Jan 29, 2019 12:00:00 AM
I was there on a Friday with a weird schedule that meant Johal only saw her kids for 30-minute blocks. Some classes did pretty normal “fix-it-Friday” type stuff. They checked grades and made up late work or finished bigger things before the weekend hit. In other classes, they did a “
pocket solar system,” an activity that always made me think about the structure and enormity of the cosmos until I got very uncomfortable and had to look at dog videos for a while. As they wrestled with instructions that called for folding receipt paper into fractions of fractions, [pullquote position="right"]one student complained, playfully, “Ugh! Science is so unforgiving!”[/pullquote] Through the day, through the banality of grade-talk and the frustration of mixing markers and paper and measurements and written instructions, Johal’s presence remained the constant. She is the warm demander we all wish we were, pushing students to get their projects in because, “It would be lame if your elective class brought your GPA down.” And encouraging students to look over their presentations and reflect, “Raise your hand if you can make yours a little better,” before turning them in. She flowed from challenging the student with straight A’s to push a little harder while chatting about their recent successes in other classes and after school competitions to discussing, without a hint of judgement, the many missing assignments of another student and helping them make a plan to get their work in. She reminds me of many of the best teachers I’ve worked with, teachers who manage to leave no doubt in their love of each one of their students while being just as clear that their failure is simply not an option. What we do in class is, of course, important, but it often doesn’t matter if our
what is super good if students aren’t set on the
why they should do it. Sometimes they’ll do it for grades or fear of parents or because it seems kinda OK, I guess, for school. In Johal’s room, students dive into what they are doing, from taking notes and filling out worksheets to building little LEGO robots and labeling (and not even giggling at) Uranus, and they do it because they trust the room and the teacher and the class to give them things that are good. Sometimes it is those unremarkable days, the days of shortened classes and make-up work, that show how well the work we’ve done all year has paid off. The lack of flashy lessons, the days that aren’t those days we talk and tweet about, show us a lot about who we are as teachers, how our students see us and how important it is that we see them as more than a story.
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