Observing Master Teachers: How Joy and Purpose Improve Learning

During my last week at Goshen High School, I observed four master teachers in a spectrum of different classes. Throughout my observations, I noted a number of masterful teaching practices that build upon what I have experienced in my own classroom. Marci Husek co-teaches American Experience, a combined English and History class that serves as a stepping-stone to college preparatory classes. Theresa Collins teaches Theory of Knowledge, a required class for students going for the full IB diploma, along with Carl Weaver. Dave Wilson teaches Genetics & Ethics, a mid-level science class for upperclassmen. Laura Younghans, a first-year teacher who attended GHS in high school, teaches Focused English for sophomores. Rather than addressing each teacher and speaking to their individual strengths, I will describe the similarities common among all of these great educators. 

Upon entering all of these classrooms, I noticed the rapport and community that master teachers build with their students.  All four of the master educators I observed have built safe places in their classrooms. All four knew their students and used names as often as possible. Marci started her class by telling a story about her youngest son, and talking conversationally with students.  Dave started class by proclaiming how wonderful a day it was and how he was so glad to see everyone—and his enthusiasm was genuine. Laura talked quietly with a few girls before the bell rang. The students initiated the conversation, and Laura showed them respect by putting down her papers and really paying attention to them. Similarly, before Theresa’s class started, she checked in with two students who have a project due in another class. Theresa showed care and a personal connection by knowing her students and addressing their fears about the assignment. She then began class by checking in with all students by asking about their day so far. It is evident that the students feel safe and comfortable in the classroom and that a sense of community has been built there.

I observed in English, science, theory, and history classes. In every single one of these classes, I saw teachers integrating objectives and goals seamlessly and naturally into the class period. Laura displayed her objectives during students’ independent reading time, which gave wandering eyes something to read. Before diving into content, she read over them and explained how each would be answered in the class. Theresa showed a guiding question on her board, and explained to students that today they would be addressing an IB objective that could be answered by addressing the ethics-related question. In Genetics & Ethics, Dave seamlessly integrated objectives throughout the class period. He began the class by covering the objectives and answering “Why?” He explained to students why they were learning what they were learning, how it related to the class as a whole, and why it mattered in their lives. Throughout the class, Dave returned to the list of objectives as each one was completed, and took time to remind students of the next objective that would be covered. The ease and grace Dave showed in complying with state standards while maintaining a natural flow in his classroom proved to be extremely effective and held students’ attention.

To end, I want to address what I found to be the most masterful aspect of each teacher’s practice: the obvious joy and enthusiasm shown for subject matter. Marci shows her enthusiasm subtly through her constant smile and how she prefaces new ideas or facts with phrases such as “Now this is interesting” or “Girls, you might think about how this relates to your own lives” or “I wish we still used these kinds of words today!” Laura and Theresa both show their joy of learning and enthusiasm for their content through their presentation of information. Both women show that planning and enthusiasm must be used together to create a lesson that will run smoothly and keep students interested. Dave shows his obvious joy through his stream of science-related jokes, his excited pacing, and the connections he makes to students’ real lives. In each classroom, the teacher’s joy and enthusiasm for the subject is evident. This attitude seems to ensure interesting and filled classes, and encourages students to seek the same level of engagement.

Overall, observing these master teachers taught me that it is possible to adhere to state standards and school expectation while maintaining a clear and evident love for what they do. These teachers are all living out their calling, not just working at their jobs.

Finding Shalom in a Broken System

   A five-year-old boy goes to school with a white net over his hair—he has scalp ringworm, and it is very contagious. The little boy goes home, and his parents tell him that the school called, and that he gets to be a part of a program that will cure his ringworm. But, when the little boy goes in for treatments, his body is subjected to radiation. The adults giving the radiation did not know how to use the machine. He hears one of them say, “Oh no! I’ve given him too much!” That amount of radiation should have caused death.
   Now, he lives with a plate-sized wound on his skull. He used to wear wigs; now he wears a beanie. He never got married, never trusted anyone enough to show them his bloody, pus-filled hole. A friend recalls him saying that only 4 people have ever seen it. This is the life of Vertus Hardiman, an African-American man born in 1921. The radiation experiment was performed on him in Lyles Station, Indiana.

