Everything is the Same

I am a planner.  I have lists on paper, lists that live in my head, symbols of the passage of time are present in so much of my daily life.  

I keep a stack of bookmarks and I choose a new one with each book I start, carefully placing the one just used at the bottom of the stack, ready to use in the future, aware as I do it that the 10 books down the line may be read over two or three months  When I open a bag of coffee beans, I think of the future, aware that when the bag has emptied, six weeks will have passed.

I organize so much of the minutiae of my daily life in this way.  I watch a houseplant as new growth sparks and know that when the new leaf is full, the next season will be closer at hand.  I organize the cloth napkins on which I set out my morning coffee service each week and know that when the floral ones have been used, the bandana prints will follow, and then the green floral prints, and then…..my mind quietly recites the events to which I can look forward: JT will be home from college, T’s birthday will be celebrated, my tomatoes will bloom….

I do this so often, so much of the time, that it feels as if the planning and anticipation are just another part of my daily life.

I thought of this habit this morning when, for the first time in weeks, I put on some mascara, sandals instead of my now customary work-from-home flip flops, a skirt fancier than what I’ve worn for the last few months, and got ready for the last day of school.  But I didn’t walk out the front door and drive 8 miles to school in the early morning.  Instead, I went downstairs to sit at my desk for a Zoom teleconference with the 7th grade.  Together, if from our separate homes, we watched a recorded version of our closing ceremony and said goodbye to the school year.

Today is the last day of school and, in a normal world, I would have been anticipating this day for weeks; weeks marked by bookmarks shifting and different morning coffee set ups, by an app on my phone that marks each day that ticks by until a much-anticipated event will occur.

Instead, the weeks have all jumbled together as we lived in the world of the pandemic.  Daily existence seemed both more important and smaller as we navigated the condensed world of everything happening at home.  The amount of work required to teach remotely meant that weekends were also given over to work, hours and hours spent writing clear instructions for students to read and carefully follow so that they would know where to be: in Zoom, at our class webpage, on a shared Google doc, in a discussion forum…..but all of it from the same place, looking at the same screen.

So it seemed fitting that today would be the same as so many of the school days have been since we began to learn remotely.  That time has passed is clear.  The curve of disease has flattened,  my pandemic anxiety has become a familiar companion, the days have more sunshine and warmth, everyone has longer hair, we’ve learned new things.  But there is a sameness to it all that is the unsettling reminder of all that we’ve been through together even as we’ve been in our separate homes.

History Lessons

I’ve been teaching U.S. History to the 7th grade since 2015 and from the very beginning I’ve loved the challenge of this task.  The class covers the period from colonial settlement to the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and I’ve adapted lessons and activities from the material I used to to teach this period to college students and 11th and 12th graders.

People often find that news surprising; the fact that I can use variations from lessons first developed for college students.  I think this only surprises people who don’t know 7th graders.  For all their bluster and sass, the 12 and 13 year olds who make up my classes are intellectually engaged and honest; they want to be taken seriously and serious ideas ensure that is exactly what happens.  There are some ideas that confound them (transcendentalism, for one, but I kinda feel the same way on that front) but they are open-minded and wide-eyed, with a willingness to take risks in the world of ideas.  Because I teach Middle School and needn’t adhere to an AP curriculum or a college catalog, we have time to get into the weeds of complicated ideas and really think them over.

Unlike older teens, they have yet to develop much distrust in adults.  There is some bluster but not far underneath is a genuine desire for adult approval.  They are often moody and emotional (I joke that 7th graders have two speeds: thrilling excitement and miserable despair)  but in class they expect me to manage our time and they follow my lead.  When I tell them we are historians together, they believe it and act accordingly.

Each year, I have the pleasure of seeing these young men and women as they make discoveries about our national history and how it plays out in today’s world.  This year, my students are creating an historical trading card for a person in 18th or 19th century history.  The list of eligible people is diverse, as befits the diversity of my school.  One of my students is studying the life of Nat Turner.  As part of his research, he learned that as a grown man, Turner was owned by a 9 month old baby.  He came to me doubting this fact and asked if it could be true.

