A Teacher's Talk: Making a Difference in One Small School for At-Risk Teens

Thank you. Good afternoon. It truly is a great honor to speak with you today. I must admit that I am a very anxious public speaker. You would think that a teacher could speak at the drop of a hat; after all, I stand in front of my classes every day. But I do experience stage fright. Last September at my sister-in-law's 40th birthday, I stood up to read a short poem I had written for the occasion, and realized I hadn't prepared an introduction. My brain wanted to talk about my relationship with Lisa as an adult, from a different time-frame than my husband, but what came out was "I've known Lisa since before time." I almost swooned with embarrassment at my jumbled words.

But to talk to you as a teacher is even harder. And I've been thinking about what to say to you for the past 28 days. I've felt like T.S. Elliot's J. Alfred Prufrock:

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Why do I feel so uncertain? In part it's the difficulty of working within a culture that disrespects teachers. Many times I've heard these adages, "Those who can, do, those who can't, teach," or "Three reasons to be a teacher: June, July and August," from parents whose kids I teach, at cocktail parties from people reaching for conversation, on TV programs. Those people look at me and see an English major whose only job opportunity was teaching. I feel differently: Teaching is for those who can teach. Summers are just a perk that come with the territory.

So my revisions are created out of a frustration at my own ability to convey the significance of the work I do and have done as a high school English teacher for the past 13 years. My work changes lives—the lives of hurting children, the lives of worried parents, and even the lives of our employees. Teaching isn't a dead-end job from which to eek out a living, but is instead the place where I am able to pursue my interests in people and literature. I look back and see a straight and narrow road that I pursued following my interests from Dickinson to the present.

Dickinson developed my emerging passions for new friends, literature, feminism and working with teens. For starters, I met my future husband at a fraternity party. Richard and I didn't marry until six years later, but we've been together now for almost half my life—a shocking, but true statement. I formed other close friendships that have endured to this day. These friends have always supported my desire to teach. Some invited me into the Women's Center, where I was introduced to feminism—an ideology that changed my life permanently by changing my perspective, to see the world through a woman's eyes. But more to the point, at least career wise, while attending Dickinson I fell in love with literature. Now it's true, I've always been an avid reader, but at Dickinson I devoted unprecedented time to studying English, American, and French literature. One memory of college life that I cherish is a semester I read a novel a day, reading into the night long after my floor mates were sleeping. Read by night, discuss by day. Sometimes, when I decide to teach a text I studied at Dickinson, I still get out my old notes and read through them. And finally, throughout all my years as a college student I worked with teenagers—as a camp counselor for gifted and talented children, as a resident adviser for a freshman floor and as head resident adviser of Witwer Hall. Yes, teaching seemed an obvious choice for someone who loved books and teen-agers.

So, the day after graduation, I followed my heart from Dickinson to D.C., where I would be near Richard and in a metropolitan area full of private schools. The disadvantage of this path vs. teaching in a public school was a smaller salary, but I've always appreciated the lighter workload and the minimal politics. But first I needed shelter and funds to pay the rent. I temporarily found a room in a house, which I shared with three bachelors—friendly strangers, who worked odd jobs and who dipped tobacco. Kelly Services, a temp agency, provided fairly steady income while I searched for a teaching job. I bought a little yellow book, Independent School Guide for Washington, D.C. and Surrounding Area, and called every single high school listed. At night, surrounded by cups of dip spit growing mold, I typed letters to schools that had indicated openings in the English department.

I interviewed at a Christian school where I was asked the role Jesus Christ played in my life. I was interviewed by the father of a boy who went to the summer camp I worked at—"a mercy interview," he said. "I'm sure you need the practice." I drove three hours in the pouring rain to the Eastern Shore of Maryland to interview at a boarding school.

I landed a job at Mackin Catholic High School, an inner-city, all-boys school, in what turned out to be its last year of operation. I had stage fright every morning, but it evaporated in front of my raucous, friendly, challenging classes. I credit them for propelling me into a love of teaching.

The year I worked there The Washington Post metro section was following an unprecedented number of homicides in Washington D.C. At the end the year they published the names and circumstances of the violent deaths of more than 500 people. Many who sent their sons to Mackin were working-class parents hoping to give their children a chance to move ahead. Because I was only there for one year, I don't know much about all those who made it. I do know that my student Antonio Dinkins, from my very first class as a teacher, was on the list: stabbed to death at age 17. So I think it was with good reason that my students generally objected to my optimism and enthusiasm, but we worked hard together. When I look back on that year, I realize that it established the foundations for my approach in the classroom: Provide appropriate texts to read closely, emphasize skills, give and expect respect, make the classroom safe.

