Storytelling: A Ramble About My Head

Last night, at the local bar where we often hang out (it's part Jamaican restaurant too, with good Jerk Pork) Andrew & I got into a conversation with one of our friends about her daughter's school performance. This friend has some tough decisions to make, decisions that are similar in some ways to some choices my mom had to make when I was just about the little girl's age. In the process, we all threw in our opinions on child-rearing, the education system, discipline. Andrew & I have a little knowledge about some of the issues from having taken a bunch of education classes a few years ago in the process of thinking about him getting a Master's degree in educational administration and me looking to get certified to teach in Texas. Neither of us eventually went through with our teacher's plans (although I'll tell you we had big plans of opening our own charter school for a while). But we did read a lot about school law, and we learned a lot about the way schools work with the testing systems & failing kids & so-called "standards."

This friend of mine keeps wanting me to teach in elementary school. She keeps saying that I would be a great teacher (I always say I am a teacher already, but she thinks college is too late to help kids. I tell her it's not, but she doesn't believe me). I shudder to imagine teaching elementary school. There are plenty of kids I would be glad to teach, but for the most part, it is a thankless painful job with very little incentive for me to do it. I haven't spent all the time I've spent trying to get through the damn PhD to go back and do something I could have been doing years and years ago. I agree that we need better teachers (and that would begin by paying them better, but that's a totally different post). But I'm not cut out to be one of them; not at any level lower than high school. I would consider high school, by the way, but only in a progressive school where I did not have to argue with the sorts of people who are on school book committees who say "I've never read To Kill A Mockingbird but if it has those words in it, it ought to be banned." (which a local textbook committee person is supposed to have said.)

In the process of our discussion, Andrew and I told stories of our courtship-- some of which I've written here already, some of which I haven't. It was fun; he would tell part of the story, and then I'd chip in. Our friend listened with fascinated eyes. Then she told stories, and we moved along for a lot longer than I had intended to hang out. (They were having tequila shots; I had to make do with a bit of ice cream.)

Then this morning, with Andrew having a lately very rare day off, we got up, had breakfast, and watched Lean on Me-- that movie from the late 80s about principal Joe Clark's attempts to bring a school back from the edge of oblivion. I have to admit, in some ways stories like that are inspiring, but generally, the potential Joe Clark's of the world are far more often worn down by the system than not. Even the teacher who they told Dangerous Minds about eventually had to quit teaching.

If we, as a society, wanted better schools, we would get them. We can certainly get other things we want implemented, as our friend Robotnik laments about our society's great urge to TIVO everything. We can buy a TIVO and plenty of video games, but when we consider paying more for educators to have better salaries, or doing what it actually takes to get the kids in the schools working the way they should (and it would be tough, and dangerous, just as it was in the movie, by the way) we can't seem to get around to it. And I say "we" deliberately, because I definitely include myself in the problem.

I think that my method of teaching has been and always will be storytelling. I just need to figure out how to get my head wrapped around telling a different kind of story (the dissertation) and getting it done enough to get back in the classroom where I belong. That's how I can do even my own children the most good. It will happen. But Goddess, please, grant me the strength to do it soon!