Review: Real Talk for Real Teachers: Advice for Teachers…

By Faisal Bari

Rafe Esquith has taught elementary school children in a public school in Los Angeles for the last three decades. And he is still not only very sane, he is also brimming with enthusiasm for teaching and is looking for new things to do, new ways to reach his students, to motivate them, to make them grow intellectually and to make them into better human beings and citizens. Rafe is a rare phenomenon indeed. But one who can teach us, all humans, and not just the teachers, a lot about life, love and living.

Esquith’s rare quality has been recognised. He is the only teacher in the US to have received the President’s National Medal of the Arts. He has also been made a member of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth and has a host of other awards and acknowledgements of his excellence as a teacher. Real Talk for Real Teachers is his fourth book on teachers and teaching.

Teaching is not easy. Despite contrary beliefs, I have always found teaching to be rewarding but exhausting. Even a few hours of teaching, and I have only taught at the university level, leave me completely drained. The reward is the occasional and sometime more than occasional twinkle of understanding in the eyes of a few students or even one student. But it is hard work. Most people, many even amongst the teachers, think teaching is easy: it is just standing in front of a class and delivering a lecture. I guess the difference lies in how one teaches. And Rafe’s book brings that out clearly.

Rafe’s typical day starts at 5am and he is in his class by 6am. The school does not start till 8am, but some of Rafe’s students come early to work on areas and / or projects they need extra time or help with. And though school ends at 2.30pm, Rafe stays in class till 5pm to work with students on their extra projects, such as the Shakespeare play that his students stage every year and the music that is needed for the play. So, it is an 11-hour workday in class and Rafe has sustained this, with enthusiasm, for almost three decades. Talk of teaching being an easy profession!

Real Talk for Real Teachers is about advice to teachers: from novices to veterans. From how Rafe sets expectations for students, how he deals with discipline issues and / or deviations from expectations, how he deals with more difficult students, and caters to student diversity, in terms of level, ability and motivation, is very well documented and should give all teachers plenty to think about. But this is only one of the contributions that the book makes. The book is quite a primer for students, a source of inspiration and motivation for teachers, especially for those in need of a picker-upper, and it is a good take on what it is like to be a professional. The list above is not even close to being exhaustive.

Rafe’s 10 rules for Hobart Shakespeareans (he teaches at Hobart Elementary School) are a guide for students to grow with. Be nice, work hard and there are no shortcuts are the first few rules (I am leaving out the others for readers to find out for themselves). I cannot think of a better place to start with for elementary school children. And it is not Rafe’s way to drill these rules into children by using sticks and or by emotionally or otherwise blackmailing them. He expects them to live up to these. Those who do get to participate in a lot of extra activities on their own and with other children. Those who deviate and show they are not responsible enough to participate in other activities (trip to Washington, Shakespeare play, arts and crafts projects, learning musical instruments) have to mend their behaviour and thinking before they are allowed back in.

This does not mean Rafe is able to transform every student. There are always a few who do not bite. Rafe insists on doing his best with them, but he is fine with some students refusing to engage and benefit from learning opportunities available. Children come from very diverse backgrounds and a teacher and a school can only do that much to level the field for them. A teacher has to balance the needs of all her students in class and so there are limits to what she can do for each.

More than the challenges that are posed by difficult children or children with very diverse abilities and learning levels as they enter a class, it is the administration and the education bureaucracy that is the source of major challenges for teachers and for sustaining high levels of motivation for teaching. Rafe has some advice to deal with these issues too. When the administration cancels a trip, which had been planned months in advance, without a warning and due reason, when students / teachers are suddenly not allowed to access classes before or after school hours, and when lack of resources hampers good teaching, Rafe has some suggestions on what to do and how to get round some of these problems. Mostly it has to do with not banging one’s head against the administrative / bureaucratic wall and to find ways around it. The particular strategies might or might not be useful, but the general method should be of interest across schooling contexts.

It does take a village to raise a child. Rafe does not teach alone. To do all that he does with his students and for so many years, he has had to get a lot of help from a lot of people: musicians, actors, directors, photographers, lighting experts, lyrics writers, other teachers, and most importantly of all, his ex-students. Ex-students visit his class all the time. Some mentor students, others help in showing students what is possible even if they come from challenged backgrounds, and some even help with the day-to-day activities of his class. The key to involvement with Rafe’s class is commitment and professionalism. Professionals are on time, they take their work with utmost seriousness, and they espouse and practice some of the same virtues that Rafe has identified in his 10 rules for Room 56 (Rafe’s classroom).

