...stories are important. People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the otherway around... Stories, great flapping ribbons of shaped space-time, have been blowing anduncoiling around the universe since the beginning of time... And their very existence overlaysa faint but insistent pattern on the chaos that is history... This is called the theory of narrativecausality and it means that a story, once started, takes a shape... It is now impossible for thethird and youngest son of any king, if he should embark on a quest which has so far claimedhis elder brothers, not to succeed.Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
etta accosts me rather forcefully as I walk into the staffroom. I've been subtly avoiding herfor weeks, because I know what she wants, but I really needed a coffee just now - it's afreezing day, and I'm boiling the kettle more to get my stiff cold fingers around a steamingmug than for the caffeine.
although that's gonna be a big help too
I have to travel to Brisbane this weekend for a family conference that will beharrowing, and I really just feel like hiding in a corner, clutching my coffee and breathing.
"Are you going to help me with the science preparation for the new module?" ettaasks, and I wince. In theory, at least, my role in Cowan team is across the whole group, andI'm meant to be providing assistance with science planning to all the teachers. What thatmeans, though, is different for each teacher. With Candace (and by extension Andrea) andAlyx, the planning is genuinely collaborative, and we work together to develop interestingscience-related experiences for our students. Tanya has chosen not to be involved with me atall, simply because she feels self-sufficient in science and is quite happy to run her ownlessons. From what I've observed, they're not exactly as I would teach science, but sincewhen am I the standard of practice? In Carolyn's class, I essentially do all the planning andpreparation, while the working relationship with Colin is still establishing itself.
One of the things I had to try to break the teachers of early
but should I have been more responsive to their wants and needs, rather thanimposing my perspective?
was the idea that 'science support' is synonymous with 'resources', and 'resources' basicallymeans worksheets and textbooks. There were two problems with this, from my perspective.
Firstly, I really don't value these kinds of teaching approaches - I think worksheetsthat just need to be completed lead to almost no learning, like 'recipe' type practical sessions.
Secondly, I've never taught Year Seven or Year eight before, and I've never taught inthis state before. This means that their assumption that I've built up a huge fund of'resources' that I'll be able to provide to them is simply unrealistic - if I want resources I'llhave to research and write them myself, and I really don't have the time.
The case for etta's class is a little bit different. Cowan 7 is the 'education Support'
this year's politically correct term for students who are 'learning disabled' or'ADHD' (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), or whatever other labels we might need
classroom. She has seven students, only one female, who range from the hard-of-thinking butlovable and gentle Russell to autistic and withdrawn Brendan to disturbed and often violentPatrick. Their ages range from twelve to fifteen, and etta is a miraculous teacher - theresponses she elicits under what look to me like impossible conditions are amazing.
She wants to offer these students some science-related experiences, and she's lookingfor my help and support in planning them. In a way I'd love to help - I think what she's doingis exciting - but then I think about the time involved. It would mean learning a lot ofcompletely new stuff for me, about the capabilities of these students and the appropriate levelof challenge and information, and what to expect in the way of activities and results. It wouldalso mean chasing down some primary school resources and information, to which I haveeven less access than I do to secondary. Time pressure from my two jobs, churchresponsibilities and the needs of the family mean that for me to help etta with this, somethingelse would have to give, and I'm already feeling stretched and tense. Reluctantly, I agree tomeet with etta next Thursday (an extra trip to the school, and more time I have to find foreverything else in my life) to talk about the next module. But before that can happen,something else blows up in my face, and we never have that meeting.
My father-in-law, may he burn in hell, is a pedophile. He sexually abused my wife,Sue, from age eight until she stopped him when she was about eleven, and the consequencesof that abuse still cause her emotional pain every day of her life. In self-defense, her mind hasdissociated itself from her emotions and sexual responses, and she feels as though she leads ashielded half-life. She's in counselling, and will be for years to come, and she's healing andgrowing every day, but there's still a harvest of pain to come, and he's the one who sowed it.
Christians are supposed to forgive, and I suppose I do, but it's unbelievably hard, andI can't just forgive him once, I have to do it every day, because what he chose to do hurts theone I love again every day.
He'd molested other children at around the same time, but he claimed that he'drepented and changed his ways, and because everyone in the family needed to, they believedhim. But it's finally come to light in the past couple of months that he's also molested someof his grand-children, quite recently, and the family feels the need to confront him together,both to make him understand the enormity of what he has done, and to get him into someserious counselling so he won't hurt anyone else.
Sue doesn't feel she's ready to confront him yet - she's still so shielded off from theanger in her heart that she can't feel it, and doesn't see any purpose in what would be anempty confrontation. There'll come a time when she needs to see him face to face, but thattime is not yet. I'm quite nicely in touch with my anger, thanks very much, and I'll be there.
I used to have fantasies of punching the bastard out, of kicking him, of throwing himagainst the wall. But in the flesh, he's a pathetic, weak, rather frail seventy year old man, nota ravening monster, at least apparently. And such monsters often are powerless men - theyturn to children to exert their power because they're pathetic, not because they're powerful.
He keeps on lying - to himself most of all - saying that what he did was all overtwenty years ago and God has forgiven him, and quoting Bible verses in his letters. But he'sselfish to the core - even in a letter asking for forgiveness, what he concentrates on is the painthis is all causing him: he never acknowledges the pain of those who must survive his touch.
I'm going to hate every minute of it. I avoid confrontations whenever I can, and I'mnot even sure it'll be productive: can you change the pattern of thirty years or more?especially if you don't even truly understand why you need to try? But if we can get him intotreatment and stop him from doing it to even one other person, the $40,000 it'll cost in cashterms, and the inestimable human cost, will all be worth it.
even as I'm kissing Sue goodbye and getting on the plane, I'm scared and I'm worriedand I'm depressed and I'm hyped. I don't want to do this.