“Yes,” I said, “and that is the utter irrationality of slavery in a nutshell.”  The student in question knew that slavery was wrong; knew that it was inhumane and rooted in racism.  But this discovery drove the point home in a way I had yet to manage.  And that it was his discovery means a splendid thing: he will remember it for the whole of his life.  There is a power in this sort of learning and it is my daily blessing to be a part of it.

I Live in Hope

I teach U.S. History to 7th graders.  My course starts with the settlement at Jamestown and aims to close out at the Emancipation Proclamation, which is a story of hope.  I end with hope because a whole lot of my course is helping a diverse group of 21st century 12 and 13 year olds to unpack a story that features the original sin of slavery.  I respect the power of the American promise and I believe in it.  I also realize the ways in which we have fallen short of that promise.  In 8th grade, my students will pick up U.S. history at the Civil War and they will study into the 20th century. I want them to be well-prepared to understand segregation, the Great Migration, and the promise of Martin Luther King, Junior.  I also want them to ask questions.

  

The greatest challenge in my class is to help the students to identify and understand the promise of the Declaration of Independence, specifically Jefferson’s claim, “that all men are created equal” and then to make sense of that promise in light of the many ways our nation fell short of it.  

Slavery and the exclusion of women from the promise of the Declaration absorbs a great deal of our time; it has to.  Because as thrilling as Jefferson’s words are, our nation fell far short of them for many years.  We fall short today, as even a cursory listen to Donald Trump’s words reveals.  There are days when I listen to the news and shake my head; there are days when I listen to the news and rage, as I did when the president took up against Mexican immigrants this week, calling some of them animals.

When it comes to slavery, it’s remarkably easy for 12 and 13-year olds to fall into the trap of believing that slavery was introduced into North America because the colonial settlers needed workers.  We separate these issues and identify the reality that labor was needed and that enslaved labor was chosen to meet that need.  This distinction helps the students to identify the racism at the core of slavery.  And make no mistake, slavery was a racist institution.  While its easy enough to understand their co-existence, it’s often a disappointment for the students to realize that the end of slavery did not bring an end to the racism at the heart of the institution.

I am careful when I introduce the language of the positive-good pro-slavery crowd.  The rhetoric of John C. Calhoun is my first vehicle.  In my classroom of racially diverse students, we are precise when we look at Calhoun and his crowd; we never lose sight of the ways that he sought to dehumanize the enslaved people; to treat them as other.  We recognize that the tools Calhoun used to characterize the slave, calling the enslaved people animals instead of people, can easily become the ugly racism of our time.  

And indeed it has, thanks to Donald Trump, whose words are damaging and dangerous.  I’m a woman who is often unrealistically optimistic and this default position of hope has always served me well.  When I taught 7th graders in the atmosphere created by the presidency and leadership of Barack Obama, we all soaked in the language of hope.  We felt proud of an African-American president living in the nation’s White House.

Donald Trump is not a man who brings hope.  In his small meanness, I feel dirty and ugly.  Hope feels elusive and rare, a fading commodity in the bitter stew that is Trump’s version of America.  I tell myself that reason will triumph; that my little group of thoughtful and tolerant 7th graders will win out.  But some weeks that feels like an investment in optimism that is not born out by the reality of daily life in Donald Trump’s mad, mad world and I  grow weary.  But I will not give up the fight.  I will live in hope.

Real Life Conversations with Middle Schoolers, Bullying edition

The backstory:  We are studying George Washington’s presidency and I explained to my class the issues that drove the Jay Treaty.  Discussing British refusal to evacuate the West or stop impressment of American sailors, I characterized British actions as if they were a bully.

Me:  So it’s like England was giving a young United States a wedgie and then jamming the U.S. into a locker.

Student R:  Oh man….America needs to tell an adult.

At that, we all burst into laughter.  And, as a happy aside….we all understand the problems and perils of the Jay Treaty.

Neither Great Nor Better

I’ve taught American history for many years.  These days, I teach 7th grade students.  7th graders are at an interesting point in adolescence, at the corner of young adulthood and childhood with both experiences on their minds.  They long for independence, but aren’t always sure what to do with it.  Their brains are moving fast and are occasionally beset by strong emotions that feel new and mysterious and, sometimes, overwhelming.  As each of them sorts out their identify and place in the world, they are sometimes unkind to one another (or themselves); at the same time, they are the first to point out unkindness in others.   It’s easy to underestimate the abilities and talents of 7th graders because they are prone to underestimating themselves.  But it would be foolish to do so because 7th graders are capable of understanding and communicating in sophisticated ways about complex ideas.  In this, they are an absolute wonder to teach because they are absorbing and learning so much.  I learn from them every day and I am aware that they are learning from us all the time.

