THOMAS LARSON

(Palo Alto Review, Fall 1995)

In 1991, when I finished my first year as a writing instructor at San Diego City College, I won an award for my teaching. The “Golden Apple” was given by a campus honors society, after it solicited recommendations from student members, voted and held a banquet to announce the winner. There, we heard students testify to our prowess in the classroom, until we were whittled down, ribbon by ribbon, to a plaque for the winner. I appreciated the honor for my first year, especially the good words that I know came from several students in my Tuesday/Thursday intermediate composition classes.

So radiant were the students’ tributes that any one of the ten finalists could have won. Why was I chosen? Was it my past performance? Previously, I had won no honors. Student evaluations of me were usually positive, but seldom glowing. Was it the material I covered? We read George Orwell’s Down and Out in London and Paris, which my young urban working-class students loved. Many enjoyed telling stories and writing essays about their own intolerable working conditions at McDonalds or in retail. Was it the assignments? I alternated personal experience essays and analytic papers, followed by readings of their drafts in a workshop setting, which often perked student participation.

Maybe the award had more to do with my becoming the teacher they wanted me to be, and I became him. And, rather easily too, because I am pliable, the trait many students deem essential in an instructor, along with open, convivial, liberal, supportive, loose, tolerant. Though I hope I’m not this patently consistent, perhaps they construed my amiableness as the right and only way to be taught. And then maybe because it was my first year and I wanted them and my colleagues and the department chair and the administrators to like me that my students and I were co-enabling. Perhaps they unconsciously thought up, in a sort of collective mind, the following plan: Now here’s a guy who wants to be evaluated well—his first year—and he’s open to what we want, lots of class discussion and writing about issues and experiences of personal importance and, when we insist on shaping the course, he lets us do so by indulging our worries and celebrating our triumphs. Why not, they reasoned, reward him with an honor that lets him think he was the one who was responsible for our doing so well in the class.

Since receiving that award, I have been not more confident and comfortable in the classroom, as you might think I should be, but more critical—and more reflective—about my teacherly character. What haunts me is the idea that my students somehow build into the direction of the course their expectations of me as a teacher. The idea that my teaching could be manipulated by their expectations is not only new but revolutionary in my thinking, just as collaborative learning was several years ago. Consequently, I have become fascinated with the world of student-teacher expectation and its flip side, the expectations, often dismal, that teachers have of their students.

I believe that aside from the financial and curricula struggles in contemporary education, few issues in education are as important as who articulates and who controls the expectations of learning. This issue is made more complex be¬cause our expectations of ourselves and others in America constantly mediate our experience; the myths we believe—such as small-town neighborliness or inner city violence—are far more real to us than actual reality. So too is our belief in the myth that the better the teacher, the better the student. Whether we like it or not, we teachers are held accountable for the success and failure of our students. That is how Americans believe education works. As teachers, our focus may be on critical thinking one year, retention another year, multiculturalism still another. But the focus of responsibility never changes because the target of educational responsibility remains the same: Teachers either educate or do not educate students in our system, and any other equation is simply not possible largely because we refuse to believe it possible.

After years of educationally dire facts, from the “rising tide of mediocrity” to surveys that showed nearly half of adult Americans are functionally illiterate, our responsibilities as teachers are now being wholly redefined by forces outside ourselves who, with promise and doom, are articulating those expectations and outcomes for us. These forces—business people, parents, social workers, the news media, the depiction of saintly teachers in such films as Stand and Deliver or Dangerous Minds, cash-strapped school districts, the students themselves and, on occasion, our fellow teachers—these forces emphasize who we should be instead of who we are. Our personalities, our temperaments, our teaching sensibilities are less important to our identity than the romanticized view of the teacher as hero. When such social, economic, and honorific expecta¬tions gang up together and create the reality by which we are judged, then we’ve reached the fictional or mythic level—the mountain of the great teacher.

