 Years in Education: 4-6
White Heterosexual Male High School AP English Teacher Q: What do you have in common with your students? A: Throughout most of my education I was never known as a high-performing student. In fact, I was satisfied passing with Cs. The rare B’s I did receive I thought must have been through luck and polite behavior. I felt like I was just expected to pass and I was never motivated to achieve more than what was expected of me. I see now that I feared finding out that even with my best efforts, I may not be good enough. It was safer for me to not try hard in school. Similar to many students who enter my classroom, I never had a mentor who inspired me, or a teacher who invested their time into me outside the classroom. No one expected me to become better than who I already was. But in high school, that’s what I wanted. I longed for a relationship with my teachers. I was desperate for an adult to invest their time into me and to show me that I mattered. Simply put, I wanted to be known. I wanted to know that my teachers cared not just about my grades, but about me: who I was, my aspirations, and my passions. Now as a teacher I see that so many of my students want that same thing. I empathize with my students who have been expected to achieve very little. The ones who have been given up on. I see that society has stereotyped and labeled them and I try to see past those stereotypes and labels myself. If you were to come into my classroom, you would see a white, middle-class, heterosexual male teacher in front of a room of teenagers who are mostly Hispanic and Asian. A smaller population of my students are Pacific Islander, African American, and Caucasian. 70% of my students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Many of my students are 1st or 2nd generation immigrants who speak a variety of different languages. About 80% of our students at TEC High School are male. I may not look like a majority of the students in my classroom, nor have a similar socio-economic status, but what I do share with my students is the desire for relationships, to be affirmed and pushed to a higher expectation, and ultimately, to be known. During the year, as we share our stories with each other I have found that I have a lot more in common with my students than I originally thought. That is why we take the time to share our stories with each other and most importantly, to listen to one another. My hope is that we may see what we do have in common and in the end see the humanity in each other. Q: Does it matter that students and teachers have things in common? A: I start each year telling my students about how I was not involved in high school and had no idea what I wanted to pursue in college. I tell them I went to college hoping to learn construction. I tell them about my insecurities including my fear of speaking in public. And then I tell them how I overcame those challenges to become a teacher. I don’t spend the first week of school having us tell our stories so that I can only get to know them, but more so that they can also get to know me. I hope that they can find some similarities between us and see that we’re not so different after all. Ultimately, I hope that they also learn to be okay with being vulnerable and learn to tell their story. Shortly after sharing with my students this year, I had a student come up to me at the end of the day and tell me that even though we look completely different, he saw himself in my story. We talked about our battles with anxiety and our fear of speaking in front of others, and how hard it is sometimes to motivate ourselves when there’s little support or purpose. By the time we ended our conversation, this student resolved to join ASB and get involved in assemblies so that he could overcome what has been holding him back for so long. It’s the connections like this, or finding out that I still relate to the humor of seventeen-year-old boys, or taking the time to share the music and shows we like, or even sharing the love for soccer and kicking the ball around after school that brings me to a resounding, YES! It does matter that students and teachers have things in common! It can be a groundbreaking moment when you realize how much in common you actually have with your students. When that moment finally breaks down barriers, there’s an increasing desire to learn and an increasing desire to teach and become a part of each other's story. Cameron is the Head of the English Department at TEC High School in Seattle. He is also a former a flag football/soccer/basketball coach. Connect with him on Twitter @CamMTown. Photo (c) 2017 Kristin Leong
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 Years in Education: 16-20
Asian Female English as a Second Language Teacher Q: What do you have in common with your students? A: When I'm teaching, I feel like I'm a robot/machine. I don't have time to have my break. I'm the disciplinary teacher, and there are times that I handle many truancy cases. We have a crazy system in Malaysia. Every five years we have new Education Minister and this person introduces and implements new approaches. The victims are teachers and students because we become the guinea pigs. Our schools are too exam-oriented and students do not have the choice to do or learn what they want. They come to school to pass the exams. Our education requires teachers to prepare students for examinations not to prepare them to face the reality once they leave school. Only recently (last year) did our government encourage students to develop soft-skills at school so that when they exit, they are able to continue to develop their skills, not only by answering exam questions. In my classrooms, I allow students to choose their own topic of interest and I let them share the topic with their peers. We talk about sharing and listening to each other's stories and how those stories impact their lives. In class we talk about issues that are hardly being discussed in normal Malaysian classrooms such as LGBT issues, child marriage, sexual grooming, and our education system. From our classroom discussions, I can see that the students are actually keen to know the issues but it's not within the content of our syllabus. Once one of my female students was having an identity crisis because she realized she was attracted to her female friends. She was afraid to share it with her parents. As a mother of two teenagers, I told her I respected her feelings and it's okay to have feelings towards the same gender. I know she was confused at that point. I'm not sure whether I did the right thing. That incident really made me realize that many parents never really