I Wish My Teacher Knew

by Kyle Schwartz

  This is a big responsibility for teachers but it is also an opportunity. The type of relationship we build with our students becomes the foundation for their performance in our classrooms. Each time I show care and interest in my students’ lives, I am building an interpersonal link that creates the support system they need to feel connected to their schoolwork. For me, it is comforting to know that the effort I put into knowing my students as people and learners really does contribute to their ability to engage in difficult educational tasks.

  Teacher Tools

  1. Acts of Service

  Service learning can be seen as a teaching philosophy. The National Youth Leadership Council describes service learning as “an approach to teaching and learning in which students use academic knowledge and skills to address genuine community needs.” That can sound intimidating, but you don’t need to change your approach to teaching to incorporate service.

  In our school, students have collected food for the homeless. They have organized penny drives for cancer patients and held shoe drives for people in need. One year, students even hosted a schoolwide yard sale that raised money for an animal shelter. These actions make an impact. Framing activities like this, no matter how small, as Acts of Service for our students gives value to the academic skills they learn in school.

  I saw this firsthand in my classroom. One year, I read the book Beatrice’s Goat to my students. I never expected the way the story affected my class. The book tells the true story of Beatrice, a girl living in Uganda, who receives a goat from the nonprofit Heifer International that allows her to support her family and attend school. As soon as I finished the last page, my students asked if we could send a goat too.

  Sending the goat was a powerful learning experience. They worked together to come up with ideas to raise money. We ended up making and selling bookmarks and holding a bake sale. They came up with a pricing scheme and used multiplication to figure out how much we would have to sell at what price. Certain students were in charge of adding up all the coins and dollars and reporting the amount to the class. They had to figure out how much money had been raised and how much more we needed to meet our goal. In the end, my students didn’t collect enough money to send just one goat. They actually raised more than enough, so they had to decide what to do with the extra money and persuade their classmates of their plan.

  It was such an exciting project and one that I cannot take much credit for. The experience was student driven. I was really just along for the ride, facilitating their work but not directing it. My students set their own goal and decided how to achieve it. This allowed them to collaborate and work creatively to solve a genuine problem.

  Each student had a unique talent to contribute. Some drew intricate designs on the bookmarks and some baked cookies with their families; still others kept track of the finances. Completely unsolicited, two students made crafts at home and sold them at our bake sale. I was not even responsible for providing the motivation. My class connected with Beatrice’s story and wanted children like her to go to school. It was my students’ empathy that provided the true motivation.

  The whole project fit so well with Schletchy’s four characteristics of student engagement. They worked attentively and with commitment. Together, my students showed persistence and were able to contribute something meaningful, not just to their own education but to the world. To me this embodies not only student engagement, but also student empowerment.

  There are so many ways to incorporate Acts of Service into your instruction. Our schools provide a natural opportunity for students to provide an Act of Service simply by sharing their knowledge. There are always younger students whom your students can teach. Instead of hanging your students’ work outside their classroom, display it for younger students. My students have made posters explaining how the human body functions and then hung them outside the kindergarten classrooms. This little change turns a routine assignment into something much greater. In the same vein, I have turned reading a short play into an opportunity for my students to entertain their classmates. Students have also planted seeds during a science unit with the end goal of supporting our community garden.

  The ways to make Acts of Service part of your classroom are infinite. Turning schoolwork into meaningful contributions to the community helps students understand that their learning has a purpose beyond completing tasks and acquiring points. When the work students do in our classrooms helps real people and solves real problems, we have truly engaged them.

  In My Classroom

  Lauren Fine, Elementary Teacher and Dean

  Education is not just my profession; it is my passion. In the last decade each experience in urban education has taught me how to be a better educator, but it was the time I spent volunteering at a school in Accra, Ghana, that changed the way I viewed my role as a teacher.

  Although the lives of the students I worked with in Ghana were extremely challenging, their desire to learn was unquenchable. Every day I saw their passion for learning, and yet I was also confronted with the harsh reality that their access to education was limited due to an inability to pay school fees.

  Inspired by these students a fellow educator, London Moore, and I decided we wanted to respond to this inequity. We solicited donations from our family and friends and were able to send ten students to school in our first year.

  Over the next three years, our efforts grew into a small nonprofit called the Ghana Educational Collaborative. We not only provide school fees to students with high academic standing, but we also provide leadership training, and mentorship. Now, three of our graduates attend university. I credit much of our success to one of our students, William.

  I remember the first time I met William. At the time, he was a driven sixteen-year-old eighth grader who, due to financial barriers, was forced to halt his education several times. William exemplified the purpose of our program, embodying the grit, determination, and intelligence our organization hoped to support in our scholars.