I use “the myth of the great teacher” to illustrate this gap between who we should be and who we are. The words obviously require unpacking. To begin, the word great suggests vastness, as in covering a lot, as well as excellence. Myth we know is the word for an invented story that carries tribal or cultural significance. But the word is also undergoing change in contemporary usage. For example, one of the American Heritage Dictionary’s definitions of myth is “a fiction or half-truth, especially one that forms part of an ideology.” I also like Russell Baker’s definition: a myth is “something that has risen above reality and ascended into fiction,” and this is precisely what has happened to the expectations others have of us as teachers.

Many of us feel alienated from our profession because our roles have become fictionalized and exaggerated, increasingly determined by our society’s and our students’ ideology about education. Over and over the one role we are expected to fulfill, like Hollywood stars who must be as macho or sensitive or sexualized as the parts they play, is that of performer, teaching as “Great Performances.” Teachers today are located somewhere between TV talk show host and therapist: he or she must be insightful, confident, humorous, daring, compassionate, nurturing, continually present—all things to all students and most administrators. Just as women complain about the myth of the superwoman, the myth of the great teacher holds up an impossible standard to at¬tain. Because we can never fully become such masterful performers, we sometimes feel, at the least, burdened, at the midpoint, guilty, at the worst, ashamed, of what we lack.

You may be an instructor, and a taxpayer, who sees nothing wrong with the expectations about teaching that our society produces. Perhaps you see our profession as a social mission in which this performative, caring dimension is essential to student success. But before we buy the Big Bird role of the contemporary teacher I hope that we can first understand the differences between how others see us and how we see ourselves in order to better know what is being expected of us vis-a-vis our students’ learning. Teacher and student are intimately tied together in our educational system. Yet I often wonder whether the teacher, even the most nurturing, realizes that the students before him may be dealing with—and manipulating—another persona altogether.

What causes such lofty expectations? Currently, the most obvious expectation of teachers is based on the Jamie Escalante model, with dashes of the Red Cross volunteer and Mother Teresa to sweeten the pot. Teachers must care. For example, Stephen Wolf, CEO of United Airlines, has written about one inner city school that has achieved high retention of kids traditionally difficult to hold and educate. How? One strategy he notes is that “love and caring are measured out in even greater doses. Teachers routinely give their personal time to assist and encourage students who need a helping hand.” My local newspaper describes the dedicated teachers at McKinley Elementary who “routinely provide moral support for children as young as eight who cannot keep up with their school work because they are taking care of younger brothers and sisters in a home where no adult is present most of the day.” And then there are the legendary teachers who are worshipped for their great charity. An example is the late Frank O’Malley, a freshman composition and literature teacher for many years at Norte Dame. One of O’Malley’s habits was to loan money to students in his classes. When friends cleaned out his apartment after his death, they found hundreds of uncashed checks from former students which O’Malley had never bothered to deposit.

In these examples, what’s expected of teachers are personal time, love, and a saintlike devotedness to the student. These elements, while admirable, are well beyond subject matter expertise. Indeed, the teacher is more of a therapist than a guide. Scant attention is given in these testimonials to the effect such portrayals have on the psychological hardiness of other teachers, whose added stress to perform like the best can be enormous. How many of us have found ourselves in this role of counselor or psychotherapist, without adequate training, naturally caring for our students’ well-being, but often overwhelmed and uncomfortable because students have brought their problems to someone who they believe will not only care for them but also dispense remedies.

Evaluative tools to measure teaching, which administrators wield, blows even more hot air into the discussion. In my school district, we have a Faculty Evaluation Coordinator who has written a half-inch thick handbook by which the administra¬tion and our departments must, for promotion, judge our work as teachers. The form lists 15 criteria, among them Course Conceptualization, Adaptability/Flexibility and Skill in Establishing Rapport/Trust. (We are checked under the headings, “Needs Work,” “Competent,” and “Exceeds Standards.”) After class visits and student evaluations, our individual committee rates each criterion, tallies groups of criteria based on our self-chosen percentages, tabulates the results and then ranks us with others in our departments. Though these measurements may be crucial to a convincing classroom performance, very little in the profile supports our students’ needs, a grasp of the student’s psychology, learning theory, etc. In judging educational effective¬ness, deans and evaluators emphasize the teacher’s achievement far more than they value the students’. No attempt is made to correlate the students’ performance and aims with the teacher’s. (What would a student-centered teacher evaluation profile actually look like?) In any case, none of this matters. Teachers rarely receive poor evaluations because they are adept at performing to the expectations of their bosses. Many teachers also teach these same skills for surviving college to their students, which is why so many ambitious and lost students glom onto those teachers who know how to ply the waters of academia.