Near the end of that year something happened that I didn't understand until later. One of my five classes contained 30 seniors. They had long ago established who was cool and who was not. The butt of many of their jokes was a bow-tied boy named Rodney. In front of 29 of his peers, in a Catholic school, in my class, he came out of the closet. He stood at the front of the class and said, "Well, you've teased me for all these years, and I just want you to know for a fact that I am gay. I'll answer your questions, but I will not put up with your jokes anymore." His face was bright red. A few of his classmates fell out of their chairs laughing. One asked an obscene question. But he accomplished his goal. I had no forewarning of what was about to happen. I didn't know why he had chosen this time and place, but he did. I think Rodney found his voice in my classroom, because it was the safest place at the time.

When the Archdiocese merged four Catholic schools into one, I was out of a job. I found another teaching position, but not one that was right for me. I was feeling my principles squelched. By way of one small example, books I suggested for the summer reading list were rejected by my department head as "girls' books." Well, maybe it was time to teach some girls. I resigned after two years and interviewed at a school on a recommendation from a colleague, Dave Mullen, the newly hired headmaster of that school.

I've been there ever since, although I ended up working part time for the next eight years. Working part time gave me the space to earn my master's degree in American literature, and have three babies close together. My son, Jake, is 7, in the 2nd grade in public school. He's the "parent pleaser." Here's a letter he wrote to us last month in school: " Dear Mom and Dad, I love you and I alwis will. I wish I had mour time with you. I hav a lot of fun with you. I wunt to make you happy. Love Jake" Did you hear those bells? I heard working mother qualms chiming. Listen … "I wish I had more time with you." But I always silence those bells quickly for two reasons. First, I'm almost always home when Jake is not at school. We arrive home at the same time everyday, do homework, go rollerblading, play ball, cook dinner and/or go grocery shopping together. In fact he spends more time than he wants with me—it's his dad he's asking for here. But second, I need the working part of me. I feel like the worst kind of mother when I'm home all day with my kids. I'm frazzled by their incessant demands, stupefied by baby books, harried by the mess it all makes. The one piece of writing I ever had published was in the local newspaper titled, "The Isolation of the New Mother." I'm better when I can work, and then play—like I do with Jake after school this year and will do with both Jake and Kate next year.

Kate is my eldest daughter. She's 5, in an all-day Kindergarten program at NASA where Richard works. She's the "Mommy Needer." "Mama, mama, I need you, mama." But in part, I agree she needs more of me. She's caught between the older brother and younger sister. Jake gets to do everything first—ride a two-wheeler, learn to read, walk to school. And her own needs really were put on hold if the baby needed to be fed or changed or put down for a nap. When she was 2 she was a terrible sleeper. She'd climb into my bed after a nightmare and wrap herself around my neck like a boa constrictor. I finally had to get her a sleeping bag so she could sleep on the floor next to me, which she did for about a year. But her place has also compelled her to learn faster, work harder and discover the things she can proudly do first.

My youngest child Josephine is the most independent, and as a result does most things on her own terms. She's the "Parent Taunter." We draw a line. She steps near it, then on it, then over it, and finally throws a temper tantrum, her screams projecting her mantra: "You can't make me do it your way!"

I'll tell you, though, I never would have stopped having babies if Richard and I hadn't consciously decided that three was enough. Our babies were so cute, our children so interesting, the miracle so startling. It shocks me to remember myself in my late teens, certain I would never have children. I don't know if it's from lack of imagination or what, but virtually the only vision I have had of my future is that of an old grandmother rocking on the porch of this house in Maine. I realized that if I was going to be a grandmother, I needed to have children first. Fortunately, Richard has always had a clearer vision for his family. He found the time to propose to a woman who never felt ready for marriage. He was certain of his desire for children. And it's only because I never turned away from him that I find myself in the middle of this deeply loving and supportive partnership. When people ask how I can work and raise three children, it's only because they don't understand Richard's full impact on the person I am today.

Today, as the assistant head of The Nora School, I have the opportunity to be a mother, a teacher and an administrator. I am involved in every aspect of the school, from the lowliest task of ordering toilet paper, to writing the payroll, to resolving conflicts. I teach at least one course a year. And at three o'clock everyday, I go home to my family.