  Almost immediately William became much more than a scholarship recipient; he became a true partner in our work. William helped us understand the nuances of working in Ghana and assisted in the day-to-day operations of the program. Once we hit a roadblock in transferring the payments for school fees. So, we sent funds directly to William. He crisscrossed the city and distributed the money to each school in time to keep every student in school.

  In our second year, we knew our students needed stronger mentorship, but being so far away it seemed there was little I could do. William took the initiative to mentor the younger students and began leading “family meetings” every month. At these meetings students gathered to discuss their school progress, develop leadership skills, and support each other through challenging times. When I think about authentic engagement and leadership, I think of how William has been a part of our work every step of the way.

  His impact reached far beyond the work in Ghana; it extended right into my classroom here in the United States. Seeing the leadership and ingenuity this young man brought to our organization made me rethink parts of my role as a teacher. I became aware of how often in impacted communities, programming happens “to” our students, and not “with” our students. I realized I needed to give students, like William, a place at the decision-making table.

  As an elementary school teacher, I know my students can positively impact the community as much as I, or other adults, can. In order for students to be fully engaged and invested in their learning, I realized that I could not merely be their instructor; I needed to be a true partner in their education.

  This led to a program I started in my classroom called Little People, Big Changes. Each year, my students create a service project where they can apply their academic skills and make a real difference. One year, my students researched the impact that limited access to books has on reading abilities. They raised money to donate books to the preschool students at the Head Start program across the street. Another year, my students
collected shoes and sent them to students in need.

  It is a powerful thing when students see themselves as little people who can create big changes in this world. My students know the skills they are developing as readers and writers have an authentic purpose: to impact and improve the world in which they live. This is what can happen when we teachers ask our students not just to engage in our classrooms, but also to be engaged citizens of the world.

  I choose to actively elevate the voices of students, both in my classroom and in our scholarship program. When you allow students to be the drivers of change, you allow them to recognize the power they have. This is the lesson that William taught me.

  What My Teacher Doesn’t Know

  William Yakah

  I don’t know where to start. I guess everything begins in Dabala.

  Dabala is a typical village in the Volta region of Ghana. There was no electricity and just one elementary school. In order to be admitted to the school, you have to be old enough. In Dabala, being old enough is not measured by your age. Instead, each child must prove that he or she is physically big enough to start school. At the start of each school year the principal lines up the children of the village for an arm test. You must reach your right arm over the top of your head and touch your left ear. If your fingertip can touch your ear, you may begin your education.

  I couldn’t wait to go to school like my older brothers. I was small for a six-year-old, but I eagerly lined up with the other children and reached my right arm as far as I could. The principal pointed to the centimeters between my fingertips and my ear and sent me home for another year to sit at home, help in the fields, and do the impatient work of growing.

  During that year, each day I forced my brothers to yank on my right arm in an anxious attempt to gain the centimeters that kept me from my education. When the next arm test came, my arm was still a few stubborn centimeters from where it needed to be. But hope was not lost. I had practiced inching up my shoulders and tilting my chin ever so slightly forward so that my arm would appear to be longer. That is how I outwitted the principal and earned the opportunity to start my education.

  Sitting in the dusty school room was like an intense thirst finally being quenched. I reveled in learning that the tangled lines on the page were really letters and numbers. And, if you learned to untangle them, you would be rewarded with knowledge.

  When I was nine years old, in search of work our family moved from Dabala to Accra, the capital city. At times, my parents could not provide the school fees. My brothers and I took turns each year. One of us would attend school while the others worked to support the family. I would not be deterred. This was my chance. I would do anything to make the most of my education.

  One day in school, a teacher showed me a photograph that caused me to realize a dream I didn’t know I had. In the picture there was a man with a white jacket and blue pants. It said “doctor.” From that moment on, I knew I was meant to be a doctor. That vision for my future motivated me to commit myself entirely to my education.

  I began waking up at 3:00 a.m. each morning. I left the one-room shack my family lived in, walked through the tightly knitted homes to quietly study under the dim light of a lamppost. As the years went on and high school grew closer and closer, the reality set in. I had no way to pay the fees and my dream of becoming a doctor seemed farther out of reach than ever.

  Then the Ghana Educational Collaborative came into my life. They offered to pay my fees, buy my textbooks, provide a stipend as well as mentorship from their board members. I was determined to make use of this opportunity, to achieve academically, and pursue my seemingly impossible dreams. I wanted to develop as a leader and become a person who could help others.

  I had not merely earned a scholarship. I had become a part of the GEC community. I began mentoring the other students in the scholarship program, checking in on them and tutoring them with their schoolwork. Honestly, the relationship I formed with my fellow students helped me just as much as it helped them. When I told them how much I believed in them, how much I expected from them, and how their hard work would result in their success, these are the words I needed to hear as well.

