Robbie Johnston

TFA Sacramento Year Two

Who I am and how it relates to why I teach
Ive mulled around the idea of teaching for most of my conscious life because Im
in love with learning and always will be. I think I decided that at the age of ten. But I
never wanted to be a teacher because it was obvious to me that teaching was thankless
work that paid talented individuals one-quarter of what they deserved. I was always a
good student one of the best in each class and I often felt sorry for the treatment my
teachers were getting at the hands of their students. Why would anyone want to
become a teacher? Im going to be a professor, where I can teach only people who want
to be there, I decided.
But the more I learned about teaching, and what professors do (which seems to
be mostly research) and what elementary teachers do (actually interacting with
students), the more I realized that maybe I didnt want to teach at a university or
college.
I wanted to teach kids after all.
In a nutshell, I wanted to become a teacher because I love learning, I love
students, and I love teaching. Im not sure why Im here on this earth, I dont have many
specific goals that I HAVE to take care of before I die, and Im hopelessly moderate, but I
know that enjoying your work is very important. You spend most of your life working, so
youd better pick an activity you like. I like teaching, I like playing games, and I like
watching students light up when they understand how to solve a math problem. I enjoy
learning from them as well. Before I started, I never really thought about what
demographics that I wanted to work with, if I wanted to teach in a small country town,
or a big inner-city district. I just wanted to teach students something, somewhere,
forever.
As of why I got interested in Urban Schooling? An accident! I hate doing
something if I cant be good at doing it. I just picked UCLA for my credentialing program
because it has a reputation as one of the best education programs in the country, and I
wanted to have all the possible tools to be one of the best teachers around. UCLA just
happens to be focused on Urban Schooling. Thats how I got into Urban Schooling.
I know that sounds sad, but thats how I began working in inner-city schools.
Nothing terribly lofty or admirable about it. However, since I began at UCLA five years
ago, my attitude toward teaching and my future in education has changed quite a bit.
I was talking with a teacher who works in level fourteen group homes recently. A
level fourteen group home is a live-in facility for Emotionally Disturbed boys and girls
who have such violent or disruptive behaviors that theyve struggled in other traditional
placements, or such as lower-level group homes or foster care. I worked in a few as a
counselor before I started at UCLA. Anyways, this teacher told me that he once tried to
teach in a quiet, affluent, middle class school at one point, but quit after one year. I
asked him why, and he shrugged. Those students didnt need me, he told me. They
could learn the content that I was trying to teach from anyone a book, even. I wanted
to go and teach somewhere that they need me.
I guess I want to be a teacher in a place where students need me, too. And those
places are public urban schools - the kind of schools that really, really need effective
teachers. Im pretty sure Im not an effective teacher yet, but I know that someday, I can
be. My parents taught me that I can be absolutely anything that I want to be. All you
have to do is work hard in school and all the doors will stay open. I believed it, and I still
do.
Of course, those doors opened pretty easily for me. I dont come from the same
background as my students - Im the whitest, male-est, middle class-est dude you could
imagine. I come from a background where I dont have to worry about being hungry. I
always had decent clothes to wear. My parents gave me a car, a clunker, but they gave
me one, when I turned sixteen. I was always fully supported and encouraged by great
teachers in well-funded schools.
I think its for that reason Im not all that proud of graduating from a prestigious
university. The deck was pretty stacked in my favor. I just put one foot in front of the
other, and suddenly I was graduating from UCSD a really good school. My only friends
at UCSD were White or Asian-American. I didnt have any Black or Latino friends at all I
think less than 10 percent of the student body was comprised of those minorities.
I guess its hard for me to talk about race because I grew up in a place with only
one race - Nevada County is the whitest county in California. I also have trouble talking
about culture, because it seemed like everyone I knew growing up had the same cultural
values as me. Race and culture were just not ideas I thought about. Im also not
religious, and my family was never a part of any major community organizations, so I
never felt much of a sense of community. So I guess those UCLA social justice
conversations always made me uncomfortable, because I knew that I knew nothing
about race, about culture, about religious community.
So in a lot of ways, I have no personal connection to what a lot of my current
students are going through. Well, maybe I do, but on the other side of the equation.
There was one day that I was riding my bike with a few of my friends - I think I was
around 12 years old. We rode up to a bike shop and were looking at an amazing looking
new bike in the window when I mentioned, Man I want that one. My friend Matt
looked at me with sudden bitterness in his eyes and said Sure, why not? It shouldnt be
a problem with all the money your dad makes. I was stunned my dad was a doctor,
but I never really considered myself spoiled or having access to a lot. The bike I was
riding was a hand-me-down from a cousin of mine. I looked around my group of friends
for support, but they all awkwardly looked away, or one or two even gave me a bitter
look, too. They all rode off, and finally I mustered up the courage to ride on after them.
Im pretty sure thats being the Kid with the Bike is often to make my job, as an
aspiring fantastic inner-city teacher, a bit harder. What can I do to confront these
circumstances as a social justice educator? I can present myself to my students as a
student of their culture, of their needs, of their interests. I can ask questions that show
that I dont come from their backgrounds, but Id like to learn more about them. I can
concede that I come from a culture of privilege, but that I come from a place of knowing
how to get to the top of College Mountain, and that I can show them how to get there,
too. Five years into my urban teaching career, Ive learned a lot about African American
and Latino communities, but I still have a LOT to learn.

