Two documentaries I saw recently got me thinking a lot about teaching, even though neither focuses on education: "Amy," about acclaimed British singer/songwriter Amy Winehouse, who died in 2011, and "Iverson," about 11-time NBA all-star and 2000-2001 Most Valuable Player, Allen Iverson.
At their respective peaks, both Winehouse and Iverson were incredible, unique talents. But personal struggles, which played out under the full glare of the media spotlight, eventually overshadowed their gifts in the eyes of many, and over time morphed into shorthand labels: Winehouse as a self-destructive addict, Iverson as a self-centered "thug."
The documentaries push beyond these simplistic depictions to allow audiences to see their subjects as three-dimensional, and to better understand the troubles that gripped them. Neither film is a hagiography: Both Winehouse and Iverson are portrayed as flawed individuals who made questionable decisions along the way. But we are also witness to their vulnerability, their eagerness to please, and--perhaps most striking to me--how young both seem when initially thrust into the whirlwind of non-stop attention.
There's a sequence in "Amy," after her drug and alcohol addictions had become widely known, with a clip of former "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno tossing out a joke about her in a monologue. "Amy Winehouse's new album will feature songs about cooking," Leno says. Then, after a couple beats: "Cooking crystal meth, black tar heroin..." The audience howls and erupts in applause.
As I watched the scene, I wondered if I would've laughed at the joke if I had heard it at the time. I'd like to think not, but I might've. Either way, it wouldn't have fazed me much. Back then, all I knew about Amy Winehouse was that she could sing and that she looked increasingly gaunt and bleary-eyed every time I saw videos or photos of her. At most, Leno's jab might've caused me to shake my head and wonder what the singer's problem was, why she couldn't just get herself together. But as the film unfolded, I began to understand more about Winehouse's childhood, her insecurities, her path to that point. Seeing her in that new light, the joke not only wasn't funny, it seemed cruel and unfair. As Leno's audience roared its approval, I hurt for her.
So, what does all this have to do with teaching?
For me, both films serve as potent reminders of how important it is for teachers to "see" our students. I don't mean just noting their physical presence. I mean seeing each kid who walks through our classroom door as fully as we can. I mean asking ourselves questions: Who is this young person? Where is he or she coming from? What animates or silences or worries him? What passions does she have? What wounds? What parts of him or her might I not be seeing in the classroom?
Just as some white basketball fans looked at Allen Iverson's black skin, tattooed body, and embrace of hip-hop style and labeled him a "thug," teachers sometimes fall back on shorthand--seeing a student as simply "slow" or "unmotivated" or "gang-involved"--and fail to look more deeply at what lies underneath. Or, having not examined their own biases or prejudices, teachers use part of a student's identity--African American or poor or immigrant, for example--to make limiting assumptions about the child, to not see him or her fairly.
Other times, we fail to see a student almost entirely. This past spring, a 7th grader in one of my social studies classes came to my room after school to check out the next book in a manga series. As she was leaving, she looked up at a couple drawings she'd done that I'd posted on a wall. "That's the only place in this school that I feel visible," she said.
I didn't interpret her statement to mean that she felt more visible in my classroom than in others. I took it literally: that the meager rectangle of wall space that held her artwork was the only place in school where she truly felt seen. Sure, her comment could be disregarded as teenage hyperbole, but it left me thinking for days afterward--not just about her, but about all the other students I needed to make efforts to see more fully.
One way I tried to do that was through a project inspired by a series of short videos by Justin Harenchar, a Chicago-based filmmaker. Harenchar recorded footage of his everyday experiences over the course of a year, then edited together 3-second clips from each day into monthly visual collages. For my spin on the idea, each 8th grader in my homeroom checked out a video camera for a day and taped whatever they chose--inside their apartments and out in their south side Chicago neighborhood. Once they'd all finished recording, I pieced together short clips from each student's footage to create a montage of their lives outside school.
Viewing the students' videos gave me glimpses of their experiences that I never would've seen otherwise: taking care of a younger sibling at night while mom worked the late shift; helping cook enchiladas for a family dinner; marveling at the lights of downtown Chicago at night ("We should come here every weekend!"); tensing up at the sight of a passing police van; listening to a father extol the virtues of hard work.
It was a fascinating project, and it helped me see a number of my students in ways I hadn't before. But here's the truth: At the end of the year, I still didn't know all of my 32 homeroom students well. Some remained barely etched outlines or half-drawn portraits.
How does that happen? I had two years with these kids--360 school days. How could any of them leave my classroom not being fully seen?
Some students try hard not be, of course. They throw invisibility cloaks over their heads at every opportunity. But a teacher can't--or at least shouldn't--just accept that and let a kid disappear into the crowd.
Still, it's not easy, and institutional factors and counter-productive policies make it even more daunting. Large class sizes bring with them a greater likelihood of student anonymity. The narrow focus on raising test scores obscures the crucial relational component of good teaching. And the prizing of "text-based evidence" in Common Core standards can make it seem as if students' own perspectives--based on their lived experiences and cultural backgrounds--are little more than distractions to the educational process.
These aren't excuses--just realities. Another one, perhaps more important but even less discussed, is that many school districts give little attention to building their teachers' cultural competence: the ability to better understand, validate, and build upon students' racial and cultural backgrounds in the classroom. In Chicago, only 9% of students are white, but 50% of teachers are, which means a lot of white teachers are teaching African American and Latino kids. For these teachers--myself included--part of "seeing the student" is seeing them racially and culturally.
But increasing one's cultural proficiency isn't something that can happen in a couple PD sessions. It's an ongoing commitment. I've spent 25 years working in Chicago schools, and I'm still doing the work, still have a lot to learn. For the most part, though, it's been undertaken on my own or by collaborating with thoughtful colleagues--not through efforts the district itself has initiated. Perhaps district leaders are of the mistaken belief that a teacher's race is of little significance. It sometimes seems so. After all, Chicago has seen a drastic decline in the number of Black teachers over the past 15 years--from 40 percent to 23 percent--and I've heard little about strategies to address it.
When we fail to see students fully, it not only hampers our ability to teach them well. It prevents us from envisioning what they are capable of doing and being, what they might become. In his recently released bestseller, Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates recounts his years as a student in Baltimore's public schools, where the curriculum seemed hopelessly disconnected from the life he then knew. "I was a curious boy," Coates writes, "but the schools were not concerned with curiosity. They were concerned with compliance."
Similarly, in their book To Teach: The Journey, In Comics, William Ayers and Ryan Alexander-Tanner tell of a retired teacher's recollection of one of her former students, jazz great Ella Fitzgerald, upon the iconic singer's death. "I've thought about it all these years," the woman says. "I had the great Ella Fitzgerald in my class and didn't even know it." The tragedy, Ayers and Alexander-Tanner say, is that all the kids in the class were Ellas--or Amys, or Allens, or Ta-Nehisis--each with unique gifts, a singular story, something of value to offer.
As a new school year gets closer by the day, I plan to hold that thought close, to re-commit to seeing each student I teach as fully as I can. Amid the myopic focus on test-based "achievement" in our schools, it may be one of the most overlooked aspects of a teacher's work. It's also one of the most vital.