I teach my 7th graders American history, from the period of colonial settlement in 1609 all the way to the Civil War.  We take on some very difficult topics as we explore these years.  We study the founders and wrap our minds around the philosophical origins of the American movement toward independence.  Together, we read the founding documents and explore the claims made in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.  We also explore the disappointing elements of the American story, including the lives and experiences of the Native tribes that were here when colonists arrived.  We talk about the origins of the “original sin” of slavery and we go to lengths to understand both the lives of enslaved people and the lasting legacy of the institution of slavery.

It is in the inequities and injustices of the American story that 7th graders step out of themselves to see both a world that was and a world that can be.  As we wrestle with a document that claims all men are created equal even as it excludes native tribes, enslaved people, and women, we come to understand the complexities and injustices present in the human story; in the American story.

My 7th graders know that painting all native tribes with the broad brush of the name of one of the more well-known Indians is both offensive and ignorant.  In fact, my 7th graders know the real story of Pocohantas.  They understand the complexities of her experience.  They know better than to objectify or dismiss tribal people because they know better than to objectify or dismiss anyone.  Like all of us, it does not make 7th graders better to live in a world where the president’s casual racism is the accepted and tolerated order of the day.  
Greatness comes from honoring one another’s accomplishments, from making an effort to stand outside one’s cultural experience to understand the experiences of others.  It comes from tolerance and empathy and kindness.  It comes from the daily effort to be better.  It comes from the struggle to give promise to the claim that “all men are created equal.”  And it should come from leaders who help us to do these things.

The Power of Powerlessness

As I plan my Harriet Tubman lessons for the 7th grade, my mind continues to whirl with the story of Tubman’s life.  Born to the Ross family, as a child she was known as Araminta.  She chose a new name when she escaped to freedom in 1849, calling herself Harriet after her mother.  It was a reinvention that led to freedom for more than 300 other people, all at the hands of a woman once enslaved. It’s a story with lessons that resonate today.

When Araminta Ross was six,  her father Ben had to stay behind while his wife and children when were sent to work 15 miles away, at a farm belonging to Edmond Brodess in Dorchester County, on the eastern side of the Choptank River.  There, Araminta looked after children, worked in the fields,  hunted muskrats, and found that she was a good observer of the outdoor world.  Her father had taught her to identify the North star so that she could navigate home after dark and as she grew up, she cultivated more knowledge of the outdoor world.  As a teenager, contracted out to work for slavemasters in Cambridge, a harbor town, she mingled with free black men who worked the Chesapeake waters and taught her about the river and the tributaries and creeks along the Eastern shore.  They also told her about life in the North, where freedom beckoned.  The presence of Quakers in the region ensured that those who sought freedom from slavery might find help.  

Free and enslaved African-Americans in the world of Chesapeake, Maryland, moved amongst one another.  They intermarried, with freemen sometimes having children by their enslaved wives. Araminta Ross became Araminta Tubman when she married John Tubman, a freeman.  Children born to enslaved mothers were themselves enslaved and families of this kind faced the constant risk of separation.  White slave owners in the region treated their slaves as an investment and when debts needed settling, they didn’t hesitate to sell their enslaved property to slave traders at the wharves in Cambridge, who would arrange for the human property to be shipped off as cargo to plantation owners in the deep South.  If this occurred, families would likely be separated for good, unable to communicate with one another because they could neither read nor write.  This fate befell two of Araminta Ross’s sisters and it was the threat of being sold away from her family that finally inspired Araminta to try her hand at freedom in 1849.  As she explained to the author of an 1886 biography about her life, "I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me.”

