The Board of Examiners, the credentialing
department of New York City’s Board of Education, said I, with a BFA in
Communication Arts, a MA in Media Studies, plus sixty-three credits in a Ph.D.
in Media Ecology, was unqualified to teach Communication Arts in the City
schools but I was qualified to teach Social Studies. That I had substantial
knowledge in Irish, American and European history, politics and government
allowed me to be not too angry at the decision. Besides, there was at the time
no need for Communication Arts teachers in the City system but a high need to
fill Social Studies vacancies.
Now, preparing to be a
professor requires in-depth disciplinary learning and high level training in
research, but nothing in the art of teaching, nor in the social science of
Learning Theory. However, to be City licensed
and State certified to teach in the public schools of New York City, one needs
to have sufficient course work completed in these areas. So, I went back to
school in academic year 1990-91 and completed the required courses to be a New
York City Social Studies teacher.
The singular fellow teaching
us to teach was then the Chair of the Social Studies Department of Brooklyn’s
Abraham Lincoln High School, an urban public school noted for its championship
football and basketball teams and its rather rough student body. One would expect our professor to prepare us
for students we would be facing as newly minted teachers, urban ninth graders, as
the brand new teacher in this public system is given the most challenging
students, and ninth graders are all that.
Certainly, he came from a school which held classrooms full of such
youngsters. But, no, he chose to educate
us to a teaching method he used for his honors classes, The Developmental
Lesson.
I immediately took to this process
as it is based on the Socratic Method, which I had made my own during the ten
previous years. The way this professor
had us style each day’s Socratic lesson was as an argument answering a specific
question. These turned out to be mini
debates where a teacher would elicit evidence from students through asking them
“pivotal questions”. The evidence would
be placed on the board in a manner so that the accumulated "proofs" would
definitively answer the lesson’s question.
Students would copy what was placed on the board as notes for study. In this practice, evaluation of student
learning was mostly essay type as such writing was thought best at reproducing
lesson arguments to answer test questions which were in actuality the ones
contemplated in each day’s class.
Frankly, I enjoyed the year and waited anxiously for appointment.
However, academic year ’91-’92
had to be spent as a substitute teacher in five Brooklyn high schools. But, in
September, 1992, I was appointed to teach Social Studies in one of the tougher
Brooklyn high schools. And, as expected, in that school, Erasmus Hall High
School, I was given a ninth grade program.
I employed Developmental
just the way I was taught to do. This was
very difficult to accomplish as it required students to do homework, to
actually read with understanding the assignments in preparation for the next
day’s discussion, which to a young ninth grader they did not do. The short, narrowly conceived “warm-up” work
given at the very start of each period as a way of getting students settled
into a learning frame of mind did work to an extent as a substitute for
homework. But, they were so habituated
to being talked at as an instructional strategy they had trouble grasping the
concept, no less the practice, of, the Socratic Method upon which Developmental
Lesson instruction is based. As a consequence of all this, we were struggling
to get through each period.
For my troubles I
got "straightened out" by the Principal and by the students
themselves. The Principal demanded a definite lecture, a talking to,
factoid on the board, textbook teaching/learning instructional strategy, not
Developmental, and the students didn't actually know what they wanted but they
did not want Developmental either. Wanting to remain employed in the teaching
capacity in that school, I did as told moving completely away from Developmental
to the type of lecture talking to, factoid on the board, textbook
teaching/learning the Principal wanted with the result that the ninth graders,
who were all two to three years behind on any and all schooling criteria, were
far more lost in the weeds than ever.
The tragedy of the situation
was that these youngsters needed a wholly different way of being formally
educated, but none was available, so they floundered. As might be expected, this
situation didn't last, not at all. I saw what I was required to do
creating worse student outcomes than if left to what I was doing before and I
resented having to force bad outcomes when I knew better; yet, I felt in order
to remain employed I had to do as told. It did not take long for me to implode:
I resigned my appointment to become a scuba diving instructor.
I mean, if all this wasn't
telling me something. Still, my head was in school teaching, so I thought all I
needed was to get more and different instructional strategies. Thus, informally
through a whole lot of reading I acquired Experiential Learning, Project Based
Learning and techniques in the Johnsons' Model of Cooperative Learning. I even
took a graduate level course in the Johnsons’ Model. But, the City schools, and even the private schools,
refused me any additional employment in Social Studies denying me opportunity
to apply them. Now, one had to wonder if the negative decisions on all of my
attempts to regain a school teaching position-I had a bunch of interviews-were
a clear rejection of the array of instructional strategies I presented as being
fundamental to my teaching. More, I was offering myself as a Cooperative
Learning teacher and I have to wonder if the principals with whom I was
interviewing had already decided very much against Cooperative just in the way
the Principal of Erasmus Hall had decided very much against Developmental. Unfortunately, I was not thinking in that
direction as I continued to go after each vacant position offering each
principal a grant assortment of pedagogical possibilities, Cooperative Learning
most prominent among them.
There was a glitch with
private schools complicating any consideration of my pedagogical approach:
their reliance on academic degrees as qualification. My academics were in
Communication/Media Arts and although I possessed City license and State certification
in high school Social Studies as well as a store of knowledge in American and
World History and in Economics and Government-the subjects of Social
Studies-the conventional private school community in NYC would only recognize
degrees in History or Economics or Politics/Government as marking prospective
teachers eligible for employment in Social Studies. And, as it happened then,
there were no vacancies in the private high schools for Communication Arts
teachers.
So, rather than taking the
hint I began looking at private alternatives to the conventional schooling to
build a teaching career.
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