   Dr Wilbert Smith, whose documentary Hole in the Head: A Life Revealed delves in Hardiman’s world, spoke on campus this winter as a part of the Martin Luther King Jr Study Weekend. During his community conversation at Umble Center on January 20, 2013, Dr Smith addressed the issues of health care and race, and a Peace and Conflict Studies class provided information regarding the long history of African-American medical experiements. Although Dr Smith’s presentation was not focused on education, much of what he said was directly applicable to the life of a teacher.

   “What are you going to do when the next Vertus Hardiman walks into the room?” asks Dr Smith. “Even if you don’t know that you are, you can be a part of the problem.” Dr Smith challenged us to know others. It is only through recognizing that we have so many similarities, and so few differences, that we can turn our stories into ones that avoid injustices like Hardiman experienced. Regina Shands-Stoltzfus called students to remember that stories are precious, and holding others’ stories is an important part of our work as human beings.

   As an English teacher, the idea of the importance of holding others’ stories really spoke to me. I think of my future classroom—what will they look like? Whether I teach in the suburbs or the inner city, I need to know my students and understand their stories. Multicultural literature is a beautiful way to show students that not only is their story valued, but it a part of the set of writings worth reading. Multicultural literature allows students to take pride in their own experiences and culture, and also reminds them of the importance of knowing others’ stories as well.

   In some sense, English teachers are charged with a more practical goal than other teachers. Gilberto Perez, a professor of social work at Goshen College, reminded the audience that despite the perceptions of Americans, the US is not living in a post-racial society. Teachers, and other authority figures, need to work to eradicate racism. One of the most important steps to its eradication is awareness and acknowledgement of its existence by the younger generations. By carefully selecting the texts, authors, and messages—aiming to widen the literary canon and celebrate authors from all races, religions, ethnicities, and orientations—our community can begin to heal old wounds and prevent new ones. Shalom, a peace and wholeness of body, spirit, and mind, will be possible for us as individuals and our wider community when stories are known and valued.

Anti-Racism Training: Why is Race so Hard to Talk About?

Race is hard to talk about—but it needs to be done.

On Thursday, November 1, I participated in Anti-Racism Training at Goshen College. This four-hour seminar was led by Professor Regina Shands-Stolzfus, and attendees ranged from students to faculty and other Goshen College staff to community members. Over the course of the afternoon, Professor Shands-Stolzfus dispelled assumptions about race, provided thought-provoking questions and space for participants to discuss race, and taught us ways to be more aware of our own interactions with race.

To begin the seminar session, we had small group discussions about our names, our own race, and what we felt most connected with in terms of our own identities. The small group I was in consisted of three white females, one white male, one Latino male, and one African male. While white females were dominant in the group, I felt that we all had surprisingly similar interactions with race. For the most part, our group agreed that in our home lives, ethnicity had been seen as something to celebrate, while race was pushed to the background. For most of us, we felt that we were aware of our race growing up, but that this awareness was predominantly from social interactions at school or the media.

None of the white people in our group professed pride about being white; instead, we all said that we were embarrassed to be labeled white, and often tried to identify in some other way to distance ourselves from the white label. The African male said that when he was young, he was afraid of people with white skin, and that when he saw white-skinned people, he would hide from them out of fear. Hearing this made me feel surprisingly hurt—as much as I want to distance myself to power-holding whites, I must realize that I am still a part of the white group and the prejudices others have towards whites they also have towards me.

Towards the end of the discussion time, we talked again in groups about how to deal with racism in our places of work or study. The group I was in came up with multiple ways: intentionally seeking out friends of other races, choosing to not be “colorblind” but color-conscious, and to promote conversations about race. Being willing to ask the hard questions about race and our own racism—and answer them ourselves—was something we all agreed would foster better understanding among racial groups.