When the details stack out, I can see how it was that Harriet Tubman could escape to freedom: she knew the landscape well, the river led north, as did most the creeks, marshes were good places to hide tracks, Quaker settlements in the area were known to oppose slavery, it was less than 75 miles to Philadelphia and freedom.  But she still travelled with the risk of death or a punishment for escaping that might be worse than death, there were still great unknowns,  and she had to repeatedly rely on the kindness of strangers.  To make the journey once was courageous in a way modern life never demands of us.  And to go back repeatedly over a 10 year period to rescue both family and strangers….well that is simply splendid heroism, from a woman born to a world that underestimated her mightily.  

It’s common to claim that the underestimation of her strength is what empowered Harriet Tubman.  But that claim undermines both her bravery and her brilliance.  Vaclav Havel wrote that the power of powerlessness can be found in the refusal to yield to fear.  Araminta found that power and it made her rebirth as Harriet Tubman something to behold.  There is a lesson there for all of us and I look forward to sharing it with the 7th grade.

Real Life Conversations with 7th Graders: Priorities edition

The backstory: One of my Assistant Principal responsibilities is to be a presence at school events.  Sometimes that means cheering on the cross country runners; on other days that means sitting with the Middle School choir during the Spring Choir Concert, as I did on Thursday evening.  The event is at an old chapel on campus at Rutgers University.  Our Middle School Choir sings and also watches as various Upper School Choirs perform.  The performance is one thing and in their starched white shirts and black skirts and pants they are both cute and nervous as they sing.  Afterward, when their portion of the concert is complete, they file back into the church pews on the side of the chapel.  Then the madness really begins.  They know they should sit still, keep quiet, and be a good audience but they find it nearly impossible to do so.  On Thursday, in addition to the more-than-occasional shush, I seized a few cell phones.  After the event, 7th grader A asked if he could have his phone back.  I invited him for a conversation.

Me:  Buddy, there were students perfuming as their families watched.  It’s rude to be on your phone.  What were you doing?

A (in earnest assurance):  I was checking the NFL draft to see who the Cleveland Browns got to pick.  

In my mind, I wanted to say, “You’re a 7th grader, not the fucking president of the Cleveland Browns.”  But I know this child and I especially know the concerns of 7th grade boys.  Chief among them are their sports teams.  I know that A is not the president of the Cleveland Browns but A, all of 4’7” of him, well, he isn’t quite so sure.  So rather than shout or offer the obvious, we ended our conversation in a different fashion.

Me:  I get it, but checking your phone while students perform is rude.  You need to be a good audience and keep your fingers crossed that things go well for the Browns.

7th grade is often the the most difficult part of adolescence, a churning sea of anxiety and frustration.  Voices and bodies are rapidly changing (or they aren’t and that’s a burden of a different sort), emotions swing wildly, and insensitivity abounds.  My job is to be the steady anchor on this ship of fools, to be compassionate and empathetic, and to kindly direct them as we sail through it together.  Lucky for me, there are plenty of opportunities to laugh and smile as we navigate the storms.  As for the Cleveland Browns, well, A is on the job.  They should be just fine.  

Real Life Conversations at School: the Strength of Hope edition

The backstory:  7th grade history class is closing in on the start of the Civil War and the students are exploring the events of the 1850s.  We started with the Compromise of 1850 and then marched our way forward: publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin; the Kansas-Nebraska Act; Bloody Kansas; the beating of Senator Sumner on the floor of the U.S. Senate; and yesterday’s topic, the Dred Scott ruling. The words of Justice Taney in that ruling, declaring enslaved people to be property and not citizens and invalidating the right of Congress to end slavery, are racist and profoundly unsettling to an audience of diverse and tolerant 7th graders.  They were not amused and sought to wrap their minds around the details and its consequences.  

Student D:  Did enslaved people ever lose hope and take their own lives?  

Me:  I don’t know of any stories of people taking their own lives.  Remember that we’ve talked about the fact that faith was a profound comfort to many people living in slavery.

Student D:  They were so strong, weren’t they?  Talk about living in hope!

We’re headed to a short-term happy ending of sorts in the form of emancipation.  But I suspect there’s a longer term happy ending also in sight in the form of twelve and thirteen year olds prepared to truly understand the very complicated history of race in the United States.  

I’ll take it.