Fiona approached me in the staffroom and asked whether there was a problem - whyhad she seen me sitting at the computer in Carolyn's room when she passed the door onWednesday, and why was Carolyn so frustrated? I guess I'd known that things were far fromperfect - and I was pretty frustrated myself - but I hadn't really known how Carolyn felt.Fiona arranged for the three of us to meet on Monday morning to try and reduce the levels offrustration for both of us.
for reasons that were adequate, but that she didn't know
I went to her desk to ask her what was going on, but she wouldn't look up, so I retreated. Shehad already begun an activity with the students, so I sat down and tried to figure out what myrole might be. There seemed to be nothing I could contribute, and I was depressed and pissedoff, and I had plenty of work to do if I wasn't needed here and... So, foolishly, I turned aroundand spent a little time working
playing
on the Internet, using the computer in the classroom. It left Carolyn even more frustrated, andme annoyed too. This day probably 'broke the camel's back', and let Fiona know thatsomething was wrong. That's why she challenged me on Friday, and why we met thismorning.
Carolyn's first question was "What is your role here?" - an indirect way of getting toher concerns to say the least. But she outlined her perspective on what my role was, Fionaoutlined hers and I responded to those. I think there were some significant misunderstandingsthere, but that also my own perspective on my role had changed, and the various demands onme had shifted, so that there was a need to renegotiate exactly what it was we were trying toachieve together.
It was a highly emotional meeting - frustrations and anger were shared honestly - but Ithink it was also productively focussed on the problems and on finding workable solutions.
Carolyn was very angry, and really felt let down - I needed to know that. I had beenfeeling generally depressed - this had manifested itself in unacceptable actions like fiddlingwith the computer or reading
my besetting sin that I struggle with every day!
when I was in the classroom but not 'on stage'. I think this meeting showed a way forward forus. At one point Carolyn suggested that the whole program be aborted, but in a way we knewthat, because of the research focus, that was impossible: or at least, more difficult than thealternatives.
I also needed to be more positive and assertive: if I had prepared something, butCarolyn hadn't seen it, I needed to let her know very clearly what I planned to do with theclass, and describe her role.
In part this was a difference of personal style - I've always valued flexibility andtopicality highly, and have tended to be a 'top of the head' sort of teacher in response.Carolyn, on the other hand, is the kind of teacher who has a diary with lessons planned twoweeks ahead in great detail. So what she saw as unpreparedness was often simply the fact thatmy lesson plans usually reside in my head rather than on paper. But I also need to be awarethat to be fair in a team-teaching situation I need to give her confidence in my preparation - soI hereby resolve to plan ahead more, and more visibly!
One of the key communication problems, I think, is that I'm responding out of themost recent research and practice in science education, whereas she is basically responding onthe basis of her english expertise, and on her own science education in school. What I'mdoing, therefore, appears to her to be wrong or sloppy, whereas I'd argue that it's progressive.
Should I have explained all this to her? Could I have? What I do grows out of anentirely different theory of knowledge - would she have been willing to make the mental leapnecessary to understand? Or was it my job to make it understandable?
I also need to acknowledge, however, my tendency to advance beyond the basics before thebasics are actually in place, and to reign in that tendency.
First, I rarely if ever lecture: when I'm standing at the front it's to convene and focusstudent discussion, take student experiences and ideas and mold them into newunderstandings. I'm not really sure how it's possible to explain the ways in which sciencemakes sense of the world without taking some form of verbal leadership in the room. But Ican tend to do this too much, partly because:
Second, I felt that most of the activities Carolyn set concentrated excessively onindividual written work, sometimes followed by some group work. Strategies such as'structured overviews' of text segments seemed to require huge slabs of time for very limiteddividends in terms of student learning, and to be too individualised. They do serve thepositive purpose of challenging students who are weak in written literacy, but can also serveto alienate such students if they're over-used: students also need opportunities to interactsocially and verbally. Another problem for all concerned is the shifting set of expectationswe've had to deal with. I expected to be supporting Carolyn to take on more and more of ascience teaching role, while my own teaching moved into other, more integrated areas. Partlybecause I hadn't supported her, and partly because she expected me to continue to act as the'science expert', this hadn't happened, and our conflicting expectations had caused friction.The resolution of this meeting, therefore, was that the science time become more fully mydomain, and at the same time more fully science oriented, and that Carolyn take a supportrole while I take a leading role during this time. In terms of the philosophy of the school, thisseems like a bit of a retrograde step, but there are also the constraints of my time in theclassroom acting as a distorting pressure against fuller integration. So I'll make the runningfor those five periods each week, and also try to make clearer where we're running to.
Another problem of expectations was my cross-team role: partly because I wasover-loaded already, but also because I had felt 'squeezed out' by most of the team members(not in any negative sense - they were simply self-sufficient), this role had evolved to thepoint where I felt my only real role was in Carolyn's classroom. Given this, etta'sexpectations of a significant amount of help with science were very uncomfortable - I wantedto support her, but it would be a huge extra commitment to a whole new syllabus area, and ifI did that something else would have to give. We decided that I would focus on the roleworking with Carolyn, rather than trying to do too much and doing it all badly. I will nolonger attend the Monday team meetings. This will significantly improve my timemanagement situation and make life much easier. The challenge is to use that time to improvewhat I'm doing in the school, rather than on academic work or other things.
Where we go from here is partly mapped out, but also a little mysterious. I'm going toreally make a sustained effort to be reliable, and will try to address some of the spaceconcerns, get organised for materials and produce many more worksheets and writtenmaterials. I'll never touch the computer, never take a novel to class, walk around lots, beassertive... I'll try harder to be a 'real teacher'.