It has been a long time since I was in grade 5. But reading Rafe’s book I wanted to go back and be a student in his class. A year with Rafe would have made me a very different person and, very likely, a much better, more efficient and more productive person. Even now, it has given me a lot of think about. I cannot think of a better reason to read him.

Real Talk for Real Teachers: Advice for Teachers from Rookies to Veterans: “No Retreat, No Surrender!”

By Rafe Esquith

Viking, New York

ISBN 0670014648

319pp.

From the Dawn, Books and Authors, Sunday June 29th, 2014

Truth and Trust

By Faisal Bari

THE government recently claimed that the economy of the country grew by 4.1pc, in GDP terms over the last year. Within a day or so of the announcement came counter claims, from various sources, saying that the government had ‘fudged’ the figures and that the growth was actually much less and more likely to be in the 3.5pc range. The counter claims seem credible and the questions raised about growth rates across various sectors that the government had claimed seem fairly well grounded.

The government projected a certain deficit in the recently announced budget and within a day or two there were news reports that the government had under reported the projected deficit by a substantial amount.

Government figures on inflation are routinely questioned. The claims of the Federal Bureau of Revenue pertaining to tax collection have been regularly debated and shown to be flawed or fudged. Hardly anyone believes government figures and pronouncements on poverty or for that matter any other statistic given by the government, whose pronouncements are always taken with a pinch of salt.

The same extends to state announcements on how many ‘terrorists’ or ‘suspected militants’ have been killed or arrested, how many of the missing people are or are not in state custody, and what the reason is for a certain state action.

The truth becomes a casualty when individuals or particular interests try to manipulate reality to suit their short-term objectives at the expense of the reputation of institutions. Trust and reputation, gained with difficulty and over time, are lost even if a single breach occurs: it takes a long time to develop a reputation for being honest, it takes one lie to lose it.

Sadly, all governments of the past and the current one, have felt it necessary to lie to the people of the country on one occasion or the other. Now we are in a position where it is, often, difficult to distinguish truth from falsehood and the level of trust, in almost everything that the state and its various organs do or say, is extremely low.

The latest episode, the tragic incident in Model Town, Lahore, that is still unfolding, is a case in point. The police are claiming there was due provocation, the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) claims otherwise. Evidence, in the form of media footage, whether of police brutality or of PML-N goons leading the police, gives another story. The police have not given a shred of credible evidence to support their case, whereas there seems to be plenty of evidence to suggest the excessive use of force.

The political high-ups continue to support the police, feign ignorance or try to hide behind a judicial inquiry. But their culpability is not too hard to establish. Is there a deputy inspector general or an inspector general of police who could have ordered such an action on his own? If that is possible the political high-ups should be fired for incompetence and poor governance.

While the state is claiming provocation and a just response, media footage has showed up the collaboration of state organs with PML-N party goons, and clear episodes of the use of excessive force (merciless beatings of injured people, of people arrested and being taken to police vehicles, of old people and women). And while the political leaders have claimed ignorance and said that they will await the findings of a judicial probe, the police have already gone ahead and registered FIRs against PAT workers and have been shown to be putting pressure on various other state organs (doctors at Jinnah Hospital) to tamper with the evidence.

Whether evidence is tampered with or not, whether the judicial commission is able to do its work or not, the neutrality of the entire state has been compromised. People do not expect the truth to become the basis for subsequent actions. PML-N supporters will continue to think the police was right and there was provocation. PAT and groups in sympathy with them will feel they were ‘taught a lesson’ by design. And the neutral citizen, if there is such a beast, will feel at a loss as he believes the ‘truth’ will never come out and his trust in the state will continue to plummet.

Those who are playing the short-term game — and politicians and governments (as opposed to the state) do that regularly — do not understand the cost that institutions have to bear for their short-term manipulations of the ‘truth’ and ‘evidence’. They try to get away with their actions but in the process institutions can be damaged beyond repair. Sadly, though the PML-N has itself suffered the consequence of institutional degradation in the past, it has learnt no lessons.

Whether it is manipulation of macroeconomic data, appointments to top offices (State Bank of Pakistan is a case in point) or manipulation of evidence to protect politicians, it is the same story again and again. And with every repetition the level of distrust becomes higher.