Real Life Conversations at School: Searching for Hope edition

The backstory:  7th grade history curriculum covers the first half of U.S. history, from colonial settlement to the Battle of Gettysburg, which is the turning point of the Civil War.  8th grade starts with the Gettysburg Address, finishes out the Civil War and explores into the 20th century.  The 8th grade teacher and I planned our courses together so that mine informs what follows.  We identified a handful of central themes for the courses; race in the United States is central to our studies..

The period I teach is fully involved with slavery and though we will end just after the Emancipation Proclamation, that’s in May and it’s a very long time for 12 and 13 year olds to wait for some kind of happy ending to a pretty unpleasant story.  Moreover, the arc of the slavery story isn’t one that is always headed to the light.  From the moment I introduce the topic to the point where we explore the outbreak of the Civil War I remind my classes that, “slavery gets worse before it gets better.”

We’re currently studying the early Industrial Revolution (1820s or so) and the widespread use of the cotton gin.  That’s the point where both the institution of slavery and the rhetoric in support of it get a lot more hateful; the “worse” part of the story.  7th graders are notoriously self-absorbed and nearly all of their emotions are intense.  But they are also capable of stepping outside themselves to understand the world and because of this they are well-poised to spend some time with some very uncomfortable realities of our American story.    Last week, we were looking at the growth of slavery in the United States.  During this period, the population of enslaved people grew from 750,000 in 1789 to nearly 4 million by 1860 and this at a time when foreign importation of enslaved people had stopped.    Enter uncomfortable realities and my explanation, including the fact that children born to enslaved women were automatically considered slaves themselves.  And then I issued my usual reminder….

Me:  Remember, slavery gets worse before it gets better.

Student E (with annoyance in her voice):  You know, I’m just getting really tired of that phrase.

We all paused and smiled; E had spoken our collective mind.  Upon reflection I realized that E’s mixed race family, including a younger sister who is a different race than E, makes her especially aware of the nuances of race, birth, and identity.  Her honesty informed all of us and provided a much-needed moment of levity as we explored a painful topic.  But for me, it’s also a reminder that 12 and 13 year olds are looking for signs of hope.  They’ve yet to fully realize that they are the people who will get to write many of those hopeful and happy endings.  But I realize it and with young people like E in charge of our destiny, I know we’re going to be just fine.

Meanwhile, Over in Cashmere Woods

A few weeks ago, I was in the faculty work room when I noted out loud that sometimes the 7th grade smells bad.  I mentioned that I was thinking about an air freshener and two friends of mine who teach in the Upper School spoke up at once with a hearty endorsement: “Cashmere Woods,” they proclaimed.  

I went out and secured me some Cashmere Woods and it really is a rather pleasant alternative to the smell of teen spirit that can otherwise pervade a room of 7th graders come warm afternoon days.  It took the kids more than a week to realize that the room had a different smell, and even then they weren’t sure what it is, which is pretty much 7th grade in a nutshell.

Classes resume today and with warm weather on the horizon, I expect that we’ll all be taking a trip to the Cashmere Woods, which I imagine to be fresh-scented, shaded, and lovely.

Teaching Slavery: Grade 7 edition

In the New York Times magazine’s yearly edition on college education there was an essay by Edward F. Baptist entitled, “Teaching Slavery.”  I keep coming back to it, reflecting on my own teaching experiences these days.  In his essay, Baptist discusses the challenges of teaching slavery to today’s college students.  He characterizes his teaching experience in the last 25 years as the challenge to overcome “….a bubbling bowl of white resentment.”  

Baptist identifies the schools where he has taught undergraduates and allows that the passage of time and diversity of the classrooms makes a difference.  Things were better at the University of Miami than they were at the University of Pennsylvania.  These days, now teaching at Cornell University, Baptist writes that things are better than they were at Penn but still notes that, “Resentment of the topic of slavery hums at a relatively low volume…”

In one respect, I teach at the opposite end of the spectrum from Baptist.  He has college students and I teach 7th grade.  In another respect, our demographic is similar.  In terms of privilege, the students at my independent college prep school are likely as well off as the undergrads at a place like Cornell, perhaps even more so.  In terms of diversity, however, my classes are distinct from Cornell and look a great deal more like the nation as a whole.  In most of my diverse 7th grade classes, whites are not the majority.

