The school year is wrapping up to a sure, but steady close. It’s evident through attendance, the water balloons, the impending yearbook arrival, and the amount of movies being shown in classrooms throughout the building. At this time each year, I find myself extremely reflective about my teaching and my students’ learning.
This year, my fourth in the classroom, ends with added bittersweetness and question. This is my senior year, and the students graduating have been with me the duration. I understand now why my high school Spanish teacher refused to attend the year end activities. It’s strange to know they leave, and they really do leave. So while the group of students I have been closest to make ready their exit, changes are afoot. Jobs are going to be lost. The school will look and feel so differently next year. And with the changes, curriculum, of course, will be affected.
While nothing is ever certain, and changes happen on a moment’s notice, my electives will be gone. The concept of electives is quite different at my neighborhood school. If mine are any indicator, as I believe they are, they have among the highest failure rate. Student motivation in a non-required class is low. I’m not sure I can even guess the number of times I hear, especially of late, a student say, “I don’t even need this class.” It shows. They don’t see any need of it.
With that, they will disappear. The students and the system agree. They aren’t needed. Never mind the course of the curriculum, the integration of content areas, the higher order thinking, the independence given, the new ideas introduced. The way in which we deem success in this current system – through assessment, sorry, make that formalized assessment – shows these classes as expendable. Some might even say worthless.
So, in hopes of redeeming my own teaching spirit and motivation, I turn to reflect on what they have gotten out of my film studies and multimedia art classes. If only to reassure myself that, although I know I should’ve played the game better, something meaningful happened. Right now, my class is watching a film in Japanese, with subtitles, and this is something like the sixth film in a foreign language they have seen. Almost all of the students had not experienced that before, and while the surface of that experience might not change the course of their learned lives, I like to believe it opens them a bit more to tolerance…among other, grander goals.
The big goals of my curricula have always been to give students skills and knowledge to be able to live more wide-awake – Greene’s term that I always return to. I want to show them there are different planes of existence, and that naming, questioning, and making connections in our worlds can lead to transformations. I believe this, and it is an essential thread through all the discussion about social justice education. But it’s so hard to see, especially when the evidence of learning – the projects, the papers, the dialogues – are not there. So what evidence do I have? Because it’s hard to believe (and depressing as hell) to think that after 40-something weeks spent with 120 students, none of my goals were reached.
They’re watching the film. They didn’t complain (this time) about the subtitles. They tell me ideas about projects, even if they never manifest. They return after graduation to talk about art. Other students ask me what I am teaching next year, because they heard my classes are cool.
And my reply…”Well, Art I, if you still need it for graduation. I think the electives are gone. But thanks.”
