Building Trust

No teacher training prepared me for this day. Textbooks, theories, graduate classes, the NYC Teaching Fellowship, my instructors, student teaching, none of these ever mentioned this possibility. I would not have predicted this would or could happen in my classroom in my first year of teaching. On Friday, for the entire period, one my students taught the day’s lesson in eighth grade mathematics. She asked me last week if she could teach a lesson on percentages (“I got this.”), and I said yes, let’s talk about it. A few days later, she presented me a lesson plan with sample problems and she said she would even make copies of worksheets. The next day, she revised the lesson plan and showed it to me without any worksheets. I gave my approval and we agreed she would teach the class on Thursday. When Wednesday arrived, I let her know that our class may not be meeting on Thursday, due to an eighth grade assembly, and if so, she would teach on Friday.

I was a bit anxious on Thursday, not knowing if my student would follow through on Friday. In the first trimester of school, she had been a ring leader of mischief in the classroom, cursed at me when I turned my back to write on the chalkboard, and was responsible for spreading lies about me to her classmates. Last fall, on my first day of absence from school, the entire class had a meeting with the principal to complain about me and possibly get me fired. As vocal as she is, I’m certain she was actively involved in arranging that meeting. Two weeks ago, I gave her a detention for disrupting my class as well as taking away her lunch pass for chewing gum. Instead of giving me her current lunch pass, she gave me a bogus expired one from seventh grade! She is also now serving an in-school suspension for cutting out of school one period early.

You may be wondering why in the world I would give the chalk to my chalkboard to such a student. I was handing over the key to my fiefdom! I, too, was unsure, if I had made the right decision. Yet, I knew she had the math ability and untapped potential to do this. I didn’t want to squash a student’s enthusiasm and initiative. After all, how often would a student volunteer to teach a class? I also really couldn’t afford to give up a period of valuable teaching time. We are now three weeks away from the state Math test and I am in a crunch to squeeze in all the lessons my students need to be properly prepared. Yet, this was an opportunity. I had to think fast, on the spot, when she asked me if she could teach a lesson on percents. My gut reaction, my instincts said yes, yes – give her a chance to develop confidence, let her know you believe in her. Despite her history of behavioral problems, set that aside and focus on the academics.

I prepared a back-up lesson on polynomials and copied a bunch of worksheets just in case she had forgotten her responsiblity or had some kind of excuse. I didn’t know yet if I could really trust her. I also thought of more percentage work to do in case her lesson didn’t take all period and the class would be left with nothing to do. Nothing is more disconcerting to a teacher that a classroom of kids with nothing to do.

On Friday, the class filed in as usual. I asked my student if she was prepared to teach the day’s lesson and she said yes. The class was suprised that this particular student would be teaching the class for the day. Immediate protests shot out as well as offers to do the same. So I could check the homework, I had prepared the Do Now with a percentage problem. No one volunteered to put the problem on the board, except my day’s teacher. It had been clear to me they needed more clarification and work in percentages and now it was more apparent. I demonstrated the solution. Afterwards, I introduced my students as “Dr. Jeanette” our guest lecturer from the mathematics department of Harvard University who would be teaching us from her speciality, fractions, decimals and percentages. She looked suprised at my introduction and came up to the board with her notes.

I stood at the side and watched. In the beginning, I had to remind the class to be respectful as they heckled her (“You should be fired!”). Then I sat in the back of the classroom as a student. I was amused watching her teach a proportion and not get any response from the class and then grow increasingly frustrated as no one was following along the lesson (“You try standing up here and teaching!!”) I couldn’t help but laugh out loud and say, “Now you know how I feel!” She persisted in explaining the proportion until the kids started to get it. It was an odd feeling sitting in my seat silently, receiving, not speaking. Was she modeling me or would she mock me? I felt a transfer of power, a shift in the dynamics of student-teacher. I was no longer the center of my classroom. My students were the center. It was an uncomfortable feeling giving up the reins. Here we were like two flying trapeze artists, I, ready to catch my student but also, I ,willing to let go. We both had to trust each other. We were both vulnerable. She, exposed, at the board in front of the class and myself, stripped of my authority in the back of the classroom. And we were flying through the air! We had done it together! I watched as my student-teacher walked around the room to confer with the other students. I was so proud to watch “Dr. Jeanette” scaffold percentage problems. I began to see through her eyes as she wrote numbers and operation symbols slowly on the board in childlike handwriting that was comforting, familiar and unintimidating. I saw the disparity between us – my textbook top-down ways and hers and how I had much further to go to meet my kids halfway. A new feeling was arising in the classroom between us all – an openness, a mutual acceptance, a vulnerability… true empathy for each other. I was so proud when three students came up to the board to solve the percentage problems in a new, relaxed manner. We were putting ourselves out there, weaknesses and all. There was nowhere to hide and no reason to either. The three students at the board were about to explain how they did the problems when I had to announce, “Time is up!” They were having so much fun, they lost track of time.

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