The teacher’s mythic dimension also arises from the over-conscientiousness of a few of our fellow teachers. For example, John Gardenhire suggests in an article entitled “Classroom Techniques for Improving Student Retention,” that teachers adopt the following methods to hold on to students. First is “to make physical contact with each student each day.” Second is to have students visit the teacher frequently in his office. And third is for each student to get the phone numbers of four other students and call all four twice a week to keep each person current in the class as well as to stimulate further discussion. Gardenhire labels this approach “humaniz¬ing all the levels of instruction,” which he clearly believes is the most effective way to teach. “The rewards of humanizing instruction are many and rich. The first and central one is the feeling that I as a teacher and resource for my students am making a significant difference in the lives of my charges.” I have no quarrel with his approach, except that I wonder if these methods do in fact make a significance difference in students’ lives. Is it possible to measure such a charge? What happens when a given teacher’s personality is unsuited to the hands-on approach? Does that mean his or her students unretainable?

My favorite source of the great teacher myth is our own internalized great teachers, those who may have compelled us to work in this profession. Indeed, without a model of a teacher who “did make a difference,” many of our desires to create such high standards within ourselves would have lain dormant. Perhaps we believe that great teaching is possible not out of social necessity but out of a personal need to emulate someone from long ago.

My great teacher was Mrs. Lee, who taught an eleventh-grade class in “American Problems,” at Kirkwood High School, Kirkwood, Missouri. Her course awak¬ened in me the desire to go to college, to discuss ideas, to see the world in political terms, and to lay the groundwork for my liberal, sometimes libertine, social and artistic views. During 1966, we had dozens of topics to talk about: Vietnam, civil rights, hippies and the emerging counter-culture, Soviet and American expansionism, adolescent sexuali¬ty. In class we researched contemporary social problems described in books, magazines, and newspa¬pers, and, working in groups or pairs, we had to produce reports and give them orally from note cards. Once given, the reports were often followed by passionate arguments over issues for which many of us had no idea we cared so deeply. Mrs. Lee guided us with a loose format, always suggesting sources—Ramparts magazine, The New York Times, Michael Harrington’s The Other America; she rarely told us what she thought (although it was clear she approved of things more liberal than conserva¬tive). Her method was relentlessly Socratic. “Why were we in Vietnam?” I asked. And Mrs. Lee replied, “What have you read that makes you ask the question?” Frustrat¬ing at first, because of its newness, this method eventually empowered us to think for ourselves. It was clear we earned our grade because we participated, not because we learned any particular idea from her. She had a way of not-teaching or, as we say today, of facilitating, which was inspiration¬al, and she was the one who led me, although I was unaware of it at the time, to want to do what she did, to adopt her style. In short, Mrs. Lee in my memory embodies the great teacher. She has become a myth, part of my ideology.

Such instructors, which we’ve all had, and treasured, because of their rarity, have led many of us to internalize the expectations we foster for our own work in the classroom. We know in the gut how we want our classes to feel, to be. The inner model of such vibrant teaching can create the confidence we need to approach classes everyday with adventure. But our practice, day after long day, can also mean a dependency upon one self-satisfying approach, whose power to control us we may or may not be aware of. Jane Tompkins, in her confessional essay “Pedagogy of the Distressed,” des¬cribed her realization of the vast difference between what she thought she was doing, that is “helping my students to understand the material we were studying,” and what she was actually doing, which “were three things: a) to show the students how smart I was, b) to show them how knowledgeable I was, and c) to show them how well-prepared I was for class.” Tompkins discovered that she had uncritically adopted the performance model of the great teacher, and that her teaching was not only a substitute for measuring how her students learned, but also the primary tool with which the students themselves evaluated their own learning. Thus, it is no wonder that students hunt for the best and the brightest teachers: Student and teacher alike believe in the myth of the great teacher with a frightening devotion which, in turn, perpetuates the reputation of the institution. Thus, the school ends up only as good as its faculty’s reputation.

