Make some noise and make a difference

I hate a quiet classroom. I love laughter and noise.

I think if I had a dollar for every time a colleague shut my classroom door, I could retire by now. Early on in my career, I understand the noise wasn’t always positive. When you first start teaching teenagers, it’s going to be a little rowdy. If I ended class early, they’d talk “too loudly” some would say. One colleague, a friend I still admire, even moved classrooms to get away from me, I’m convinced. My classes were pretty rowdy. There were moments when I humorously screamed to get their attention, threw chairs across the room, or even jumped on desks. Face to face teaching, I believe, requires a performance.

A few years later, I sat down to talk with my high school principal about a variety of topics. One was noise.

“Don’t you think some of our classrooms are too quiet?” I asked.

“Way too quiet,” he said.

I knew I liked him. If all we are doing as teachers is forcing kids to shut up, read, write, take this test, be quiet and listen to my lecture, etc, then students could learn everything they need online. They don’t need a classroom full of other students; they need somewhere where they can sit quietly and be undisturbed and do their work.

How boring.

Students should share ideas, speak freely, even engage in the occasional heated debate. And they should be laughing because real teaching and learning should bring joy, and laughter is a consequence of joy.

Last week, a college colleague very politely stuck his head in and asked if he could shut my door. “Of course,” I said. I typically do shut my door, but we have a new security system at the college, and all doors are now locked when shut. So if I’m missing a few students, I tend to keep the door open in case they are running late.

I smiled when I was asked to the shut the door though. You see, my students were laughing too loudly. That thought made me smile even more.

Sure, I have some classes that look like they are in misery. I call them out for that. “Don’t you think learning should be a joy? If you’re enjoying what you are learning, let me see it on your face. If you’re not enjoying it, I’ll keep working harder, but sooner or later you’ll need some serious self-reflection as to why you are in college. This could be the best time of your life, but only if you make it so.”

I’ll take a rowdy class over a quiet class any day. You see, I can take the energy from those rowdy students and redirect it into class discussion and activity. And when that’s done right, there are no better days in the classroom. But for those who lack energy, it’s so much harder to create it. I’ve thought of bringing espresso shots to class, but I don’t make that much money.

When I first started teaching college, I worried if I’d have the same effect on adults. I’m not trying to say I’m great; I’m saying I have a lot of fun doing what I do. But I do want to be great. Many of my college students are only a few months older than some of my previous high school kids were. There’s not a lot of difference between a senior in high school and a freshman in college. But in college, we do get a variety of ages and students in our class.

My first college class: I had a woman who didn’t smile much. She became my challenge. So many of my students in that class laughed and participated, but she was a quiet one who only listened. She was older than me, African-American, and Muslim. She couldn’t have been more different than most students I had worked with in the past. She taught me something important though: some people do prefer to listen than speak, and that’s ok. After all, listening is a prerequisite for understanding, and as teachers, we must recognize that our students will have a variety of personalities as well as learning styles. She was quiet, and that was ok; I still had a dozen other students laughing and sharing thoughts throughout each lesson. But she bothered me, for in the back of my mind I was worried that she was not enjoying the lessons.

And the end of the semester, at the end of my very first college class, this older woman came up to speak to me privately. She said something I cherish and always will, and she shattered my fears that I wasn’t getting through to her.

“Don’t ever change. Don’t ever let the system change you. Don’t ever get burned out. You are the best teacher I have ever had,” she told me and shook my hand on the last day of our class.

Now I was speechless. Here’s this woman who I worried was not enjoying my class. This quiet soul who listened and rarely spoke unless forced. But the few words she volunteered on her own were some of the nicest words anyone has told me.

If you are out there—and let’s face it, how many older African-American Muslim students have I had? (a few, actually)—and you ever stumble across this blog, thank you. Thank you deeply for giving me confidence that I could teach successfully at the college level to any audience.

So teacher-friends and friends of learning, what were your favorite classroom experiences? Favorite teachers? I’d love to hear your stories too.

