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When I was in 2nd grade, around this time of the school year, my teacher asked our class to help her create the seasonal bulletin board for our classroom. She laid out an array of markers, shiny buttons and jewels, and plates of glue along with glitter shakers we could use to decorate trees or stars that she would hang on the wall to showcase the traditions our families celebrated. Art projects were always a happy time for me, so I gathered my papers and supplies and started to work. I was in full gear with glue blobs and jewels in hand a few minutes later when the teacher hovered over my desk and began to scold me.
As vivid a memory as I have of the moment, I can’t actually recall most of what she said. I can recall how quiet the room became. I remember feeling the heat rising to my cheeks. And I remember the teacher saying, “You can’t have both. You have to choose just one.” I must have just stared at her, because she repeated this over and over to me, and eventually said, “Which one are you keeping?” with her hand outstretched to me, expecting me to hand over one of the art pieces, either the tree or the star.
I can only imagine that she thought I wasn’t listening, needed help following directions, and was being wasteful. Sometimes I wonder if I became a story that she retold over lunch in the staff room that day, was one of “those kids” in a snippet that other teachers laughed at or shook their heads at in simultaneous disbelief and knowing agreement, or perhaps worse — that the moment didn’t even register as noteworthy in her day.
I’m fairly confident that my 2nd grade teacher thought I was the problem at that moment, and if she could just get me to hand over one of the art pieces, the activity could get back on track. But the problem wasn’t that I misunderstood the assignment or wasn’t listening. She had clearly stated that the assignment was to create a bulletin board to represent the holiday traditions our families celebrate. But the assignment was based on an assumption that everyone celebrated either Christmas or Hanukkah — only those two holidays, and only one or the other of those holidays. My identity was caught in the crosshairs — we celebrated both holidays in my family and choosing just one of them felt like an impossible decision, to choose one parent over the other, one part of who I was and hiding, forgetting, denying, or ignoring the other parts of my identity.
The narrative we’re sometimes sold in becoming teachers, part of the savior complex that is often so intertwined with teaching, is that the kids are broken and they need us to fix them. We’re told we can fill their gaps, catch them up, and get them to behave — and we spend lots of time, energy and money in pursuit of these things. But what if that narrative is misguided? What if when the lesson doesn’t work out the reason isn’t that the students aren’t motivated to learn, their gaps are too large to surmount, or they aren’t trying hard enough? What if the students aren’t broken, and instead our lessons are broken?
Rethinking what’s broken is part of the design process we’ve been writing about this year. When we start with rigorous goals, expect and plan for variability, and then reframe what’s broken — the variety of assets all students bring with them to school are seen, valued, and accessed as we design and implement meaningful, relevant lessons.
There are a few more critical ideas to this design mindset and skillset that we’ll write about in the next newsletters. In the meantime, whether you’re working in the classroom or in a professional learning environment, let’s challenge ourselves to continue to reframe what’s broken, and interrogate how we rethink our lessons to center learners’ strengths, value their identities, and foster a sense of belonging.
Audrey Mendivil
@Audrey_Mendivil
audrey.mendivil@sdcoe.net
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