Personally, I found it kind of difficult to talk about race. Growing up in a home where race was not discussed, I often found myself at a loss for both articulate ideas and words to share them. However, hearing from other students who better articulated their experiences helped me to better understand my own. I realize now that I need to continue these open, honest conversations about race, so that when I am in a position of authority or leadership I have the capacity to talk about this subject with grace.

Hearing white young adults not know how to talk about race, or how to positively identify with their own race weighed heavy on my heart. I also feel that way, and I am very aware of the injustices that work in my favor as a white woman. However, I feel that everyone should be able to identify positives to their race, just as they can identify positives for all other races. Seeing the beauty in color is important—regardless of what color it is.

As a teacher, I hope to be able to connect what I learned about on Thursday, and what I am continuing to think about today, to my calling as a teacher. By striving to be consistently color-conscious both in and out of school, I hope to be a role model of positive race relations. In a school placement that I am currently in, I feel that color-blindness by far rules the classroom; but that is not healthy. Teachers need to move past the desire to see all students as colorless, and to recognize that all races need to be noted and incorporated into classroom interactions. By being aware of racism and being willing to talk about the hard questions of race and racism, I also hope to promote interracial conversation and understanding in my classroom.

I do not want to teach in a homogenous school. I would much rather teach in a community with learners representing many different cultures and colors. Having a hybrid classroom like that, with students of many shades, only makes the class stronger. In science, a hybrid is stronger than either of the separate parents—in the classroom, I can’t see why that would be any different. Teaching in a multiracial environment would open up the opportunities for me to promote healthy conversation about race. Students need to know how to talk about race in safe, nurturing environments.

Students need multicultural—and multiracial—literature. Students need to see people of their same race and gender in positive positions of authority. LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman, co-authors of Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago expressed the need of seeing positive black male role models. I believe that children of all races need easy access to same-race role models. Students need to be given the chance to get to college and succeed. This is the basic concept behind Lamov’s Teach Like a Champion and Wormelli’s Meet Me in the Middle: Becoming an Accomplished Middle-Level Teacher, and all other respectable teaching books. Students need to not feel held back by the color of their skin. Although I am no more than a white woman, I can encourage more than just white females to be future teachers, principals, pastors and coaches.

Tutoring: Learning to Talk through Trouble

Over the past semester, I have spent time tutoring a fellow student; let’s call her Stacy. Stacy and I live on the same dorm floor, which is how we initially got connected. We were talking about our classes in the bathroom, when she told me how much she struggles with writing papers that are concise and make sense. I told her I would be glad to help her out, and since then, I have spent approximately forty-five minutes every week looking over or talking through her papers with her.

At first, this was a somewhat intimidating experience for me. I have little experience tutoring or teaching my peers—my previous teaching experiences all included students much younger than me. Stacy is very much my peer, and I respect her a lot, which made tutoring her a bit of a challenge. I did not want to step on her toes or in any way insult her intelligence, but at the same time I wanted to ask her hard questions and make her think about the way in which she was writing.

The first few times we met, her papers were short—usually reflections on books she had read for her Women’s Studies class. I would ask her what she thought she needed to work on with in the paper, and then I would read it for myself. Usually, Stacy had a good idea of the things she needed to change before I even read her writing. As I read, I would make marks on the phrases or sections that needed work. We would always talk about those things that needed fixing, rather than just leaving them as marks on the page. I found that the best way to go about discussing these problems was to ask Stacy what she thought was wrong with the underlined section. She usually had a good idea, and if not, I found that the use of scaffolding—or asking leading questions—was really helpful.

Most often, Stacy had issues with creating a logical format to her papers. Once, her paper seemed like she had just written a number of paragraphs and put them in an arbitrary order—she told me that’s how she felt about it. So, we cut them up. By physically cutting the paragraphs apart, Stacy and I could look at each paragraph separately and decide what order made the most sense. When we did this, Stacy put the paragraphs where she thought they should go—and the second time through made so much more sense than her first attempt. But, Stacy would always ask me first if I thought that was where it should go.