Tossing Shoes Out The Window

If there’s one thing I miss about high school, it’s throwing shoes out the window.

You see, one day a student had his feet up on his desk. I thought that was unprofessional. So in a moment of pure impulse, I yanked his shoes off, walked over to the window, and threw them out from the second floor of which my classroom was located.

His mouth dropped to the floor in pure shock. I smiled at him. The entire class, including my shoe-less student, burst into laughter. Perhaps my discipline was also unprofessional, but in my mind, it was a moment of genius.

Now I had the class's undivided attention. I continued with my lesson, and they sat forward, listening and waiting for me to have another crazy impulse.

From that time forward, I threw out shoes for random reasons. When a student wasn’t paying attention, I’d sneak up and tear off his or her shoes and toss them out the window. Fall asleep in class? You know those shoes are coming off. Today, some of the most interesting e-mails I receive from former students wanting to stay in touch or say hi begin with, “Do you remember the time you threw my shoes out the window?”

The administration knew of this of course, and they mostly looked the other way. Until one day, when I had a little too much fun and tossed out a good half-dozen pairs of shoes during one class. My classroom was located directly above a guidance counselor’s office, and she was new to the school. She saw shoes raining down from above, and called the dean and the principal thinking that some student had gone crazy. Close. It was a teacher who was having too much fun.

The principal and the dean burst into my classroom like it was on fire. I remember telling them, “It’s all under control. This is my doing. Don’t worry.” They gave me an evil look and left the room. They never brought it up to me again.

I wrote special hall passes for the students to retrieve their shoes. Now that I teach at a different school—at a college—I look at our classroom windows with longing and nostalgia. They don’t open in the rooms where I teach. My days of throwing shoes out the window are gone. For now, anyway.

Why do I share this? You may think it to be silly or even inappropriate, but I believe the best classroom memories come from moments of impulse and a little crazy. We can’t just stand behind a podium and lecture. Teachers must find creative ways to get our students’ attention. And if you have the right personality, bringing out a little crazy in the classroom may be just the thing to keeping them focused because they never will know what you may do or say next.

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Walking Satan's Path

I love the Harry Potter books. I have no problem in confessing that I am a total nerd, but that shouldn’t be a defense in loving those stories. They are perhaps the most imaginative stories written in my lifetime if not of all time. To not had read the Harry Potter books: well that would be like never seeing a sunrise or the ocean. You’re missing out on one of the greatest things in life: the power of imagination.

When the last book came out, I bought it at midnight and stayed up until sunrise reading. I fell asleep for a couple hours and had nightmares of Voldemort. I texted my best friend my worries and fears as of course she was reading it that night too. I woke up and did nothing else that day until I finished the book. I can only dream of writing something someday that has such power and inspiration.

During my first year of teaching, I had one of my most challenging and rewarding classes. I was assigned a reading class of ten of the lowest level readers in the freshman class. My job was to improve their reading scores. When I reflected on how to do that, the first and most important task, I thought, was to help them learn to love reading. Students have low reading scores because they don’t read. And those who don’t read don’t like reading. Simple, right?

So I thought of the one book that could help them love reading: the first Harry Potter. For nine of the students, I think it was a roaring success. They aced my tests, and they loved the story.

But when the book was assigned, one student’s parents visited me after school, and I will never forget what they told me.

They introduced themselves and then said, “Do you know you are walking in the path of Satan by reading this book? Do you know you are encouraging students to walk Satan’s path by having them read it?”

I laughed. This had to be some kind of joke, right? But they didn’t laugh back.

“A fiction story that plays with magic is akin to worshiping the devil,” they said.

“Have you read the book?” I asked.

“No,” they answered. Of course not, I thought.

“Well, if you had read the book, you would know that the magic is what we call fiction or make-believe. It is not real. Furthermore, the books deal with the themes that I think all students should be exposed to: friendship, good over evil, self-discipline in learning, overcoming fear, teamwork, bravery, love of family, love of learning, and so much more!” I told them.

They stared at me. I could see in their eyes that I must be the anti-Christ.