talk to their kids. All they can think of is the grade, the kid's performance in a test. I guess my specialty is I'm very open towards my students. LGBT issues is an alien topic in our Malaysian classrooms but I've taught about it about for the past two years. Most of LGBT students keep their identity to themselves as they would be teased/condemned if people were to find out. My community is not accepting but I want my students to know what is LGBT and I believe that each and every one of us has the equal rights to be who/what we want to be. To instill awareness to the students is not easy as many of them have their own mindset (mostly negative thoughts) about LGBT people. I have a group of students who will be doing a project on LGBT issues and I'm super excited about it! I know that there are many students who want to share their thoughts but they do not know how or if they should. I want my students and my own kids to know we should treat people equally and never to judge them. Regarding the students who opened up to me a few years ago, I never heard from her again. I wish more students would come forward and share their feelings. Q: Does it matter that students and teachers have things in common? A: YES, to me it matters for me to have similarities with my students. I need to understand them and with that similarity is essential. The classroom environment is not only about a teacher standing in front telling students what they should do. Willingness to listen is another thing a teacher should have in common with their students. Teacher should at least listen to their students. Maggie is a TED-Ed Innovative Educator. Maggie’s TED-Ed Innovation Project is helping Malaysian students overcome their fears of speaking in English and is allowing them to share ideas at their own pace. Connect with her on Twitter @magdmuuk . Photo (c) 2017 Kristin Leong  Years in Education: 4-6
White Female Heterosexual First in Family to Graduate From College Former High School International Studies Teacher Q: What do you have in common with your students? A: I grew up as a first generation college student with a stay-at-home mom and a blue collar father who worked most if not all weekends of the month, to enable my mom to stay home with us and to give us the opportunities my parents wanted us to have in our affluent suburb, where there was rampant elitism. I use the term "rampant elitism" because despite the fact that my family's class status didn't impede my academic success, from my perspective, the pressure and the boundaries of elitism were almost always present in my life, though often quiet and subtle. As a student, elitism was always more apparent in my peer group than in my teachers. Group project work sessions were always held at the homes which were more desirable. Certain students always won in our school elections and ran almost all of the school clubs. We had a strong population of students who refused any attire that was not clearly expensive. When it came time to drive, there was a clear divide between who was driving a new vehicle and those of us who sported something older. My experience as a student prompted me to be highly motivated to want to see a change in how other students experienced school. I know I felt just a shadow of what many other more significantly marginalized groups feel. I always wanted my classroom to be a safe space for students where they felt free to share their honest, even if at times controversial, opinions or feelings. My work ethic came from watching my family push in every way to offer me and my two younger siblings the best possible options for our futures. My dad was initially an elevator mechanic and eventually an industrial mechanic in the Everett Boeing plant. He switched to working nights instead of the prized day shift that he had held for over 20 years because the overtime was being cut on that shift and he didn't want our quality of life to suffer. He continued to work until was mandated to stop by a doctor due to a late diagnosis of Stage 4 lung cancer. I have no doubt he would have continued to work through his illness even longer without complaint if his brain tumors weren't affecting his balance on the catwalks. Even in the last weeks of his life, he complained that they wouldn't let him fix the crookedly hung paintings in his hospital room. The drive that my dad fostered in me is guided by my mom's influence. She is the reason I care so much about how people feel. Her gentle pushing and prompting, with firm, high expectations (regardless of my low starting point) inspired my classroom management approach when I was a teacher and led me to have great success with a wide swath of students at the different schools I worked in. My mother's influence is the reason I am so driven to connect to others. She taught me to value everyone's story and it's part of the reason that I am so passionate in being supportive however I can to every teacher I work with now. Ultimately, my mother is probably the reason that I am participating in ROLL CALL, despite the fact that I am usually not a big sharer of my feelings or personal life. I am hopeful that someone may glean something from all of my sharing that resonates with them. Q: Does it matter that students and teachers have things in common? A: It absolutely matters that teachers and students have things in common. That bond and connection created by common interests motivates drive and motivation that cannot be replicated if a teacher does not take the time to find or create a common interest with a student. As teachers we are expected to be role models for our students, part of that status requires that we ensure that all students can see part of themselves in us so that we really can function effectively within that role for students. I am a white woman. That gives me an immediate connection to many of my of my white female students. For my nonwhite and male students, I find I connect with them better over time. Because we lack the obvious outward connections, it takes time creating that connection by sharing and establishing bonds over what experiences or values we both share. For me, sharing my background with my students that includes my love of sitting in the garage tinkering with my dad or baking with my mom for big family potluck gatherings was usually a great opening connection with my students who didn't automatically see themselves as similar to me. Krystal has recently transitioned out of the classroom to become her school's Instructional Technology Curriculum Leader. Connect with her on Twitter @KJStevie72. Photo (c) 2017 Kristin Leong |
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