HERE'S TO TEACHERS

Beth Dunn

Lesson #1: "How was I going to maintain authority?"

Beth Dunn has been teaching in Ocean View Elementary School in Albany for the last 16 years.

There have been many situations in which she was challenged as a teacher. One of the stories she tells us is about an emotionally disturbed child. “That was probably my most challenging situation,” she said. “He was violent.”

Dunn never knew what would make him angry. The student would throw the tables and chairs toward her, as well as hit and kick her.

“It was really hard. I had 23 other students in the classroom, and they were very frightened,” said Dunn. “And how was I going to maintain authority in the classroom, when I have this kid that is acting this way?”

Eventually the school administration relocated the student to another classroom, with another educator who specialized in teaching students with special needs. “It was very healing for all of us,” said Dunn. Unfortunately, however, Dunn later learned the student was eventually suspended from the school.

Lesson #2: "That's how he must feel."

Working at a public school in a community with low-income families brought other unexpected provocations.

Dunn remembers her very first day as a teacher: now she smiles telling this story, but she did not smile back then.

Lesson #3: "I do feel like this!"

A teacher’s day in the classroom is full of joy and laughter.

Sometimes little kids can teach adults life lessons. Their sensitivity and awareness can affect a teacher enough that they will tell about that story after many years.

Paula Alcantar

Lesson #1: "I felt like a stranger to the classroom."

The students are moving freely around the classroom. They are comfortably asking questions. There is laughter. The kids feel freedom to be themselves (wear hoods, listen to music, dialogue off topic). There’s a laid back atmosphere in this high school biology classroom.

It wasn’t always this way for Paula Alcantar, a third-year teacher. It takes time to build a good relationship — to create trust and develop the sort of collaboration that allows for meaningful and authentic learning.

But sometimes, it takes a little bit more work.

“Every day you’re challenged,” said Alcantar.

As a relatively new teacher, she aims to continue to learn how to better her teaching practice. In her first two years of teaching, she definitely had moments of frustration with her students, but never experienced situations that were so challenging in which she had to do “a lot of deep reflection.”

This school year, she’s teaching two periods of honors biology and three periods of college prep biology. Of those three college prep biology periods, two are student cohorts in the Public Service Academy — a three-year college and career pathway for students interested in public service.

“They always operate together,” she said. “They’re like a school of fish.”

Lesson #2: "They totally took the power from me."

In the first few days of school, those last two periods of the day entered her classroom “a little rambunctious and boisterous,” said Alcantar.

She suddenly felt like a stranger to her own classroom, in part because the students had shared previous class periods with each other all day long, as well as the prior school year.

“They’ve had all day to build relationships with each other,” she said. “So when they came into my class, it was just like a social hour for them.”

Up until that point, she had naively thought she had mastered her classroom management skills, as she had never had an entire class challenge her.

Lesson #3: "In that moment, I was amazed."

As a result, she had her classes “do some reflection on their end.” She distributed an index card to her students and had them respond to the following prompts:

• What does a good classroom look like to you?
• What does a good teacher look like to you?
• What do you think that, as a student, you have to do to make the classroom environment positive - and can we promote learning in here?

Alcantar allotted ten minutes of class time for the students for the reflective exercise. Working in silence, the students had their heads hunched over their index cards.

“As I was walking around, I saw that they weren’t just writing little bullet points or little phrases,” she said. “They were writing full blown sentences.”

Lesson #4: "They've actually taken it more to heart."

That day, after school, she read their responses.

As a class, they used that lesson to work out and agree upon new classroom strategies. She now describes the dynamic of her fifth and sixth period classes to be “a complete 180” from where they began at the beginning of the school year.

“The kids who were giving me pushback by not wanting to learn anything or not wanting to ask questions, they’re the ones who I see thriving the most right now,” said Alcantar.

Because of the one-on-one connections she later established with her students, she has witnessed their growth and respect for the learning experience and for biology.

"They've actually taken it more to heart," she added.

Lorenzo Delgado

Lorenzo Delgado is typically found zipping around his school site in a golf cart, supervising and coordinating the use of facilities for day-to-day activities and maintenance.

Despite not being in the classroom, the former Spanish and an ELD teacher, who is now a high school assistant principal, continues to strike up conversations and build relationships with his students.

He recalls what he has learned in his 35 years of working in education.

And yet the biggest lesson of all, he said, is that "every day, every year, you have to renew those relationships because kids are different. You have to focus on the art of teaching - and then the science of it just happens."