“We will not allow our child to read this book,” they said.

No wonder your kid has low level reading scores, I thought. You stifle the imagination.

Naturally, I had to provide an alternate book. Something boring and old and without magic.

I think of this story many times when I’m teaching today. I think creativity and imagination are the most important elements in the classroom. And a little magic and make-believe can do wonders for the imagination.

Sure, these parents are a minority, members of a specific religious sect that see the devil everywhere. He’s on the back of your cereal boxes and on the television and in your video games.

Evil, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I have a fantasy that this child snuck a copy of Harry Potter and hid it under her bed like a teenage boy would hide a copy of Playboy. I hope she read it late at night, under the covers with a flashlight while her parents slept and dreamed of devils. Wouldn’t that be a nice ending to the story?

I can’t imagine any writer not reading and re-reading the Harry Potter stories over and over. Imagination is the soul of life and the seed of creativity. If that’s walking on Satan’s path, then let me hold his hand because it’s a wonderful journey not to be missed.

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The Day I Cussed Out a Student

The first time I was called into the principal’s office was when I was fifteen years old. It’s a memory that haunts me still twenty years later because—even if for a brief moment—I was the kind of person I hated the most.

Teenagers can be cruel, no surprise there. In my sophomore geometry class, I sat next to a group of pranksters. They were always teasing someone and laughing behind the teacher’s back. One day they started teasing an overweight girl.

Whenever the teacher would turn and write something on the board, these boys would say, “oink.”

There was a quiet girl sitting near them. I remember her soft brown hair and innocent eyes. She had a round face and a round body to match. Truth be told, she could have crushed any of those boys had she tackled them, but she wasn't aggressive or mean. She was just overweight.

First, one boy would “oink.” Then two or three would “oink” together. Then something happened that made me hate myself: I laughed. My fifteen year old self found this funny for a moment.

There’s something to say about group pressure, the desire to be included and not excluded. The boys who instigated the “oinks” smiled at me when I laughed out loud. Then I did the worst thing: I “oinked” with them.

The girl burst into tears. The teacher turned and snapped at all of us. We were kicked out of class and sent to the principal’s office. As soon as I saw the girl’s tears, I felt incredibly bad. What kind of person had I become? An asshole, that’s what. I was so mad at myself. I spoke honestly to the principal and surprisingly never got in any more trouble than a one on one talk. I apologized to the girl too.

Ten years later I found myself in the principal’s office again, only this time I was a teacher getting a reprimand from my boss. You see, I had cussed out a student in class, and I guess teachers aren't supposed to do that.

But there was this boy, a fifteen year old, skinny, pimply jerk face of a student. He never did his homework, he talked back in class, he got up and walked around whenever he felt like it. And then one day, he started teasing a girl who sat in front of him. This girl too was overweight, round as a stability ball in the stomach. I heard the boy call her an “oompa loompa.” And then he called her a “fat cow.”

I snapped. “Hey, asshole. Yeah, did that get your attention? You are an asshole. And I won’t tolerate that in my classroom. Get out, now.” My face was red, my lips thin and angry, and my eyes were wide with adrenaline. I kind of wanted him to fight back, to say something mean back to me. I had plenty more to say to him.

He told the principal what had happened, and I was called down that afternoon to speak with the boss as well.

“You can’t cuss out students in the classroom, Joe,” he said, but he was smiling. “Between you and me, the kid is an asshole. Just watch your temper, ok?”

“You got it, boss,” I said. I can’t say it was the last time I had ever cussed at a student, but believe me, the few times a swear word has come out of my mouth in fourteen years of teaching (and I can count on my fingers the number of times it has happened), the person always deserved it.

But that first time, I will never forget. And let’s face it. The kid was an asshole, but that’s not all that was going on here. I was also calling my fifteen year old self an asshole too. When you see the bad in you reflected in other people, it makes it all the more real.

It’s these small moments that shape who we are, I think. And it is small reflections like this that have made me into the much stronger teacher I am today: the one who will stand up for everyone and put the assholes in their place. 

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