When I think of teachers, I do not think of community leaders, or of role models. I do not think of all the varied problems with which they must face daily, or of the tremendous responsibility that they wield. Instead, when I think of teachers, what comes to mind is not their great abilities, but their lack thereof. As a student, however, I did not harbor any such feelings. At that age, teachers were paragons of the community — they were the standards by which the community should elevate itself. Anyone who took it upon herself to teach another should be applauded for her philanthropy and selflessness. All of this changed, however, when I became an editor of mathematics.
As an editor, I discovered that most teachers are not the paragons of ability I had originally believed. It was like the day I had discovered that Santa Claus was not real. I was mortified. To my chagrin, very few teachers of math actually know the math they teach. In the realm of mathematics, many teachers cannot find pi on a number line, let alone understand the concept of irrational numbers— those of nonterminating, nonrepeating decimals. Many have trouble understanding the difference between fractions, rates, odds, and percents, further lacking the facility to explain this difference to students. Most teachers specialize in teaching, not mathematics, and so know little more of the subject than their students. This allows for conceptual misunderstandings which when transcended to their students, expounds errors further. Since coming to Montclair State, I have discovered this is not true for all teachers of math, yet the reality is clear: Teachers are no more special than any other specialized group of professionals — some know the field better than others; to be an exemplar of the group requires work, patience, and desire.
Unlike my view of teachers, I view school and students with more of a balanced frame. In an ideal world, school is the stage upon which the future (students) begins. It is a crucible into which students arrive with preconceived notions, where these students challenge orthodoxies, and are challenged by tenants that may run orthogonally to their own views; as graduates, these students exit as young leaders ready assume their responsibilities in civilian life. From my experiences as a student, however, school is far more complicated. While schools can be benevolent centers of possibility, they are also troubling locales where bureaucracy rules, where internal politics can prevent the occurrence of good teaching, and where strife between administrators and unions can interfere with the main purpose of the institution — the education of the student. Open a local newspaper sometime, or stop to talk to the disgruntled teachers picketing outside the local train station; schools, despite their austere appearance are centers for internal brouhahas and political scrimmages.
At the same time, students are a complicated lot. Amid all their potential, there is equally the likelihood that they may turn to vice, to crime, or to apathy. Middle school and high school are self-conscious periods in students’ lives. For me, middle school was a period of fights, of visiting the principal’s office, and meeting with the school counselor. High school was about discovering who I was and what I wanted from life. Both were periods of great transition. Truly, students’ search for meaning to life and their part in it begins here. They want desperately to belong to something of their own making or choice. At the same time, they are unsure if they can trust the opportunities presented at school. Some students seize these opportunities with great excitement. Others examine them hesitantly, skepticism eliminating their curiosity. Many depart school, drawn away by more appealing —or necessary— opportunities that lie outside of the realm of academics. Taken altogether, it is an upsetting picture.
At the heart of all these topics —teachers, students, and schools— is the urban center. Referred colloquially as the inner city, Random House Dictionary defines this area as “an older part of a city, densely populated and usually deteriorating, inhabited mainly by poor, often minority, groups.” It is more than that. It is the culture where students live, where the school resides, where teachers work. It is the society where teachers and students come together under the auspices of a school. It is full of possibility, even if it exists amid congestion, crime, broken homes, and low-income families.
Examining all these factors together, one might assume that I would shy away from teaching in the inner city — many of its teachers lack the necessary education to enable learning, the schools do not engender learning, the student drop-out rate is staggering, and the neighborhood has been abandoned by the municipality to drug lords, gangs, and other vices. It paints a grim picture, indeed.
Knowing that teachers in the inner city may be ill-prepared to teach, you might guess that I would look down upon my cohorts in teaching. On the contrary, I see it as a call to aid my future peers in teaching. As a fellow teacher, I hope that I can be the peer whom they can call upon to garner a better understanding of mathematics, while also learning from them what it is to be a teacher. After all, no amount of theory and methods can completely prepare a pre-service teacher for actual service. Further, I know that my opinion of teachers will propel me to be a better teacher in terms of instruction, accessibility, and support of my students. This leads me to my feelings on students and how I will interact with them.
Knowing of the struggle that many students face in secondary school, I see it as my duty as an enabler of learning to provide content and an atmosphere conducive to their needs. It is my feeling that many students turn from school due to inaccessibility and lack of structure. Not only does much of school seem irrelevant, it does not address their needs. When your parents are absent, and your younger sister is pregnant, homework seems trivial, especially if it has no relation to you, and seems to provide you with little assistance to your troubles. Without the necessary support from their teachers, it is no wonder students drop out.
It further seems necessary to negotiate a fair structure and topics with students. Mathematics is generally considered the hardest of subjects, mostly due to its inaccessibility. It is a language that never gets the same level of attention in its mastery as English or Spanish. Due to this lack of facility, many students “check out.” They decide that it is too difficult to learn. Who can blame them? Most textbooks and instruction show no relation to the real world. It is all about symbols and numbers. It is all about people getting on-and-off a pair of trains, each traveling 60 miles per hour in opposite directions. What does this have to do with their lives? I feel it my duty to make that connection with students. Math is more than just irrelevant facts and common story structures. It is a way of thinking. Therefore, it is my duty as a teacher to negotiate with my students what we study in mathematics within a natural frame such as algebra, or geometry, or trig. It is further my duty to bring meaning to the subject so that they might see how it relates to their lives, and how knowing it can provide them with an added edge in life.
Taken together, I believe that these assumptions and beliefs will help force me into a nurturing professional that strives to make mathematics accessible, meaningful, and useful. It will force me to create classrooms that are reflections of the society that my students will someday help to create. It is my hope that these will be unique classrooms where my students will engage in projects that relate both to mathematics and to their lives, enabling them not only to appreciate mathematics’s place in the world, but also arming them with the tools they will need to be active, thinking members of society.
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