Baptist’s lessons on slavery are likely building on the previous knowledge of the institution that his history students have acquired.  I’m at the other end of the spectrum, laying the foundation for that knowledge.  My 7th graders care a great deal about fairness and in this respect slavery is at first quite easy to introduce:  it’s so clearly unfair.  Of course, it’s more than that, and I don’t neglect the complexities.

I teach my 7th grade history students that studying history is the process of discovering more complete truths of the human experience.  When I introduce slavery to a room full of diverse faces I make very clear that none of us are slaves and none of us own slaves.  We know that such a thing is deeply wrong.  I explain that none of us are personally responsible for slavery in the United States, but that we are all living with its inheritance and as citizens are therefore responsible for understanding its complexities.  I emphasize that this is a collective enterprise.  I explain the introduction of slavery in the American colonies as a racist solution to the desire for cheap labor.  My students and I never forget that slavery was driven by racism.

Talking about such a horrifying topic with 12 and 13 year olds is sometimes a challenge.  The pain and discomfort of understanding slavery sometimes shows on their faces; I can be overwhelmed by that horror.   So I tell them this as well: there are moments of greatness in our history; there are moments of great disappointments.  Together, they make up who we are.  Our history is imperfect because people are flawed.  From this foundation, our self-knowledge moves forward.  We can work as a class to understand our nation.  Instead of resentment, we have community and the sense that it is our world to both understand and repair.

Superpowered

For the second year in a row, I started 7th grade History class with a “quiz.”  It’s really a series of questions for the students that are designed to give them a chance to tell me about themselves in a private and creative way.  They are 7th graders, the most self-absorbed creatures on the planet, and so they very much enjoy the chance to write about themselves.  I ask them what superpower they possess; I ask what them what their favorite thing to do is; I ask them where they most like to be and then I ask what place they’d like to visit.  I invite them to practice their autograph and then to identify something in history that they’d like to know more about.

7th graders are notoriously difficult and opinionated.  I often tell parents that if you survive 7th grade, you’ve made it through the hardest year.  Parents in the midst of the struggle nearly always respond with a nod of understanding.  7th graders are less difficult at school then they are at home because the adults at school, no matter how caring, won’t put up with the whining, sharp tongues, and quick frustration that their parents endure.  That’s not to say this middle school year is easy, more that its challenges are externalized and are shared by the whole 7th grade community: getting organized; learning to be kind to one another; practicing empathy; seeing beyond the self; learning to cope with adversity.

But the best part of the 7th grade is that underneath the gruff 13-year old exterior lies a maturing child who is increasingly capable of sophisticated thinking,  Bit-by-bit they begin to understand the complexity of the world and their place in it.  So even when things are difficult, the typical 7th grader has moments of self-less clarity.  It is this that I find most charming about 13 year olds.

Even so, for parents in the midst of the dark moments it is sometimes hard to see the light that is starting to shine.  So I suspect that they’ll be pleasantly surprised to learn that when asked, many of the 7th graders in my class identify home with family as their favorite place to be.  They wrote that they feel loved and happy there.   Perhaps it would surprise families to learn that many of them long to go to a new place in the company of family, the people with whom they most enjoy sharing adventures.

Some of them had “superpowers” that were touching.  The shortest child in the 7th grade identified his height as a superpower.  One of six twins in the grade told me that being born with another human being was his superpower.  Another explained that being able to laugh at anything was her superpower.  These are awfully astute observations and evidence of children who know they are blessed.

13 year-olds may be bigger, more opinionated, and more combative than 6 year-olds but their most super power is that there is still a lovely child inside.  I’m so glad that these 7th graders are mine to cultivate, enjoy, and sometimes bemoan.  Because my superpower is them.

Real Life Conversations at School: Laugh More Often edition

The backstory:  My 7th graders are creating American history-themed amusement parks as their final class project.  By necessity, this means discussions of their favorite amusement park rides.  Student G has even greater ambitions.

G:  You can rent all of Hurricane Harbor (a local water park) for yourself and I’d like to do that some day.

S:  For yourself?  Wouldn’t that be….(and here I pause to consider my word choice…..I’m thinking of lonely or overwhelming or quiet or something but G quickly filled the gap).

G:  Awesome?