  I want teachers to know that the inner drive we students need to fully engage in our education comes from a clear understanding of the journey we are on. Students like me need to have a vision for our future. In every lesson they teach, educators need to help us conceptualize the connection between what is being taught and its relevance to our world and our dreams of the future. We students need help to hold on to the dreams that can pull us through our challenges. That connection is what drives us to overcome our challenges and work harder to keep our dreams alive. Each skill we learn along the way is really a step on our journey to pursuing our dreams. That journey can take us to the most incredible places. I am proof.

  Education has taken me, a small boy from the hinterland in Ghana, across the ocean to study at Michigan State University, the beginning of the realization of my dream towards becoming a doctor. As I work to achieve my dream, I also work to ensure that there are more students to follow.

  2. Family Learning Projects

  The idea for Family Learning Projects came from fellow teacher Tiffany Martinez. She and I were leading a group of second-grade students in an intense study of insects as a part of our school district’s summer English Language Acquisition Academy. Ms. Martinez invited her students to create a bug diorama at home.

  This had not even crossed my mind. If I’m being honest, I hadn’t thought of inviting my students to complete this type of project, largely because of my own biases. My perspective of creating a diorama came from the way I had done it as a child. My parents had driven me across town to a craft store and spent $20 on plastic figurines, paint, and fake grass. I thought this extra expense for a school project might not be accessible to all of my students. Due to this flawed assumption—that some students and their families would not have the resources to complete an assignment—I simply didn’t offer the opportunity.

  I am grateful that I was proven wrong when, day by day, Ms. Martinez’s students showed up at school beaming with pride as they carried a Styrofoam spider or a poster with the body parts of a ladybug carefully labeled. Her students had the same challenges as mine. But because Ms. Martinez gave her students the opportunity to create something meaningful, they took their learning further than mine did. After this realization I invited my students to do the same project and was amazed by the results. Though my students had varying levels of resources and family support, each and every one brought in a bug project that showed their unique personalities and interests.

  Two brothers actually collected live ants to show the class. One boy told me he didn’t have anything at home to do the project with, so I sent him home with a few sheets of construction paper. He came back the next day holding a colorful menagerie of carefully folded origami butterflies and cockroaches.

  Ever since this experience, I have incorporated Family Learning Projects into my classroom. I have learned a few key aspects that have helped make them successful. One is to make these projects optional and ungraded. Even though they are not required, most students still complete the projects. Each time a student brings in a project, it is like free advertising motivating more and more students to go home and give it a try. I also leave it up to the student to decide if they would like to publicly present their project to the class. They almost all choose to stand at the front of the class and share, but I don’t see the point in forcing students to engage in public speaking if it causes them extreme discomfort. I also do not see a need to grade the projects. The purpose is for students to take the learning we have done in class in whatever direction they choose. Making Family Learning Projects graded would mean that I would have to create grading criteria, and in this case it might stifle creativity.

  This leads me to the next aspect of my Family Learning Projects. They are completely and utterly open to interpretation. The assignment sheets I sen
d home say something like “We are learning about the planets. Create an interesting solar system project. There are no rules. Have fun!” I have also sent home a single sheet of paper with one simple printed sentence: “Turn this into a paper airplane.” Students have complete freedom to create these projects and I have been amazed by the results.

  One of our Family Learning Projects was to make a map of Colorado. Some students drew pictures and others made posters. A student who loved computers made a digital map with his father. Another even made a completely accurate map by decorating a sheet cake with her mother. For our solar system project, one family created a glow-in-the-dark solar system complete with an electrical circuit. Another student who had limited supplies at home brought in a solar system made completely out of the materials she had: a box she found in our classroom recycling bin and her most precious resource, her Halloween candy.

  The best part for me is when families help bring in the projects. The adults are just as excited as the students to show off the projects they worked on. Seeing the faces of my students’ mothers, fathers, or aunties glowing with pride at their child’s work shows me the impact of these projects.

  Family Learning Projects offer something my third-grade students have likely never had in their education career: complete freedom to investigate a topic they are interested in and demonstrate their knowledge in whatever way they see fit. I have found that the only thing students and families need in order to do this is a simple invitation. As teachers, sometimes all we need to do to engage our students is provide the opportunity. As I have grown as an educator, my strategies for engaging students have evolved. I know I have the ability to manufacture student interest in my classroom simply by being amusing. I can stop a book right at a cliffhanger and leave my students pleading for more. I can make silly faces or jokes so they hang on my every word. Just by putting a piece of technology in front of my students, I can keep them on task and absorbed in their work. Most teachers know how to grab their students’ attention, but remember that true engagement is not entertainment.