For many middle school teachers, the first day of school is the most exciting. It is a time to get to know all of the new students and explain what the year’s curriculum will be like. My interviewee, Mrs. Callister, says that she thoroughly enjoys getting to know her students through an old fashioned method of introduction. Everybody stands up, introduces themselves, and expresses one fact about themselves that they would like everybody to know. This can be a hobby they enjoy or a strange food that they love; it does not matter to Mrs. Callister as long as it is something that expresses who the student is. She understands that middle school students are not the most expressive or comfortable people. To loosen things up she often begins by introducing herself and expressing her love of silly wigs around Halloween, or her hobby of building model dinosaurs.
Her passion continued as she aged. Through school she had good teachers, as well as bad. The good teachers showed her exactly how she wanted to be when she reached her goal. Many shaped who she is today. The bad teachers did not deter her, but instead showed her how to avoid becoming jaded and mean. Teaching looked like a difficult profession, depending on how you approached it. “I decided early that I would approach it the right way, by appreciating my students,” Mrs. Callister said.
The setup at Mrs. Callister’s middle school dictates that she only teaches two subjects: social studies and English. She is qualified to teach others. Her best lesson, in her opinion, is English. It covers the most material, and she believes the students benefit the most from it because it encompasses critical thinking as well as many philosophical views that “enlighten younger minds, allowing them to expand their thinking later on,” as Mrs. Callister says it. She prefers her brief sections on poetry, where she allows the students to write reports on their interpretations of the poetry. There are no wrong answers in this section of the class, as long as the students demonstrate reasonable thinking behind their interpretations. Looking for deeper meaning in the author’s writing is very important to the curriculum Mrs. Callister has designed. Her learning goals are simple; she insists that the students have fun and realize that learning can take place outside of the classroom as well, which is why she assigns summer reading lists for her incoming students.
“I try to be open and honest with my students. They are trying to grow into themselves; it will do my no good to patronize them or treat them as children. They would probably revolt against me!” said Mrs. Callister, regarding how she maintains a rapport with her students. She tries to keep lines of communication open. First and foremost she is a teacher, but she also tries to lend her ear as a trusted adult that the students can come to. Somehow she has managed to find the fine line many adults miss: she is respected as an authority figure but trusted as a friend by her students. She believes she has done this by creating a classroom built on trust and fairness. However, not all of her students have seen her as a fair and trusted adult figure. One student in particular, whom she kept anonymous for confidentiality purposes, was a continuous discipline problem. He was unresponsive to her untraditional discipline methods, as well as the traditional discipline methods of the other teachers. He seemed disruptive in all of his classes. When discipline was administered by Mrs. Callister, the student insisted that the trouble caused was somebody else’s fault, or that Mrs. Callister was unreasonable. Mrs. Callister was sure there was more to this student that just a disruptive nature so she began to take the time getting to know him. He was forced to spend many lunch hours in her classroom, cleaning under desks, dusting, and other cleaning chores. Through casual conversation, she was able to gain his trust and eventually learn that his home life was troubled; he was acting out in school, as a result. It may have been for attention or a cry for help but regardless, this is when she realized what one of her greatest responsibilities was like a teacher. “I know I have a responsibility to educate, but they are with me several hours a day, I also have a responsibility to know them and keep them safe. In a way, they are like my children, as well. We educate them, we prepare them; and when parents are negligent, as the parents of that boy, we raise them too.”
