Book Review: A Teacher’s Tale by John Thompson
Every so often, I will pick up a book that illuminates my own experiences, opens my eyes to the truth behind those events, and often helps me put a name to whatever I have been muddling through on my own. Oklahoma City educator John Thompson has written one such book.
Prior to downloading the Kindle version of A Teacher’ s Tale: Learning, Loving, and Listening To Our Kids on a Saturday evening, I’d followed Mr. Thompson’s writings in theHuffington Post, Scholastic Administrator, and Diane Ravitch’s blog. I had an opportunity to meet him at a workshop or event once, and we follow each other on Twitter. All that said, I had not really had a chance to delve into his teaching philosophy until a review of his new bookshowed up on my Facebook news feed.
The review including the following snippet from his book:
I was never a hat-snatcher. I did not believe in grabbing students’ contraband, whether it was hats, cell phones, marijuana, or gambling proceeds. So how did I find myself firmly holding half of a gang leader’s hat, ignoring the teenager’s threatening look?
I have been in the same boat a few times. I do not consider myself authoritarian, but yet I’ve had to take on that role in my classroom in order to maintain a semblance of order. My vision of teaching includes constructivist, project-based learning in which the students revel in the process of creating authentic learning artifacts, discovering truths about themselves and others, and mastering the skills they need to be effective communicators in our ever-changing world. Yet, I have had to take on a role of disciplinarian that I’m most uncomfortable with, particularly when students (and sometimes their parents) don’t appreciate that I’m trying to help them become the people they are capable of being, to reach the dreams they tell me about in their first-week-of-school writing exercises.
This has been true whether I’ve taught in a rural high school with a 35 percent poverty rate (based on free/reduced lunch eligibility), a racially diverse suburban middle school with a 85 percent poverty rate, a rural middle school with a 74 percent poverty rate, or a rural high school with a 64 percent poverty rate.
Over the years, I’ve struggled with the pedagogical dichotomy between the supportive teaching philosophy I aspire to, and the realities of managing 25 to 30 teenagers in a classroom during 7th hour. My ideas have worked in some schools, where principals Book Review: A Teacher’s Tale by John Thompson:
