the fact that teaching can be both rewarding & disheartening. Find proof to this statement in the following extracts from the book by Bel Kaufman "Up the Down Staircase".

 

Sept. 7

What I really had in mind was to do a little teaching. I had come eager to share all I know & feel; to imbue the young with love for their language & literature; to instruct & to inspire. What happened in real life was something else again, & even if I could describe it, you would think I am exaggerating.

But I am not.

In home-room they went after me with all their ammunition: whistling, shouting, drumming on desks clacking ink-well lids, playing catch with the board eraser, sprawling in their seats to trip each other in the aisles – all this with an air of vacant innocence, while I stood there, pleading for attention, wary as a lion-tamer, my eyes on 46 at once.

By the time I got to my subject classes, I began to stagger under the inundation of papers – directions, circulars, letters, notices, forms, blanks. The building itself is hostile: cracked plaster, broken windows, splintered doors & carved up desks, gloomy corridors, metal stairways, dingy cafeteria & an auditorium which has no windows.

Sept. 25

You ask what I am teaching. Hard to say. Professor Winters advised teaching "not the subject but the whole child." The English syllabus urges "individualization & enrichment" – which means giving individual attention to each student to bring out the best in him & enlarge his scope beyond the prescribed work. Bester says "to motivate & distribute" books – that is, to get students ready & eager to read. All this is easier said than done. In fact all this is plain impossible.

Many of our kids – though physically mature – can't read beyond 4th or 5th grade level. Their background consists of the simplest comics & thrillers. They've been exposed to some ten years of schooling, yet they don’t know what a sentence is.

Oct. 2

I'm beginning to learn some of their names & to understand some of their problems. I even think I can help them – if they would let me. But I am still the Alien & the Foe I have not passed the test, whatever it is.

These children have been nourished on sorry scraps, on shabby facsimiles, & there is no one – not at home, not in school – who has not shortchanged them.

You know, I've just realized there is not even a name for them in the English language. "Teenagers", "Youngsters", "Students", "Kids", "Young adults", "Children" – these are inappropriate, offensive, stilted, patronizing or inaccurate. On paper they are our "Pupil-load"; on lecture platform they are our "Youngsters" – but what is their proper name?

Communication. If I knew how to reach them, I might be able to teach them. I asked them to write for me what they had covered so far in their high school English and what they hoped to achieve in my class. Their papers were a revelation: I saw how barren were the years they brought me, I saw how desperately they need me, or someone like me. There aren’t enough of us.



To the outside world, of course, this job is a cinch: 9 to 3; five days a week, two months’ summer vacation with pay, all legal holidays, prestige and respect.

Oct.5

There is a need for closeness, yet we can’t get too close. The teacher-pupil relationship is a kind of tightrope to be walked. I know how carefully I must choose a word, a gesture. I understand the delicate balance between friendliness and familiarity, dignity and aloofness.

 

School life is unpredictable. A teacher’s personality traits are constantly tested. What professional advice can you think of in the following situations?

1. – Hi, teach!

– Looka her! She’s a teacher?

– Who she?

2. And Ferone is still testing, testing me with all the tricks of the trade. He pretends not to hear and keeps asking me to repeat. He drops books loudly, spends a long time picking them up, drops them again. He arrives late and stands gaping in the doorway. He answers me with false humility: “Yes’m, teach, you’re the boss”.

3. The books we are required to teach frequently have nothing to do with anything except the fact that they have been taught, or that there is an oversupply of them or that some committee or other was asked to come up with some titles.

4. …I am busiest outside of my teaching classes. Do you know any other business or profession where highly-skilled specialists are required to tally numbers, alphabetize cards, put notices into mailboxes, and patrol the lunchroom?

5. …You ask the silliest question, darling! What do you mean, why must I float? – Because Mary Lewis uses my room for two of her classes. Why doesn’t she use her own? – Because another floater uses hers. We share the bulletin board and blackboard 50-50.

6. …Yesterday I was playing my record of Gielgud reading Shakespeare. I had brought my own phonograph to school and I had succeeded, I thought in establishing the mood. I mean, I got them to be quiet, when – enter Admiral Ass, in full regalia, epaulettes quivering with indignation. He snapped his fingers for me to stop the phonograph, waited for the turnable to stop turning and pronounced: “There will be a series of three bells rung three times indicating Emergency Shelter Drill. Playing records does not encourage the orderly evacuation of the class”.

 


Date: 2015-12-18; view: 1069


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