Based on that experience, it came to my attention that perhaps the reason that Stacy feels like she cannot write logical papers is simply a lack of self-efficacy. Stacy is a good writer. She’s capable of writing complex sentences, using semi-colons and colons correctly, and has a broad vocabulary. I asked her if she thought she was a good writer, and she told me that she didn’t think so; that it was just a little too hard for her. I found that interesting, because I definitely think of her as being a good writer. Over the weeks that we worked together, I kept trying to get Stacy to recognize her own skills as a writer: both by not giving her the answers but by using scaffolding questions, and by pointing out the good things that she was doing as a writer.

Over the span of the semester, I definitely noticed a change in Stacy’s attitude toward writing. When we would talk about things in the beginning, she was always very hesitant and seemed worried about what I thought was correct. She came to me multiple times with papers, usually once to talk about what would make a good thesis and then later to read the finished product. As the semester progressed, she came to me less often at the beginning, and more often at the end. She also began to come with certain things in mind, like asking me to look at her use of the words affect/effect. Whether she was becoming more comfortable with her own writing skills, or simply more comfortable with me, I noticed a definite increase in her levels of self-efficacy when it came to writing over the past weeks.


What do I do with this experience now? For me personally, I realized the importance in making multiple drafts. I often assume that my first draft will be pretty close to perfect, and that I should not consider drastic rewrites. But through tutoring Stacy, I realized that good ideas often hide amidst poor wording or awkward sentence structure. I also realized that in creative writing, what we, as the writers, find important is not always something that the reader will value. I think it’s important for me to remember the value of one-on-one help, especially with something as personal as writing. Increasing self-efficacy in relation to writing is very possible, it just requires more intentionality from the teacher. I also think that talking through papers verbally really helps to be able to write a good paper—in my experience, if you can talk intelligently about the topic you are going to write about, your paper will be just fine.

Bennett: Benefitting Education?

As a result of class schedule conflicts, I didn’t get the opportunity to attend a board meeting this semester. For my alternative assignment, I kept myself up-to-date with current events on education, particularly focusing on Indiana education. While reading about current education news in Indiana, I focused on the question “Who are the people outside of my classroom who influence what happens inside my classroom?”

Tony Bennett, the Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction, certainly holds a spot as one of the people who greatly affects the classroom from outside of it. As the Superintendent, Bennett makes decisions that affect schools, teachers, and students. Bennett, along with Governor Mitch Daniels, has been pushing for merit pay since August of this year. On December 8th, the Education Roundtable of Indiana—a group of twenty-four Hoosier leaders—approved of the changes that Bennett wants to make for how teachers get paid.

According to Bennett’s new plan, teachers are going to be “graded” and paid based on their content knowledge, instructional skills, and—most controversially—students’ academic achievement. In an interview with the Tribune Star of Terre Haute, Bennett says that he doesn’t think it is fair to grade teachers based on how many of their students pass the ISTEP, but that he doesn’t see a problem with grading them based on their students’ level of improvement.

Personally, I don’t think this is a valid or valuable way to judge teachers’ impact on students. When I took the ISTEP tests, I always passed them. However, if I were to guess, I would say that my level of improvement probably didn’t increase all that much, simply because I didn’t have much space to better my previous score. It seems that under this new law, children with high mathematical or linguistical intelligences (or those who are good test takers), will be left behind. Teachers will be encouraged to focus on the students who can improve the most, because that will look best on their end-of-the-year assessments. It seems to me that this unbalanced focus will push teachers too much to teach to the test. Not only will students miss out on other types of learning (hands-on, science, history, social activities), but some students may miss out on learning altogether as teachers struggle to improve low ISTEP performers’ test scores and teach to the level of more advanced students.

Is this really, as Bennett said, ensuring “student learning as our highest priority?”