So it was 11 years ago that I started teaching at The Nora School, only back then it was called The Washington Ethical High School, or WEHS, for short. Actually the school has had four different names since its founding, but its mission has remained the same: "The Nora School is a small, progressive, private day school working with bright students who have found themselves frustrated in larger institutions. The Nora School offers a college preparatory curriculum and small classes in a relaxed, nurturing environment." Leon Eberhard founded the school in 1964. Originally, his idea was to find teachers with expertise in the working world to come teach a class or two in a more casual school setting. Today, The Nora School has mostly full-time teachers, but they are more likely to be experts in their fields as opposed to certified teachers. While employed there I have worked with teachers who had previous experiences as a radio journalist, a lawyer, a dentist, a musician, an editor, a published writer, an outward-bound camp leader, a NASA physicist and an art dealer who also is a successful ceramics artist.

When the school was called WEHS it operated from the basement of a gray concrete structure in the shape of a shoebox owned by the Washington Ethical Society. It had three classrooms. One was divided in half to make room for two classes. I taught either in the student lounge, the faculty room, or upstairs in the Main Hall. Why choose to teach there? I was attracted to the idea of teaching what we then referred to as "at-risk teens." That part of our mission statement which I read earlier: "… private day school working with bright students who have found themselves frustrated in larger institutions" used to read "working with at-risk teens" Let me tell you, bright but frustrated students are at risk for dropping out of school. They come to us with learning disabilities, diagnosed and undiagnosed, depression, clinical or symptomatic, histories of drug or alcohol abuse, suicide attempts, histories of school avoidance, struggles with being adopted, suffering from the death of a parent, struggling with issues of identity and sexuality. Many of our students feel damaged or broken in some way but want to be seen as normal or intentionally eccentric.

Teen-agers, in general, are on one hand, certain about how the world is and certain that they are the first to have discovered its "reality," but on the other hand, are exceedingly insecure about their place in it. At The Nora School, those teens who fit into traditional settings have already been weeded out. Our students bring in pockets of counter culture, trying hardest to stand out. One year we'll have a bunch of "Smurfs"—skateboarding, graffiti artists in baggy pants who are basically anti-intellectuals. Another year, or even at the same time, there will be a group of "Goths" who wear only black clothing, dye their hair black, wear black eyeliner—male and female alike—but who are super-intellectual. This year we have a group back into the punk scene of the '70s. They wear clothes purposefully ripped and then held together with dozens of safety pins and wear their hair in spiky Mohawks. In spite of their efforts to be exceedingly different, they get along well with each other. As a result of suddenly being thrust together, they, somewhat reluctantly, perceive that they're all in the same boat and tolerate each other well. In part it's because they choose to come to The Nora School. Admission is based on a student and parent interview. Every applicant attends classes with a host student for one morning. This quote is an excerpt from Josh Steinberg's speech when he graduated from WEHS in 1999:

When I traveled into the open doors of WEHS, it was the last of a series of alternative and private schools I had visited in search of a piece of destiny. It seemed that every school I visited wanted to enforce more rules and less freedom. I had lost all hope, and I was sure that with a name like Washington Ethical High School that I would not belong. But I decided to visit it anyway to entertain my parents who had faith in this alternative-learning environment. When I arrived at WEHS, the first thing I saw was a group of teen-agers congregated outside on the corner. They were running around, talking and laughing, giving high fives and everything else that I had secluded myself from for so long. When we drove by they all stopped what they were doing and looked at my father's car as it passed. They all had a look in their eyes like they knew something. But this was something I wanted to know. When I traveled into the open doors of WEHS for the first time, I was looking for a case of trophies or a security office or something else that you usually see when you walk into a high school. But the first thing I saw when I walked in this amazing structure was that Robert Frost poem on the door. I would later look around to see a vast array of pictures that dressed the walls of the main hallway. The walls were filled with photographs of the students and teachers having fun together; uncensored art and poetry enveloped my eyes as I saw pictures of airplanes and sky drawn by the students. I would later learn that these pictures were WEHS' trophies and they did not need security."

We foster this environment where differences are acceptable and hurtful words and actions are not.

The challenge is to engage these students academically and help them continue the work they and their families and doctors have already begun. It's a good trick, really, because we get the credit for their success. But, in all honesty, making a difference as an educator is less about changing one individual's life than it is about creating a positive community within which students and employees have the opportunity to do their best. Taking the pulse of a school is not just about the success of its students but also the morale of its teachers, and the appropriateness of the facility.

Here are some reasons why The Nora School works. Everyone is on a first name basis, which eliminates the authority factor of and sets us apart from more traditional schools. Class sizes are small, with a maximum of 12 students per class. In general, classes are divided by ability rather than by grade level. The class I taught this year had one senior, three juniors, three sophomores and a freshman. The staff meets weekly for several hours to discuss students and their progress. Generally, the focus is on the kids who are having problems academically or behaviorally, and we discuss ideas for what might help. But it's important, too, to look at what's working. We adjust our overall program as we see the need and have been able to make the program more academically rigorous without having to change the kind of student who seeks us out. Each teacher creates his or her classes according to his or her area of expertise. There is no predetermined curriculum. It develops as the teacher's tenure evolves. In addition to providing core courses required for graduation, The Nora School has a large art program for the size of our school, in part because our students are extremely creative and, in part, because art gives them an arena for success that doesn't require reading, writing or math.