Regardless of our specialties in reading or composition, math or science, as lecturers or facilita¬tors, we are empowered and compromised by the great teacher myth whenever we indulge our performative egos. To close, here is a story about one myth that has driven this writing teacher’s ego. Until I reflected closely on my experience, I had no idea this was a myth, nor did I realize I had invented the fantasy myself.

For the last three years I have made my classes more and more writing-based. We take the time to write in class. Using the St. Martin’s Guide to Writing, I sit with my students and guide them through the detailed steps of invention, drafting, peer review, and revision. In class, we make lists and clusters and cubes and almost always freewrite each day. The words are not in your head, I tell them, they’re in your pen! Don’t think, write! After oral and written critiques of their drafts I have them write an exhaustive self-critique in class which I’ve adapted from Donald Murray’s The Craft of Revision. As I guide them, I also do the writing. I use my journal to explore topics and invent material. If I’ve drafted a new story, essay or article, I will do the self-critique on my new piece. I love it. It’s wonderful to have the time and the discipline to work with my students, doing what they do, their doing what I do. As a co-worker I celebrate the process. Sometimes I’ll exclaim—because I’m the teacher and I get to blurt out something anytime I like—Wow! I came up with a wonderful idea or I got to a new level in my writing today that I was completely unaware of. Did any of you? Yes, a few will say. And we’ll discuss those levels, what we knew but didn’t know we knew until we started writing. Sometimes I note perplexed expressions. I sense they’re wondering about my involvement with my own work, how anyone can get so excited about the struggle to write, which is really a love of being lost. Why write, only to discover how lost you are? Who needs the stress? I listen. I never try to convince them otherwise. Yet I hope by writing with them that they witness the sometimes arduous, sometimes exhilarating process of writing demonstrated.

The myth that I am operating under is this: I believe that the more passionately I involve myself in the process of writing and demonstrate my creative drive in front of the students, the more they too will involve themselves in the process of writing. Yet this may have no basis in fact at all. It may be a simple post hoc. No matter how much I embody the process of the writer, most students have years of disappointment built up against writing, seldom placing language arts at the center of their cognitive lives as I do. Unless I show them my writing as theirs evolves (the students have small groups in which they work through the entire process), they see me more as a coach than a player, one who can do it but at a higher level of awareness and experience. They know I am beyond their level, so they may think I’m writing down to theirs. Though I say levels don’t exist, though I say process is everything, they still see me as a competitor, an evaluator, one who is driven by all manner of forces. Inevitably, they see me as privileged, already educated. Incidentally, this was how I saw professors in graduate school—enthroned in chairs that allowed them the time for self-examination and observation which was what I wanted for myself, too, and which I realized could never happen until I graduated.

Recently I was reminded of my place vis-a-vis the student’s place in the classroom. We had sat in a circle and finished a freewriting exercise, followed by a 20-minute period to write an introduction for an assigned paper. When I was finished I asked everyone to turn to a neighbor and share. I turned to a timid but attentive student, asked if he wanted to go first (he said no), so I explained my idea and then read him my intro. I asked for feedback. He said, “I can’t comment on your writing. You’re the teacher.” How true! I’m the teacher! Though I wanted to be a member of his community of writers, be both teacher and student as he was with his peers in their critique workshops and brainstorming sessions, I realized that the teacher is, to students, an outsider. I can never work at the students’ level, nor can they work at mine.

I seem to be back at the beginning—expected to be so many things to my students, trying to get close enough to be one of them, practicing empathy, identifying, and then when I become the most honest and caring and open and involved—the great teacher!—I finally understand that my teacherliness is not exactly what my students need. What do they need? I don’t know. After a few thousand classes, up on the stage before them, I still don’t know. Maybe the answer has nothing to do with me. Or maybe the answer has everything to do with me not being who they want me to be.