Happy teachers, happy students?

The current newsletter of the YES! Magazine put out by the Kortens, she of the Ford Foundation and he of the When Corporations Ruled the World fame, used the above title for a theme. This, of course, is a no-brainer and I am sure school systems around the world are cognizant of this truism. Happy teachers make happy students!

The reverse is equally true: unhappy students make for unhappy teachers. Of late, I have had a few unhappy students. So I was at the fork of unclarity, figuring out who got unhappy first.

As humans are prone to do, in the horn of a dilemma, one looks to blame the other guy. It is easy to identify the ADHD-types, the loquacious and super mobile kids, who would rip off your ears with gab, and whose movements, were it convertible to energy, would drive CUC out of business! They definitely do not fit in Mr. V’s class!

Being one who does not settle at the objective-verifiable level of data, “where life-happens-to-me,” I swing over to where “I-happen-to-life”—sort out my reflective data that are my psychological and intellectual impressions, my interpretive analysis that is in dialogue with current social wisdom, and my decisional conclusions that bears the ethical imperatives that fuels one’s living. Voila! I discovered that neither does Mr. V fit in the classroom of my students’ familiarity.

Neither one is to be blamed for the situation. Consider a couple of realities.

Take language learning, for instance. The much-quoted phrase, “From K to 3rd grade, students learn to read; from fourth grade onwards, students read to learn,” was probably coined elsewhere where the language learned on Mama’s weaning ministrations is the same language in question. People learn their primary language by listening and speaking first, then proceed to reading and writing. From Mama’s cooing and feeding in the warmth and comfort of her bosom comes the formation of language. When one heard one language and suddenly has to learn another by reading and writing it, the subsequent learning spells confusion. Such is the state of our English language development.

Add Susie’s famous pre-school complaint and we have a behavioral contradiction. “For as long as I can remember, adults kept encouraging me to form words, with the whole household going gaga when I finally made the sound of ‘dada’ and ‘ma-ma.’ But as soon as I lined up in school, I was told to be quiet. And when there are 20 of us talking simultaneous, it did not take long for the teacher to shout out, ‘Shut Up!’”

Our school has Direct Instructions first thing in the morning. It must be of Teutonic origin transported to Maryland where Hitler’s group of scientists decided to continue their research and justify their existence in another facility flying a different flag, but still coldly run like Buchenwald. When the pedagogy was first demonstrated to me, it was by a drill sergeant snapping her fingers at German shepherd dogs! What passes for reading is a monotone voice of an orchestrated herd where the loud screams louder and the quiet ones sheepishly hide under the cacophony of unleashed uninhibited throats.

Language learning is heard first in normal human discourse. But now, when the teacher talks, no one listens. Talking without listening has become the symbol of defiance against imposed authority. Consequently, of all the standardized tests, students invariably fail ‘listening,’ which, if it is any consolation, holds true nationally, regionally and locally. We do mimic well, and as one of my school mothers whispered during one of our parent-teacher meetings: “My daughters do speak English well with a Pampango accent!”

Today, adult language learning has rediscovered the natural way of language acquisition, and the Pimsleur or the Rosetta Stone methods that are widely favored by most public and private entities for crash language courses for their executives, instructs by learning how to listen first. Often, they do not even bother reading and writing because the phonetics follow, unless one is learning Sino-characters.

A change of subject: the screen saver that streams on my classroom computer screen reads: “From a culture of domination, to a classroom of collaboration; from a society of competition, to practices of cooperation, one sixth grader at a time.” Unfortunately, that is not a majority sentiment. So here’s the second reality.

The latest overlay of life understanding on these islands through Uncle Sam’s strategic military trusteeship, and Nippon’s Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere design in the previous century, have left us a strong Spartan tradition of the pedagogy of fear, and a well-cultivated culture of coercion and instructions by intimidation. Until President Obama’s executive decree, the latter was allegedly widely practiced in Gitmo of the Caribs. That we do not wince at the methodology is shown by how one of our enterprising solons want the function moved into our shores!

If as published almost daily in our newspapers, some of our public leaders cannot help but let the venom of their bitterness spill quite easily into their discourse of vilification and condemnation of those who do not share their views. Why should it come then as a surprise if Johnny Angel and Barbie doll Annie in 5th grade, at the great turning into puberty, suddenly are transformed into Johnny the Daredevil and Annie the Witch (rhymes with?) on 6th grade?

A colleague who substituted for an absent teacher lamented the fact that he had to procure sweets for the children because the reward-and-punishment disciplinary scheme in the classroom required it. “Ah, it is worth it,” he sighed, knowing that the measure would have, at best, temporary effect. My class finally behaved well at the library when they were offered ‘pizza’ if they exhibited acceptable behavior. The day after the reward was granted, we were back to normal, and the usual suspects were back to their ADHD-like performances.

In the contemporary rhetoric of willful assent and democratic suasion, we behave in the Abu Gharib of our minds!

A rabbi once said: “Never waste a crisis. It can be turned into joyful transformation.” I told my class and colleagues at SVES that I have since reached my level of classroom incompetence, and added a little medical discomfort of partial disability plus the nagging and ongoing exploitation by the system of cheap pedagogue labor, it is just as well that we move on. Alas, as some had difficulties abiding by Mr. V’s classroom procedures, it is evident that Mr. V had difficulties living up to their expectations as well.

As there is no rest for the “wicked,” another colleague said: “With all your passion for learning and teaching,” she dared, “why not run for the Board of Education.” Quite a challenge and serendipitously, Galvin TG now aims to be a Louie, and Herman TG needs a sparring partner, so: “Why not, indeed?”