At which point I burst into laughter and the startled class started laughing along with me.  When we caught our breath R said, “You’ve never laughed like that before.”  I think that I laugh like that all the time but now I’ve made a mental note: laugh more often with the 7th grade.

The Audacity of Grade 7

7th grade history at my school is the first half of American history.  As befits a school with as much diversity as ours, it’s the first step-by-step introduction of American history a student whose been in the school since kindergarten will experience.   In 7th grade, we start with colonial settlement and go all the way to the Battle of Gettysburg in the Civil War.  8th grade starts up with the Gettysburg Address and goes through the majority of the 20th century.

Because they are 7th graders, it’s also an appropriate time for us to explore some hard truths about our national story.  I love my nation and consider myself a patriot but I’m not blind and I am aware that the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights —— freedom, independence, and political equality ——— haven’t been extended to everyone in the same measure.  In the gradual journey that is the American story, those principles are in the process of being extended to all of us.  But it’s a slow process and a cursory look at the nation today certainly reveals the inequalities with which we continue to struggle.

My students are universally from a privileged economic class and they know this.  Half are students of color, many of them multi-racial children who don’t fit neatly into a single category.  They look at their immediate world and see a range of faces and experiences that they value equally, even if their nation does not.  The formative president in their imagination is Barack Obama and they are about to watch a presidential race that will feature a front-runner candidate who is a woman.

In this atmosphere, they are sometimes casual about race and gender in a way that surprises me.  But this is their world and their own comfort with diversity is reflected in their friendships and ambitions for one another.  In the past few weeks, as we’ve explored the nuances of inequality in antebellum America, the injustice of it infuriates them.  That I can’t promise a clean and perfect happy ending to the story frustrates me.

But that is the lesson of history: the arc of history leans toward justice, but the journey is sometimes slow.  Often, it’s more than a lifetime.  I’d be more frustrated about this if I wasn’t daily in the company of some extraordinary 12 and 13 year olds who won’t permit injustice to continue on their watch.  They give me hope of a kind that is extraordinary.  Audacious, even.  And that is a most happy thing.

Real Life Conversations with the 7th Grade: Swarm edition

The backstory: Typically, our Middle School students wait outside the classroom if their teacher isn’t in the room.  Since 12 and 13 year olds are notoriously loud and self-absorbed, if a teacher isn’t careful, that means a swarm of kids jammed at the door, blocking the hallway.  Most teachers encourage the kids to line up instead and by universal agreement, Mr. S, who teaches math, is the best at managing this process.  Earlier this week, my 7th graders were waiting for me,  loudly blocking the entire hallway, as they are wont to do.  I greeted them and sought order.

Me:  Line up, folks, I want to be just like Mr. S.

(assorted students scramble into a sadly disorganized line).

Me:  Seriously, why can’t my lines be like Mr. S’s lines?  I want to be like S!

JZ (quiet student at the front of the line):  So, more math homework?

I laughed out loud as the class filed in.  There’s worse ways to spend my days.

A Room of Our Own

Administrators at my school all teach and last year I taught 6th grade History while also serving as the Middle School Assistant Principal.  I have a lovely office but I taught the 6th grade in 3 different classrooms, none of them my own.  I got to be pretty good at getting the right supplies to the right place, but I missed having my things in just one classroom.   And I also missed the intangibles of one classroom —— the way a space becomes our own and contributes to the quality of the learning.  It’s not that the spaces I borrowed weren’t nice and functional; they were.  But a space of our own is much, much better.  This year, the stars aligned and I have a classroom where all of my 7th grade classes can meet.

The room is right next door to my office, which makes it easy for me to be in two places at once, a requirement of the Assistant Principal who also teaches three classes job that I hold (and love!).  Once I knew this room would be primarily mine, I immediately set to work getting it ready for the 7th graders.  There are new tables and chairs to seat the students.  Windows facing the northwest let in a lot of natural light.  To complement the freshly painted walls and provide some visual interest, among the Apple TV screen and white board,  I hung a poster acquired from the National Women’s History Museum.  On the bulletin board, I hung an assortment of historical photos that I made over the summer.

A picture from a former student and my patriotic pennant add some more interest without being a distraction.

Now we are in business with a great space for learning, thinking, and laughing.  Bring it on, 7th grade!