Teaching Hope: Engagement

This chapter had a few characteristics that perplexed me. Of course, let me first say that I'm glad to see that we're moving into that portion of the book where at least a quarter of the testimonies are not heavy with descriptions of children in the midst of despair, death, and broken homes. The interesting things that I saw linking all of these stories together were race and a startling variance in teacher intervention.

Nearly all of the stories had to do with the students in focus trying to overcome racial stereotypes, something that I, as a Mainer and a student who has never been in a school with more than maybe 1% of a minority presence, have a hard time visualizing and identifying with. I understand that these issues exist, and I know the struggle that all of these characters must be going through in the midst of it all, but I feel as though this chapter was full of more those kind of issues that need to be experienced rather than relayed. My attitude on the chapter's effectiveness (i.e. in being a tool for beginning teachers) is that some of the stories are very specific in their situations to be of much help. I ended up asking myself, what can I take away from this? since the very first entry all I've seen is an abundance of ignorance in every community that these teachers seem to be working in.

This sentiment ties in with my other observation, which is that some of the teachers in these stories didn't seem to bring all that much to the table when faced with a pressing issue, a few teachers were spot-on in their reasoning and juggling of life lessons, and then there were those testimonies that made me wonder why in the world some of these people were getting so caught up in the issues of their students. Some examples would be, respectively: The teacher who had a student with defiantly racist views, the teacher whose student was rejected from the school play, and the author of that feverish and obscure retelling of an irresponsible trip to the American/Canadian border crossing.

While I can read these stories and make up my own ideas about why the teachers might be dealing with these issues in the ways they have, I have to keep in mind that I have not had a steady teaching job, nor have I ever gotten a chance to form a serious, trusting relationship with any students. This must be one of those issues that is so hard to judge for someone in my position, since I'm not currently teaching in Appalachia, I don't have any Hispanic students, and I will never ever put myself at risk of incarceration for any of my students. Most of all, I do believe that the issues in the chapter simply defy standard practice and rational explanations, so who am I to second-guess these teachers?