There was a time when judicial commissions were taken seriously and were thought to be a big deal — whether or not they were able to implement anything, they were taken to be good revealers of the evidence at least. Today, there are few in the country who expect the truth to come out from any state organ, inclusive of the judiciary.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has issued a long statement on the Model Town incident. The gist of the statement seems to be a plea for a ‘fair’ investigation and for the findings of that investigation to be shared with the people at large. But given recent and past history, is that likely? Truth became a casualty long ago, and trust in state organs could hardly be lower. And given the government’s record so far a change is unlikely.

From the Dawn, Friday June 20th, 2014

Learning to learn

By Faisal Bari
ENTER a school and within 10-15 minutes you can tell if it works or not — whether it is an exciting place where children learn and are keen to learn or if it’s just a space where children and teachers park themselves to spend five to six hours a day because they are required to.

Schools that work have a lot of energy: children and teachers are actively involved in learning; they exude the excitement of learning; they are involved in many activities that allow them to engage with their curricular material; there is a lot of extracurricular activity and the management of the school is purposeful. Schools that do not work or are just about functional lack this excitement and activity.

Over the last few months, I have had the opportunity to visit a significant number of schools, across different cities, private and public, low-cost and high-fee, and the difference in schools, irrespective of the fee level, determines, to a significant degree, how learning is proceeding in these schools. It is exciting to see children excited about learning.

In one of the schools, a grade 5 student wanted to have a conversation with me in English. She was so keen to show me her language skills that she kept tripping on her words in an effort to get them out quickly even as her mind was racing on to new things to say. I had to tell her to slow down as my mind worked a lot slower than hers. Full marks to those teachers, administrators and school managers/owners who make learning exciting and are able to impart valuable skills to the children.

But a few observations continue to bother me. They tend to be reinforced with every visit to a school and with every interaction with teachers, managers and owners. One is the narrowness of the skill set that our schools are giving to our children. Most of it is about language (with the focus on English), mathematics and ‘facts’ from science and history. But even within these subjects, the focus is very narrow eg, on some parts of history (Pakistan Studies, early Islam), some mathematical skills and some scientific concepts.

True, education must have a focus, but the narrowness, suggestive of the ‘teaching for examinations’ phenomena, even in the early grades, is worrisome. Children need to learn how to learn, they need to play with what they learn and they need to develop a critical attitude towards what is given to them. This is not possible if the content of our teaching is narrow in scope.

Narrowness of content encourages an uncritical attitude: teachers can develop the attitude that students have to ‘learn’ specifics come what may. But this is not what we want our children to learn. We want them to learn the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ too.

The narrowness of content, especially in subjects related to the social sciences, will have the unintended but negative consequences of producing relatively narrow-minded individuals. My interactions with students show that the only heroes they have are Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Muhammad Iqbal, and their knowledge of other religions, ethical systems, cultures, ways of being and traditions are not only inadequate, there is little or no understanding or awareness of the existence of such multiplicities.

We are also not teaching our children the skills of critical thinking they need to have. Rote learning allows almost anyone to regurgitate and reproduce whatever they have learnt, but learning can only be internalised if a child is and has been able to play with the material they have been learning.

Children need to be able to question the premises of what they are learning, they need to comprehend the application of content and they need to have a better understanding of the context of the material they are engaging with. This is as true of concepts from mathematics and science as it is for history and Islamiat.

In a grade 8 classroom, students were learning about triangles and how the sum of the angles of one triangle totals 180 degrees. I asked the students to tell me why this was so. They did not know the answer.

That is not important as in grade 8 they are not expected to. But they should be taught so that they are curious about the whys. If they are curious enough, they will automatically seek answers. For instance, in an Islamiat lesson where students were reading the translation of Surah Al-Asr I asked them as to why God swears by Asr at the beginning of the Surah.

Irrespective of subject, it is the ‘learning how to learn’ part that is a very important part of what we should be teaching.

Because of the narrowness of some of the content, and encouraged by this narrowness, there is an attitude that the content has to be ‘learnt’ and that it should not be questioned. Questioning is tantamount to undermining the legitimacy of the content as well as the process. In fact, questioning and playing with learning material is how learning happens and how the material is internalised.

In most interactions I have had with students and teachers, the narrowness of their approach to learning has been very noticeable. The goal of making students learn well is commendable but that should not imply forcing material down their throat.

From the Dawn, Pakistan, Friday June 6th, 2014.