Working For Social Justice and My Vision for my Classroom

For me, teaching for social justice is fancying oneself a great teacher who could
get a job teaching at an elite private school, but chooses to teach in an inner city school
instead. Defining what a great teacher is can never be done in a way that will be
pleasing to everyone, but to me its someone who is caring and engaging, someone who
can figure out what skills their students need to make it to good colleges or strong
positions in the workforce, and can effectively teach these skills. Social justice is
knowing that you are that person, and working for inner city schools.
As I wrote above, I grew up in Nevada City, California, in a rich community with
supportive parents and creative, fun teachers. I looked forward to school, I listened to
my teachers, I eagerly did my homework because school was fun I didnt have to think
twice about working hard, it was just what I wanted to do.
This strength of mine that I did all my homework with zeal because I loved learning
- was largely because I was the product of a joyful learning environment. I do not believe
this is a right reserved for Americas wealthy citizens, which informs my goals as a social
justice educator. I seek to transform a tiny part of a few low socio-economic
communities through education, and I believe that the way to do this is by creating the
same kind of joyful, fun learning environment that was in my classroom that I had
growing up.
Over my 4.5 years both student teaching and full-time teaching at 6 different
schools, I spent a lot of time in urban elementary school environments, watching
teachers force joyless lessons down their students throats, and then watched the same
teachers complain that their students dont do their homework. Well, of course they
dont do their homework, I think. They hate the material, and they might hate you.
This was my mantra from the end of my student teaching days onward I was
determined to bring the J factor into a rigorous, high-performing classroom. When my
first year of teaching started, I went a little too far in the direction of trying to be a fun
educator who doesnt yell my class had so little structure and discipline that it
developed into a place where very little learning was taking place at all. After a few
months of being frustrated by this, I became more and more like one of the Yelling
teachers that I despised during my student teaching days. I started raising my voice on
occasion; I started acting a little mean here and there if my students were getting too
chaotic to teach. I started viewing classroom management as a reactionary skill.
I remember that I told my first principal that when it came to classroom
management that the most effective strategy is to plan really engaging lessons. When
your students arent engaged in your lesson, then youre roaming around your
classroom putting out fires, and youve already lost, I told her. It was a good answer
then, and its a good answer now but its something I lost sight of during my first two
years teaching. During those tough first years, I started to feel out of control in my
classroom, so I started doing what seemed to be working for a few of the other teachers
raising my voice and acting mean on occasion. Id gotten so wrapped up in finding the
perfect way to control my class that I had lost sight of a few of my previous goals as a
social justice educator to bring an engaging learning experience to students of low
socio-economic status.
But I dont think that I can 100 percent the sort of fun teacher that I envisioned
while I was a student teacher, and thats the main way that my understanding of social
justice has been developing that I cant just give my students the sort of wacky, fun
teacher that I would have liked as a fourth grade teacher. I have to give them the firm
sort of structure that THEY seem to need from their teacher, but I also need to find a
way to work fun Mr. Johnston into the equation.
Im now calling this balance silly/strict and its the basis for what kind of
teacher I want to be, and what kind of classroom I want to teach in. Students work hard,
but laugh a lot. Students learn to think critically, but play games while doing it. Students
look forward to my class, but describe me as strict. Students can go from smiling ear-to-
ear to quietly taking notes in a heartbeat. Students will learn the skills they need to be
successful in college or the workforce, but will have a great time doing so.
There are a number of ways to go into further detail on this goal, but Ill address two
aspects of it here. My goals as a social justice educator are that I want to make learning
engaging for urban students, and I want to create a stable environment where my
children can thrive without losing that fun aspect of learning.
In Jay Matthews 2009 book about the rise of the amazing KIPP charter schools,
Work Hard, Be Nice, he interviews Harriet Ball about her Fearless Learning Theory. The
whole point, Ball says, is to make the classroom vibrant, fun, and interesting for your
students and for you. A teacher who does not enjoy teaching is going to make a mess of
it (p.33). Students are more inclined to do anything if they find it to be more
interesting, and the best way to get a student interested in something is to use methods
that I, as a teacher, am interested in. The worst lessons that Ive ever taught as those
that I dont find to be interesting, because you can be the best actor in the world, but
your students will see right through you if youre not excited about the lessons that you
teach. In Fearless Learning (1993), Ball emphasizes chants and songs for almost all route
memorization. Say David Levin, founder of KIPP,
Ball was a whirlwind. She laughed and sang, and scolded
when necessary, but so quickly and with such rapid
changes of tone that I had to listen carefully to catch every
word. She played her students like an orchestra. With her
nod, the fourth graders would begin a musical chant,
something that sounded like the multiplication tables.
With her raised hand, they would snap back into silence
(p. 31).
Her students paid attention not because Bell scolded when necessary, but
because she was a whirlwind, a spinning, exciting focus point to get students fired up
about learning. Students that love school dont have attendance problems, they do their
homework, they learn the material, they pay attention, and they dont disrupt class. Its
an extremely effective theory in getting urban children to succeed.
However, all the fun and games means nothing if I cant provide it to my
students in a rigorous, content-based learning environment. Many of our students come
from backgrounds without much structure, and to be successful students, they need
structure in the classroom. Alex Kajitani, in the book Conversations with Americas Best
Teachers (2010), wrote:
I think the key to classroom discipline is preventing
problems from happening long before they could
developI use James Wilson and George Kellings Broken
Windows Theory Crime is the inevitable result of
disorder. Thus, someone who sees chaos, and sees a
system that deals with criminals ineffectively, is more
likely to commit a crime himself (p.16).
I will use Constructivist practices in creating a firm, structured learning environment,
complete with explicit rules for expected behavior, and quick, firm action every time
one of the classroom rules is broken. Its fine to have fun at all times during the day at
school, but there needs to be firm footing, rigorous content and structure behind every
game I play.
Teaching in a low SES school and providing engaging, interesting, fun lessons
with a strict, procedure-filled structure around them - thats what social justice means
to me.