"PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERS...ity bitty living space!"

Who is this a quote from? Genie from Disney's Aladin? Or, a classroom teacher. The Raywid article could be evidence of a comparison between the two.

The article begins by drawing our attention to the many ways in which a teacher may feel like a mere pawn in the game of educational chess. We move about the board with limited capabilities, constrained by our status and existing as the target of knights, bishops and the royal family known more commonly as principals, district curriculum coordinators, school boards and our students own families. How then can we avoid feeling “at risk” and without power ourselves.

Do educators therefore perform their daily routines with the mindset of powerless servants of others wishes or is there a means to feel our value more personally? Raywid draws attention to the fact that our real power lies in relation to the child. We are in fact a very important potential force in the present and future of each child we teach. We establish what kind of social environment we will create and tolerate in our classrooms.

I have a lot to think about as I go into my own classroom situation in regards to the use of this power. I am a big believer in demanding that everyone show respect and kindness to each person in the community. I don’t think that any form of unkindness or disrespect should be tolerated, but as Paley questions in the first half of her book, how exactly do you enforce this. This is unfortunately against the nature of some of us. I’ll be interested to read further and see how she discovers ways to make this work.

Raywid indicates that students often feel powerless in relation to the teacher. As a teacher, I want to be very approachable for the students. The article brings out the idea that students will reject learning from someone who they dislike or who they feel dislikes them. I know this is true from a high school experience I had with a teacher that seemed to dislike me. My response was to refuse to ask for help when I needed it and eventually drop the class. I think as a teacher I want to have a sense of authority, but also of camaraderie in each child’s process of learning, “We are in this thing together bud…follow me. I’ll help you find the path”. Teachers need to struggle together with their students, but they need to maintain their position as leader also.

I know we have done a lot of reading about using democratic process in the classroom as a way of teaching and training democratic thinking in the greater world. I can see having students be the designers of their constitution as being a great learning experience. I can also see how giving this power to them can help them buy in more to making it their own. It is also very positive for students to feel that they have a voice and learn to carry that voice into their adult lives and workplace.

The area that I need to sort through for my teaching, will be the balance of this concept with my belief that a respect for authority is also an important quality. In our democratic nation we have chosen by the will of the people to elect a set of leader representatives and a supreme authority to have ultimate control. I think that the pendulum has swung too far in the last 15 years towards a students feeling of too much power in the classroom. There is a significant lack of respect in the upper grades for the power of the teacher to have the right to lead and set expectations. I think this has been detrimental to the teacher student relationship and ultimately the outcome of success for all students.

We cannot crush our students with rules and regulations that seem to be arbitrary. No one responds well to leadership that seem outside of reason or just unnecessary. Maintaining order and developing a relationship where students are eager to work together to reach high expectations for group and personal goals is what I want to work toward in my classroom and sometimes this requires a leader who has the final authority.

Raywid suggests (pg.84) that teachers have an obligation to share their power. I would prefer to see this as teachers imbuing students with a sense of their own personal power and the way to use and express it in their position as learner. I don’t know of a democracy where everyone has equal authority in all things. There is a purpose for leadership in all levels of human interaction, from the family to the PTA to the Federal government of our nation and others.

That being said, I think that one of the other points of this article was a reminder that we do impact students lives in significant ways. We need to be very cautious about the ways in which we impact them for the ramifications can be far reaching. We are with our students a significant part of their waking hours. We can be a great inspiration to them as they watch our passion for reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. We can guide to attitudes of social equity. We can be the force in their lives that lets them know that they are “OK” and someone out there really does care.

We may not labor in luxurious corner offices. The plaque on our door may be on construction paper and written in crayon. We may be under the watchful eye and direction of parents and administrators alike, but in spite of this we do have a powerful role to play in relation to the impact we have on the children we teach every day. Most of us still remember long into adulthood the teachers who had significant impact on their lives.