I had an incredibly disturbing conference yesterday with a teacher, and I want to tell you guys about it. Not just TELL you, but WARN you. I feel like I got an insight into something very, very ugly yesterday, and I want you to know what kind of bullshit is going on inside of some people...
I'm a tutor in the Evergreen Writing Center. Specifically, I am a program tutor, which means that I am paired up with a specific program (or "class," if you prefer), and I help the same kids every week with their bi-weekly essays. So far, this has been a pretty good experience. There's one kid who really doesn't appear to give a damn. There are several kids who are super-neurotic and are totally paralyzed with regard to writing because they think they suck at it. There are a couple of older students who haven't written essays in 15-20 years and have to relearn how to express written ideas... And there are a couple of kids who are just kind of slow. But for the most part, EVERYONE has shown improvement in some way. The neurotic kids aren't so neurotic anymore. The slower kids are picking up their stuff and trying their hardest to keep up. In three weeks, I've seen improvement in eighteen out of the twenty kids. Of the other two, one girl only came once, and one kid has learning disabilities that prevent him from basically BREATHING without forgetting what he's doing, getting sidetracked, and wandering off to do something else.
(And believe me, I'm not a big fan of people using learning "disabilities," mental disorders, or whatever as an excuse, but this kid is visibly fucked-up and truly cannot do the work he's assigned in the way it's assigned...)
Anyway...
So, I know one of the professors whose class I'm working with. She's pretty nice; maybe not as visibly passionate as I'd prefer, but she's okay. The other dude, I barely know at all. I got to know him very well as of yesterday. Let's call this man Rick. To avoid any bullshit, this is not his real name.
So, Rick and I, as well as the woman-professor (the one I like okay) and my co-tutor, had a meeting yesterday to talk about overall themes of the students' work, the teachers' expectations, and areas for improvement. And how to WORK with the areas for improvement. Fine. Great. Then, the other two left, and Rick asked me for some overall characteristics of each individual student. So I gave Rick a nice breakdown of who's good at what, who can use work with what, who's got what type of personality, and who could use extra support.
So far, everything had been fine.
Rick appeared to either LIKE his students or to be generally apathetic about them. He didn't say, "yeah, I've been having a lot of trouble with that one." He only said once: "She strikes me as a person who's used to getting her own way," and told me that this one girl was "spoiled." Other than that, he was generally nice about everybody.
But at the end of the meeting, just before we walked out the door, he said something that startled me. He said he didn't think he'd ever teach a core-program again (i.e., a freshman class). "Why not?" I asked. I'm not going to attempt a verbatim quote here, but he told me that he was frustrated with the lack of discipline the kids had, and he didn't want to be teaching a bunch of kids who don't know fundamental things. The impression he gave me was that he didn't like working with people who didn't know what a thesis statement is, or how to write a complete sentence. "They've got to buckle down," came out of his mouth, as if the students in question are a bunch of hyperactive assholes who refuse to do homework. He wants to be teaching somebody who already knows all the basics. He's impatient, is what it comes down to.
THIS MAN IS NOT A TEACHER. This man is a self-important person who thinks he has something to say and wants somebody to whom he can spew out what he thinks he knows.
A "TEACHER" is somebody who knows something (hopefully), and explains it to other people just for the joy of watching a lightbulb go on above somebody's head. I mean, what the hell? If you're a teacher trying to explain nuclear physics to somebody who doesn't know how to add, and then you teach them how to add so that they can eventually get to the level of nuclear physics -- and if that person is generally thrilled by the knowledge of addition, a REAL TEACHER would have done his job, and would be HAPPY about that.
The thing about these students is this... Half of them can barely construct sentences. They're fresh out of public high schools where they didn't learn jack shit. But they somehow made it to their first year in college, and somehow, they're in Rick's class. And they're in my tutoring session. Rick and I now have the most tremendous power, and tremendous responsibilities! It's up to me, and to Rick, to help these kids learn to express themselves in writing! It's up to us to give them 12 years of grammar and organizational skills!
This is it! This is the brink! This is the point where the "difference" is made! You want to "make a difference" in the world? I'll tell you how to do it! Take a college freshman and mark up his essay in such a way that he knows his weak spots, and he knows he CAN make them better. Take a college freshman and explain the basics of how to write a thesis sentence. Write one for him and watch the expression on his face when he "gets" it. Read a sentence out loud in his textbook, and them de-construct it, looking at the meanings of every word. Then put it back together and say, "you see? you get what the author is saying?" Watch the lightbulb go on.
College freshman are amazing to me. They fucking survived high school and they STILL WANT TO BE IN SCHOOL. Especially here at Evergreen, where the promise is knowledge, not necessarily just a career. They're begging for knowledge, these kids! It's the time with the MOST potential. It's the time when things they get taught actually MATTER.
Rick is pissed off because these kids aren't writing 50-page research essays. Who GIVES a shit? They couldn't write a SENTENCE last week, and NOW THEY CAN! That's teaching, and it doesn't happen all at once. Meanwhile, eighteen kids have SMILED at me because they knew they were getting better at something. Eighteen human beings have LEARNED something, and part of that is MY doing. Makes me want to cry, you know? Hell, if I helped a 19-year-old student to understand the difference between a period and a question mark, and if that person was delighted with that knowledge, and was excited to apply it, I wouldn't care if I NEVER saw that person write an essay. It's about taking the talents in people, and the knowledge that people already have, and helping them to add other things to it. Rick is pissed off because his students don't HAVE much knowledge right now. Well fuck Rick. What his students DO have is passion, and motivation. So their essays are sloppy and their sentences are incomprehensible; they're fucking motivated.
I'm sorry, but I don't think Rick should be allowed to teach, at least not this kind of people. His heart isn't in it; he made that abundantly clear. He's a teacher because he thinks he's got something to say, and he's pissed off that he's not going to get to say it to these kids (because they wouldn't have a clue of what he's talking about...) Fuck Rick. Fuck all the teachers in the world like Rick. People like Rick are the reason why elementary schools and high schools are so lousy; they get people teaching who spout a lot of rhetoric about "making a difference," and then stand in front of a class masturbating to the idea of being smart enough to teach.
Makes me want to cry.
Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that. I'm sorry this is a little incoherent and babbly; it just infuriated me and I'm having a little trouble expressing how very, very, VERY much I hate teachers like Rick.
~Helena*