Most of our students succeed at The Nora School beyond their initial expectations. Most years, 90-100 percent of seniors graduate, and 80-90 percent of graduates go on to college. But our parents credit us with other successes. Recently, I had a call from a parent. It was not unusual to hear from her, because she generally calls two or three times a week. She's the anxious parent of an extremely anxious ninth grader.

Last year, his first attempt at the ninth grade, he stopped going to school entirely. When he came for his interview, he was too scared to get out of the car, so his parents rescheduled a few months later. Granted, he is a rather weird kid. If I address him directly in class, he always responds, "Hunh?" and looks away. Always. If I ask him a question about the reading, it's "Hunh?." If I ask him to take out his book, he responds, "Hunh?" or about his weekend, "Hunh?" Any kind of social interaction makes him very nervous. In November we have a huge Thanksgiving feast we prepare and eat together. I found him in the computer room at the end of the day. He hadn't left the whole time, not even once the food was served. Three-quarters of the way through his second attempt at the ninth grade, he began coming to school everyday. He raised his hand to participate in class discussion. And, when his mom brought in a birthday cake, although he at first refused to look at or eat a piece of his own cake, his peers convinced him to see the cake before they devoured it. When he saw that they liked the cake, he even took a piece for himself. So the point is, his mom called me to say thank you. "If only you could have seen him last year," she says. "He's like a different person. Your school does what schools are supposed to. You got him engaged in his classes." Our student's needs are met because of the way the institution works as a whole. Yes, he's engaged in his classes, but if he's too afraid to enter the building, he doesn't have a chance at determining whether a class is interesting or not.

As an administrator, I have less responsibility in the classroom but more responsibility for morale and safety. Working at the old building was OK for the kids, because they saw it as an untraditional space. But it was a nightmare as a teacher. When we were accredited by the Middle States Association in the early '90s, one conclusion was clear. We needed a new space.

I am proud of the work I did to contribute to the construction of our new school building. I helped with the fundraising campaigns, the choice of location and finalizing its design. I helped choose the colors of the walls and carpet. I ordered every piece of furniture, wrestled with acquiring the necessary permits and got the phone service working for the first day of school in September 2000.

As a staff we were thrilled with our accomplishment. And even today, it's a pleasure to come to work every day in our own, bright building with a classroom for each teacher, science and computer laboratories and a huge art studio. And this year even the students like it. Last year, however, they made us as miserable as they felt about the change. They complained that we put in all those windows in order to keep a closer eye on them. They kicked holes in the walls, and clogged the toilets with whole rolls of toilet paper and the toilet-paper holder. Change is scary. Change is not safe, but it is necessary. We need to balance the needs of the community with the needs of the individual. Our mission statement ends, "We are a school which keeps pace with the students we have, and moves a little ahead of them. We take them from where they are and show them something beyond themselves."

Which brings me, finally, to Dani. Danielle Molliver is the first graduate to return to The Nora School as a teacher. She is an energetic and dynamic person. When she talks, the words, like dominos, fall out of her mouth so quickly they run on top of one another. But when I ask what brought her to WEHS, the only sounds that come out are broken, painful monosyllabic words: "My, uh, fam, lee, was uh break-ing, up." Dani came to WEHS for her senior year—from a school for the emotionally disturbed—my first year there. She graduated, went on to St. Lawrence College, then spent three years working in Peru. When she returned to the area, she dropped by WEHS. By a stroke of good luck for us, she worked on and off as a substitute teacher for the rest of the year, and by the end of it, we offered her a full-time position teaching Spanish and English. She is a great colleague but also such a tribute to the difference one year of school can make.

It's what Dickinson does too. It's why I'm here speaking to you. I know when you're in school, working with the best and the brightest, it's easy to lose the perspective of the larger world. You feel the urge to go further—graduate school, law school, more graduate school. There's a sense that you can't possibly know enough yet to be successful. Maybe if you knew more, you'd really know what you wanted to be. A liberal arts education hones critical thinking skills towards a lifelong love of learning. The possibilities for the future are infinite and reachable. The difficulty is finding a true calling. For some it takes time, and several attempts. For me it was immediate. If you want to teach, if you can teach, it's worth making the difference. At least, it has been for me.