Goodbye, summer. Hello, school.
When I was growing up in Clear Lake City, I loved school.
I loved preschool, which was at the Presbyterian church, where my teacher reported that I loved “go-go boots and dancing.”
I loved my elementary school, where Cherry Sue Hammer, who taught me in second grade, started every lesson with a song on her guitar and let us have pet gerbils in the classroom. My brother’s kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Mackie, had a couch where you could take a nap if you needed one. (Imagine all the meltdowns that napping couch probably prevented. Pure genius.)
I wasn’t crazy about my fourthgrade teacher, who graded us like junior high students and played a lot of Peter, Paul and Mary records, but you can’t have everything. My glamorous and witty fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Caulfield, more than made up for it. She seemed more like a movie star than a teacher, and she could explain math to anyone, not just the kids who liked numbers. She made school seem like a great adventure, and it was.
When my family moved to northwest Houston, I still loved school, even though it was intimidating to go to a new junior high. But I loved the music and art teachers, and when I would see them at Greenspoint Mall working extra jobs in a cool shoe store, I thought they were doing it for fun. I was naive that way; I didn’t realize that even though they were the most awesome teachers I could imagine, they probably didn’t make much money.
At Klein Forest High School, I had a French teacher who made me want to go to France. I had an English teacher who let me read whatever I wanted. And I had Cathy D’Entremont as my speech and debate coach, which is like winning the educational lottery. She taught me how to take one side of an issue and then twirl around two hours later and take the opposite position. She taught me how to build an argument and come up with a counterargument. She taught me how to give extemporaneous speeches on current events and politics. She gave her students the motivation to feel like a team, see improvement and accomplish something. And she gave up her weekends. We won a lot of tournaments. Sometimes we lost, but it wasn’t the end of the world. It was the beginning of beating that team the next time, and it was thrilling.
Then I went to Baylor University, and graduate school, and now I teach college. Did I mention that I loved school?
The reason I loved school was that I had teachers and professors who were unique. They dared to be different, taught out of the box, made me want to know more. They made me want to teach as well as they did.
When the semester starts, I know that not everyone I teach loves school. But that doesn’t mean that I won’t try to get them to change their minds. That is the challenge for all educators: How can we engage students so that they to learn?
Every semester I think, “What needs to change?” And I decide to do something different. Not everything, but something.
For this new semester, I have been inspired by Trevor Boffone, who teaches Spanish at Bellaire High School. In 2019, he created an Instagram account, @drboffone, in which he and his students work together dancing (they mostly do Dubsmash dances). Video of Boffone dancing with his students has gone viral. The students teach him their dance moves, and he teaches them Spanish. They learn something from each other. After gaining thousands of followers, Boffone and his students were featured on “Good Morning America.”
“At its core, it’s about crosscultural connections and inclusive pedagogy,” Boffone says, and in “breaking down traditional barriers between teachers and students in order to create stronger relationships and build community.”
Boffone has found that by engaging students in this way, they are more invested in the class and more receptive to the content. “My teaching largely depends on the students in the room,” he says. “I do what I call ‘culture sharing’ to learn about my students and also teach them about me. It isn’t just sharing but also showing value for their cultures. So many of my students feel invisible. They feel like their teachers don’t see them as they see themselves. So, I try to learn about them and then use this information in an authentic way. For me, this often manifests through dance.”
But it can be other things besides dance. “The point is that we take the time to engage with our students beyond the curriculum itself,” he says. “Our students are more than just test scores. There is more to learning and education than homework, classwork and tests.”
Every August I hate that the summer is slipping away, but I also get excited that everything will start up again. Some semesters have already started; some will start Monday or the week after. It is the best part of school: that you have a clean slate, and you can begin again.
You can try something new, meet new people, figure out your next step. This is true for teachers and students. And this is the part of culture that we can all share: a curiosity about the world and a willingness to say, “I don’t know everything. But I will to learn something while I am here.”
Being schooled is not separate from the real world: It is the real world, and it never really ends. It just starts over, again and again.