Beginning the Journey:

One of the most prominent memories I have of a teacher is my third grade teacher, Mr. Goertz. He was so excited about learning—I remember him pacing the front of the room as he taught new things—and as an elementary school teacher, provided the rare glimpse for young boys to see a positive male influence other than their father. I learned more than academic skills from him that year—I also learned to work in groups, help others learn, and motivate my own learning. Simply put, Mr. Goertz was an excellent teacher. According to Grant and Gillette at the 4th International Conference on Teacher Education and Social Justic (January 2007), there are nine actions that will put me on the path to becoming an “excellent teacher, one who is an activist and an advocate for students and colleagues now and in the future.” The nine key actions include: getting experience with all types of learners and their families, becoming critically active, taking your education seriously, becoming aware that you are a role model and act accordingly (and becoming active in your community, joining an organization comprised of a diverse group of people, developing ways to recharge your battery, practicing democratic principles, learning to identify allies, and studying effective teachers. Seen as a list those nine things feel slightly overwhelming, but looked at individually, they are quite achievable goals.

Taking my education seriously is very important for an excellent teacher. In high school, I took all the Honors/AP classes and was involved in academic extracurriculars like Spell Bowl. Taking AP Calculus my senior was by far the most difficult class I’ve ever taken—but the feeling of accomplishment when I understood a concept was worth the hours I put in working at it. Beyond the academic realm, I’ve already established myself as a lifelong learner: I ask questions, read every magazine I can get my hands on, and spend a lot of time with people more intelligent me (in whatever area that may be: mathematics, kinesthetics, spatial, etc). By recognizing that I will never be done learning things, I feel like I’ll be more open to ideas others share.

As a student, I have already developed a lot of ways to “recharge my battery” and re-excite myself about learning and school. I feel like these methods will be transferable to my life as a teacher. Currently, talking things out with trusted friends is the best way for me to recharge my battery. Talking to Jessie on late school nights when I’m overwhelmed with balancing school and friends and life helps process and calm down. It’s hard for me to think through things in my head, I really need that external processing in order to figure out how and why I’m feeling. Being a teacher is tough, and I’m probably going to need a lot of processing conversations. But as long as I keep myself connected with people who will help me, I’ll get through it a lot easier. Other ways I’ve found that help me recharge: sleeping enough, taking a break, going out in nature, acting silly, staying in contact with others who are going through the same things, and good conversations.

I’ve got some of the actions for becoming an excellent teacher learned, but others I have had relatively no experience. Because of my age, I did not realize that I am a role model in my community. Being the oldest child, I feel like I know I ought to act as though people are watching my actions, because my younger siblings are. It seems strange to make the transition though in the community from watching the role models to being the role models so soon. I need to remember to always carry myself in such a way that I wouldn’t be embarrassed for my colleagues, principal, or students to see me. Along with paying attention to how I generally act, I can become active in my community. I could volunteer at the Post, stay an active member of my home congregation, and take part in community betterment projects. In the summers, I could work with the program that teaches English to adults at the Goshen Public Library. Overall, I just need to find positive places to immerse myself. Being a positive role model is important to 21st-century teachers because of the lack of other positive role models in students’ lives. More and more students are living in broken homes where they’re not getting to see one of their parents in a positive role, the Hollywood stars and athletes are often being caught up in drugs or other scandals, and our political leaders are often branded as liars. Kids need to see real people doing something positive.

Being a good role model and becoming involved in my community is closely tied to another of the nine actions that I’ve had little experience with: joining an organization comprised of a diverse group of people. The school system I grew up in was very diverse, but because of my placement in the Gifted/Talented (G/T) program and Honors classes, my personal experience was pretty homogenous. The high school I was in is even more diverse now than it was two years ago when I was there, and that is a trend throughout the U.S. As a 21st-century teacher, it becomes very important that I understand the many cultures my students come from. By being a part of a group of people significantly different than myself, I’ll have the opportunity to learn about others’ cultures, lives, traditions and maybe even a bit of their language. Hopefully, this will help me in the classroom as I strive to make the curriculum multicultural.

The First Step:

I declared my major yesterday: English and Secondary Education. It was a good feeling, walking in and telling the secretary that I know what I want to do with my life. Without further ado, here we go. Welcome to my blog. My name is Lavonne Shetler, and I want to be a teacher when I grow up.