I read the book, and noticed really only one thing of consequence that I would like to talk about. What I mean is, while it should be obvious that you can make teaching mistakes and fail to appropriately manage a class and that it might not be a good idea to try to be too funny too soon, what interested me was the last section of the book wherein the author culled ideas and suggestions from other teachers he had worked with. Sometimes the advice was in line with his, and at other times the author and his contributors were dead-set apart. I have noticed the same situation in summer school: we bring all sorts of people in, and they give us all sorts of advice. Nothing is uniformly recommended. At first this drove me crazy, but I have finally decided that there's really no other way to go about business because teaching is somewhat intuitive and mostly trial-and-error. Lots of folks have told me that "what works for me might not work for you." I think that the reason so much contradictory advice is being given out is so that everyone will be given the opportunity to hear at least SOMETHING that falls in line with their intuition, and gives them the green-light to go ahead and try teaching how they think they should teach. Of course, when that fails, you have to be ready to adjust on the fly, but I think that this scatter-shot method of instruction will be, in the long run, much more effective than trying to fit every MTC'er into a cookie-cutter mold that some peer-reviewed study has recommended is most helpful for this that or the other.
So I used the "Cold Call" on my kids. I didn't bring a cup full of names and draw from it. I had stored in my head a complicated pattern of unannounced cold calling. Sometimes the kids had the answers, sometimes they didn't. I can't say that the technique made a whole lot of difference. It did get the quieter kids to participate more and they, for the most part, had answers to the questions asked. Even more, those answers were usually right.
So Joel Hebert tells me that the problems facing rural schools are manifold, and I am inclined to believe him. The rural schools are basically without cash, and without cash the best teachers can’t be retained, nor can the prime asset of a small rural school (small teacher to student ratio) be utilized—the small schools are instead consolidated into larger schools that might possibly serve many hundreds of square miles. The close-knit feeling of the small town is destroyed, and the increased busing and travel expenses work to offset the larger budget of a union school.
Joel’s solution—which, as far as I can see is the only and the most effective solution—advocates a larger allocation of cash and a smarter use in its spending, specifically in the areas of equalizing teachers’ pay and upgrading classroom technology.
Usually I am in what seems to be the rather meager class of people who oppose an overriding emphasis on technological advancements in the classroom for fear that this quantitative approach (ex: look, we now have 20 computers instead of 5 at XYZ High School) will obfuscate the underlying incompetence of administration and teaching (ex: even with Internet access in every classroom, Billy still failed the state test because his teacher, on top of not being competent in her subject area, didn’t know how to turn on a computer).
But not here: I think Joel is spot-on with everything, especially the increased technological focus. Joel’s paper claims that the main advantage of classroom computers and video cameras is in the realm of distance-learning courses which allow students to take classes otherwise not available at a school and also allow the district to save money by not employing a full-time teacher in that same subject. And as far as I can tell, he is right, though I would defend the technology for another reason. Ben Guest and Reggie Barnes have both talked about the paucity of ideas in the Delta, how kids who grow up enmeshed in an agrarian life and cut off from the larger world have no conception of many of our culture’s greatest achievements. I believe that the technology can bring them a taste of this. The Internet makes available pictures of the Sistine Chapel, for instance, which I doubt that a Delta child, if he has heard about it at all, would have ever seen pictures of. Previous to the Internet, the only reproductions came through books, and from what I have seen and heard of Delta schools in general, I have little to no doubt that their art programs are the least well-funded of a group of subjects that are as a whole chronically short of cash.
More than simply opening otherwise-closed doors to students, I also believe that this technology can serve a valuable purpose for the most apt of rural students. Landon Pollard’s paper points to the challenges facing public Gifted programs, both in their hesitation to take students out of regular classes (in the lower grades) and in their misunderstanding of “gifted” as “capable simply of studying MORE information than others” (in the AP high school classes). While poor, gifted urban students also face an overwhelming mountain of obstacles, every city provides some sort of intellectual climate (whether it be museums, or coffee shops, or gatherings in parks or on street corners) that can reinforce a gifted child’s belief in larger and more complex thinking. For rural gifted students, this technological providence may well provide their first realization that they are not alone in their seemingly singular desire to aspire for more than their peers.
Basically, an increased exposure to ideas is critical to the success of the most gifted of rural students. As far as I can tell, and as much as I hate to admit it, new schoolroom technology provides the best solution to this problem. Of course, at the end of the day, the districts need cash to pay for these advances as well as many other necessary ones, so I suppose I’d ask simply for a lot more cash. But cash wisely spent. And maybe a field-trip to the Vatican.
Impressions from Lalee's Kin? Sam and Dan and I have already volleyed ideas back and forth, so there may well be some overlap of my blog with theirs (which is the kindest way I can think of saying that I'm taking all their best insights).
I was struck by the lack of positive male role models--or even more basically, of successful black males--in the Delta. As far as I can remember, only two middle-aged black men appear in the movie: Lalee's drug-dealing son and Main's Boyz-to-Men Mentor (as Sam put it). While there was a great deal of necessary focus on Lalee herself and the systemic poverty surrounding her, I thought the documentary was too sparse in its characterization of these two men. I understand that the movie's "silence" is damning--if there were more men present there would be more to report, but an interesting dichotomy could have been constructed between the son-gone-wrong and the mentor trying to make right. The contrast would have taken on an extra poignancy in so far as Ben revealed that, despite the mentor's best efforts, Main dropped out of school. This sort of poetic despair is common of tragedy, and powerful as well: although Oedipus tries his best to solve Thebes' problems, he can't escape his fate; though this young, successful black man has sacrificed opportunities outside of the Delta in a hope to rehabilitate the area's youth, his single efforts cannot overcome an endemic trend...and I'm a classics major.
In part, I joined MTC because of a few good high school teachers of mine who introduced me to a greater and grander world than I knew existed. In other words, I learned about Walden and Emerson and Woody Allen and the San Fran psychedelic scene from a couple of guys who were cool enough to care. This is the sappy part of this post, but I'd like to do a bit of the same (including, yes, the founding of a chess club) with some kids whose only experience, as the movie said, has been cotton and soybean and corn fields in both their waking hours and dreams. For a kid like Granny, I'd imagine, it would be liberating to know that there is a great tradition of thoughtful people who weren't ashamed of a devotion towards hard intellectual labor. There are smart kids everywhere, I imagine, and it's got to be lonely when none of your friends give a damn about abstract thought or learning in general. Obviously, I realize I'm in a delicate situation as a white dude trying to proselytize the accomplishments of the West to a group of people trod underfoot by some of those same accomplishments, but...I'm a classics major.
