The introduction

Welcome to the MSU Teacher Education Students blog.

This blog is about the experiences, emotions, thoughts and hopes of students in MSU's Teacher Preparation program. Our intent is to promote a reasonably open discussion of what goes on inside this program. We hope that this will help students interested in applying, as well as help us understand what we're doing ourselves.

Who can join

All students currently in MSU's Teacher Preparation program are invited to blog on this site. If you are a graduate of the Teacher Preparation program you are welcome to leave comments, and in future this blog may be extended to include you as a blogger as well. Everyone else in the wide Internet is invited to comment on blog entries.

Who am I

My name is Orion Smith. I am a student at MSU, accepted into the Teacher Preparation program and shortly to begin TE 302 this summer (2008).

Why you should join, even if you are scared of the Internet

The following is an essay. Please read it if the above heading speaks to you, or if you are otherwise curious.

Teachers (and students) are lately told to be afraid of having a presence on the Internet through sites like MySpace and Facebook and even/especially blog sites like this one. Why? Because potential employers, parents or even students can find you. The Internet also has a perfect memory that may hold you accountable for those drunken hijinks five years ago, or that really over the top teenage rant about hating your friend after she did whatever. Fair enough - the sordid portion of your past is your affair. I think though that part of the message actually received by teachers is the danger of identity; many people prefer (Internet) anonymity as a shield to hide behind and even snipe from.

Can we look deeper into why we are told to be afraid of ourselves?

Let's start with the tool. The Internet is an immensely powerful medium for publishing, and despite its vastness it's quite easy to hunt down the traces we leave behind. The new digital age demands new digital answers to age-old questions of responsible citizenship. This is of course especially true for those who operate in the public eye, or even just in the public sphere.

We are entering a profession where who we are and who we were will be scrutinized because we will be dealing with other peoples' children. In many ways, to be a teacher is to be a politician. We are responsible for serving a diverse constituency, which may judge and sentence us in the court of public opinion should we step out of the mainstream enough to be dangerous. The almost ridiculous ease of digging up someone's past makes guilt by association and even guilt by proximity into potent weapons to discredit and devalue a life's work.

In the United States, institutionalized power such as that wielded by educational systems is a contested commodity. With diverse political forces always pulling and pushing education into new directions, a fragile détente between those forces is achieved by way of mutually-assured sacrifice. When a teacher steps out of line s/he may be given up for the sake of preserving the political truce. The "L" word - liability - controls school boards and school administrations. It is into this climate of fear that we will step someday; small wonder some think we're better off just keeping our heads down whenever we can.

"I didn't ask for this kind of attention - all I wanted to do is teach kids."

"I don't like being in the spotlight."

"When I graduate from college, I want a fresh start."

Yes, I am partially critiquing the system. Everyone should see problems with the way education happens around them, simply because education really is important. And yes, as practitioners we'll only have limited power to change that system. To begin my real case, let's start with a simple question.

Ask yourself something for me. Why do you want to become a teacher, right now at this very minute? Why did you apply to the program in the first place? If the answer is "to serve the beneficence of the almighty State" please stop reading right now because I will never convince you. (If the answer is "because it pays well" you can stop reading too, to go get a reality check.) I think many people go into teaching because of ideals and beliefs about the value of education and the nobility of the profession of teaching. Perhaps the belief that "those that can't do, teach" is shared by many but I doubt by many teachers. If I'm right, if there is something idealistic about the why that will struggle to survive in the day-to-day of the how then you owe it to yourself to become not just a teacher but a great teacher. MSU's TE program strongly suggests that we must do, we must get out there while we're still learning to make that learning effective. Teachers exist in the public sphere, like it or not; who realistically believes that we can suddenly burst forth into that sphere after just keeping our heads down?

Hold that thought while I take us on a quick detour, we'll be back.

This spring (2008) I took TE 250, and as part of that course I participated in service learning time at Bingham Elementary's after-school program. This past Friday was the last day of that program and I finally worked up the courage to talk with its organizer, a gentle and thoughtful man named Archie Lake. Mr. Lake worked for GM and EDS for over 30 years in management, and though he's now retired from that role he wants to give back to his community through its education system. He substitute teaches all around Lansing, and Bingham's after-school program is his newest project since January 2008. I've been writing all semester about how the program is flawed and educationally inadequate; for instance each Monday the kids all had to copy down a writing sample from an overhead and this was great fodder for my criticism about keeping poor urban kids academically and socially stagnant. I even started questioning the kids about why they thought the exercise was "stupid" and tried to motivate the frustrated ones to do alternative writing. I was a hero in my own mind, able to frame myself as such in my papers.

Perhaps you've heard what pride goes before. Spring 2008 was Mr. Lake's first time running the after-school program, but did I bother to ask about that before it was over? As it turns out, he'd been frustrated too all spring - frustrated that between himself and a bunch of eager young folk we'd not come up with a better after-school program. Oh, he was happy that the kids were getting socialization time and weren't getting into real trouble, he even mentioned that that socialization might be the greatest benefit of these programs. But as I went into detail about how TE 250 students were there to help kids out academically while trying to learn lessons about society, Mr. Lake was telling me that he felt intimidated by new educational environments and that he was sad that the program lacked focus but wasn't sure just how to reshape it. He's been reading about after school programs and has some ideas, but at the same time isn't sure it's worth continuing his involvement. I couldn't help wondering; where were the TE students when opportunity kept hitting us over the head all semester long? We're no experts but we're not supposed to be sheep either. This had been the perfect chance for us to take the initiative and step up, but none of us even bothered to ask until it was too late. I walked out of that discussion feeling a far cry from the kid who earned his Eagle Scout rank a decade ago by committing himself to community leadership.

I'm writing my last paper for TE 250 in the next few days, and you had better believe that the incident I relayed just now is what it's about. The lesson I find in the story of Bingham and Mr. Lake isn't that people need to be taken down a peg to learn. The lesson isn't even new, in fact it's ancient. To create change you need to take risks, and for teachers those risks mean sticking your neck out in public. I should have stuck my neck out despite the inconvenience, despite how easy it was to feel good about my pathetically tiny little acts of "resistance" with individual kids. I hope it's not too late to try, though. I won't make promises yet because I don't know enough about the future, but I am going to see what I can do to help make Bingham's after-school program better by talking to Mr. Lake and to the MSU Service Learning folk and to Bingham's principal and to other folks who can help.

I'm not a teacher, not yet. I haven't had all the formal training that allows the state to certify me, I'm sure I have a lot to learn in the Teacher Preparation program and there are probably many teaching activities I'm legitimately not ready for. But it is already past time for me to get involved, putting my face in front of people who can disapprove and pushing my words into the "real world." I could have been a lot more selective in the previous paragraphs to paint myself as a better person throughout this story but I didn't. Context matters; one way of understanding teaching is making context matter. So the Internet will record this post for posterity, and someday I hope that someone will even ask me about it. For what am I doing by providing the context and the story and my hope for the future, if not teaching.

Join the blog - it's good for you.