Just as I have had workouts where I could literally feel my body changing and growing stronger, so too could I sense emotional and academic growth this past Friday when my school's fifth grade went on a field trip to Real Art Ways in Hartford to watch two documentaries designed for young people about the Civil Rights movement.
One of my greatest honors as a teacher is to witness students of all levels find success, growth, and positive identities as students while in my classroom. I have sought to expose my students to interesting and thought provoking content and challenge their existing beliefs and abilities in an affirmative (and sometimes humorous) manner to foster growth not just as students, but as human beings. Such a moment occurred at the movie theater when students personally witnessed the heroism that confronted the cold reality of the Civil Rights movement.
I have always had a deep and growing appreciation and appetite for history and uncovering the mistakes and triumphs of the past. Perhaps this was due to the mutual appreciation I have had with the elderly, my interest in current events inspired by my family, or my warped perception that I was obliged to live up to the ideals set by historical leaders that I would later learn they didn't always adhere to. But I have found that history, and my enthusiasm for teaching it, serves as a conduit for student growth that no review for upcoming standardized testing can create. There is only so far the mastery of the implementation of the comma or estimation will stretch one’s imagination or soul. Things get boring, and creativity gets stifled for everyone.
In recent weeks, I balanced out test preparations with a unique lens into the Civil Rights movement. While time nor the attention span of a ten year old would afford me the opportunity to cover the entire Civil Rights movement, I chose to enter the period via a study of the carpooling system Dr. Martin Luther King and his advisers developed to help the Montgomery bus boycott succeed. After reading excerpts from the book “Freedom Marchers”, I had my students put themselves in the shoes of African Americans and debate whether they would have donated their own cars, or walked through the rain, risked their own lives, or have been able to convince the rest of their community to make the needed sacrifices to force and sustain equality. Students took their assignments quite seriously, asked great questions, and developed great admiration for the leaders we encountered.
Our study entered a unique phase Friday with our field trip into Hartford. As the school bus drove my suburban students into a Hartford neighborhood and artsy theater no one had ever attended, I could sense students were intrigued and no longer as interested in trivial distractions. The documentary within a unique setting served to breath life into our studies and suddenly the boycott and carpooling system seemed more real even to me. African American music from the 1960’s, real footage, and contemporary interviews with people who participated in this movement from both the black and white perspective were incredibly powerful. The vivid sight of MLK rising for the first time in his church to offer leadership to his people in their moment of need made him more real to me than ever before. My students, who were asked by the theater to take notes, actually filled pages and reacted maturely throughout the film. Not once did I or my colleagues have to ask any student to behave or sit down and almost every student wanted to participate in the discussions led by the theater’s educational representative.
Later in the day, during a discussion about the film in my classroom, many questions were asked that showed tremendous understanding and interest in the films. There was one question, however, that was most remarkable as it linked the student's own conscious to history and the personalities and social forces that drive it in a manner I used to try and engage an understanding of the Holocaust when I was her age:
Mr. B, do you think that most of us would have acted like the whites in the film and have been so cruel to the black people if we lived back then?
My most immediate response was to say it is important as historians to view history and its participants through an unbiased lens, that we are all products of our times. Our founding fathers owned slaves, JFK brought us into Vietnam, and Ronald Reagan enhanced our nuclear arsenal to deter the Soviets. At the same time, I pointed out that there were a number of white people shown in the film that supported the Civil Rights movement and fought against the hatred and racism that surrounded them. I explained that society changes slowly, and invoked the importance Bill Cosby, who we had read about earlier, played by being one of the first successful African Americans on television.
As the conversation played itself out, I extended the question: Just as we can’t help but be perplexed by the behavior of Southern society at that time, how might people of the future look at our behavior? Do we sometimes act in ways we don’t want to just to fit in? Do we always recycle? What is our carbon footprint? Do we waste food? Is today’s society truly equal? Is our own school truly integrated? What would Dr. Martin Luther King be proud of if he were alive today? What would he urge us to change?
My strength or interest in being a teacher is not being the disciplinarian I sometimes need to be, or teaching the specified skill set mandated by the government so that the “quality” of my teaching can be lined up as a set of data points with the other elementary schools across town or the state. My goal is for students to appreciate where they have come from, to make the right decisions, and maybe, dare I say....feel like we owe something to the leaders who have come before us to carry on their legacy. And if we do that, maybe, just maybe, we grow up, take our learning a bit more seriously, and over time our ability to retain the boring information gets just a little bit easier. I look forward to seeing this growth continue throughout the rest of the school year.
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