2008 Call for Papers Winning Essay

RAY MONTOYA

The American International School of Muscat, Oman

I once had a prof who in the haze of a beer buzz confessed that in spite of his best effort to lay the foundation of a sound pedagogy, he suspected that most of his first year teachers, faced with the reality of the classroom, would inevitably lapse into teaching the way they were taught. Given the disassociated mediocrity of my own compulsory education, I argued that he need not worry, as I had nothing to fall back on. He smiled and replied, “Then you’ll be a good teacher.” At the time, it felt like one of those Kwai Chang Caine moments; you know, when David Carradine’s character snatches the pebble from the old Shaolin monk’s hand, or so I thought.

Cautiously self-assured, I fell into my first teaching assignment, an overcrowded middle school in Albuquerque’s south valley, rife with gang wannabes. Armed with a fatalistic ambivalence, I was quickly devoured. During the final difficult weeks of that school year, our regional superintendent, Ms Davenport, a tall, matronly, red head who could embrace an entire third grade, suddenly appeared in the back of my room. At the time, I think we were wading through the southern vernacular of To Kill a Mockingbird. She disappeared at some point in the lesson, but the next morning I found a note in my box that read: ‘I like the way you speak to children.’ The following year, clutching the tattered remnants of my whole language convictions, I was recruited by Ms Davenport, along with 40 others, all supposedly the best, brightest or in my case, naïve, to rejuvenate an urban elementary school, which during the Reagan years of welfare reform and cheap crack cocaine had spiraled into a state of apathetic decay.  

As teachers, sincerity is our most essential attribute and is most perceptible in the way we speak to children. Good teachers have a genuine quality to their voice—it is unscripted, authentic, truthful, yet tempered with humility.

We lost about a third of the staff that first year and about a third to attrition each year thereafter, but I dug in and persevered, keeping to small, simple tasks-reading to students who couldn’t or wouldn’t read, demanding at least one piece of writing each day and questioning everything along the way. The first thing I did right was to ingratiate myself with the neighborhood matriarchs — strict grandmas, not the cookie baking variety. These women, raising their second, sometimes third generation, were the ones who supported me when I kept sobbing boys, their nostrils plugged with green mucus, in from recess or after school to finish or re-do their work.

I soon came to realize that good teachers, like good parents, are consistent, never wavering, not so much defined by their methods as much as by the earnestness of the words and then of course, their follow-through. As teachers, sincerity is our most essential attribute and is most perceptible in the way we speak to children. Good teachers have a genuine quality to their voice-it is unscripted, authentic, truthful, yet tempered with humility. Even very young children can recognize this quality in a teacher, or conversely when it’s not there. Good teachers understand that real self-esteem, the kind that sustains us throughout life, is based on measurable success, and that compassion sometimes means being direct or taking a heart-wrenching stance. Good teachers understand that beyond methodology, beyond mission statements, beyond standards and benchmarks, teaching is first and foremost a human endeavor. As much as we try to make order of it, to dissect and diagram its success, the process and application remains unpredictable, and even on the best days, subject to unforeseeable conditions and circumstance. I’ve come to believe that good teaching habits will inevitably emerge from receptivity, empathy, and that unending, sometimes nagging element of self-doubt that we’re just not getting through. Whether we are employing the latest methodology is somewhat superfluous to the learning relationship. Why? Because when you break it down to its fundamental core, sound teaching and authentic learning is the result of a human connection.

Teaching is first and foremost a human endeavor. . . When you break it down to its fundamental core, sound teaching and authentic learning is the result of a human connection.

Twenty-five years later, I find myself on the other side of the world in what seems like many lifetimes removed. Anyone who’s been in this profession a while has seen methods, standards and benchmarks continually recycled. But through all this, the human element remains distinctive and indefinable. This is what sustains my enthusiasm for teaching, regardless of what or where I teach. My international students may be more sophisticated and affluent, but nonetheless, in the words of Atticus Finch, “Children are children, they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em.” So I’ll continue to speak and teach openly and from the heart; after all, I have nothing else to fall back on.