Tossing Newspapers onto the porch
In reflecting on that time, I recognize that tossing newspapers is a metaphor for what is expected from most teachers today. When ‘delivering’ content in the classroom it is like tossing. You throw it hoping it will land, hoping your students pick up some of it at least, and later becomes absorbed in the same way the newspaper company hoped for their clients.
But the classroom is not a porch. For you who are devoted to it, it is a place for relationships, for learning, for discovery, for empathy. No tossing permitted. Whatever the guise of outside expectations, whatever the assumptions of ‘authorities,’ you make your classroom your own, where you and your students bring in your whole selves, where everyone feels they belong, are heard, invited to think speak up.
The ultimate consequence of ‘tossing’ to students, particularly to those bent on getting A’s, for them it is to be able to regurgitate on the upcoming tests. Regurgitation is for cows. It does not signify having learned. It does not invite memory, such as memorizing a poem or passage, or having had a sublime adventure. Regurgitation becomes a remembrance for the moment, one that is spilled out and disappears. I want the A, says the student, once I get it, it’s on to the next one.
The classroom is a place to create memories. To invoke surprise, curiosity, inquiry, investigation, wake-up-call moments. Devoted teachers want their students to leave class wanting to learn more, to ponder, and to come back the next day with questions, ideas, insights. Certainly not possible every day, but this hope is always on the table.
