Voices from the Middle - Teaching Under Fire, Mar 1999

Describes how a class full of unwilling middle school Language Arts students got over their reticence and started looking at school as a positive place through an inquiry learning project about school. Describes the project, things students read and wrote, and a field trip to the university. Argues that students must have a voice in the classroom.

Describes how one sixth-grade teacher of English/Language Arts stopped teaching from grammar texts and instituted a writing workshop. Describes flak he received from colleagues and parents, encouragement he received from students and from his principal, and how, over time, writing workshops have spread in his school.

Describes the author’s experience as a student teacher facing an angry parent who challenged a book choice (a young adult novel by Chris Crutcher) that caused otherwise bored and disinterested students to read with interest and passion.

Suggests that the classroom is an ideal place to “struggle to be together in our differences,” as students begin to formulate their definitions of self and others, and need to learn to deal with differing attitudes and opinions. Describes experiences in the author’s class as discussion about immigration in the United States blazed into a discussion about race.

Looks at how standards in some form predominate the current landscape of education. Argues that standards pose little threat to teacher mautonomy, but that teachers should find what is useful in the standards movement and merge that into what works in the classroom. Argues that educators must join the greater debate about education.

Observes that teaching today is a major challenge as teachers attempt to sift through everything that confronts them and as they constantly struggle with conflict while trying to address the complex dilemmas facing them daily in their classrooms.

The articles in this themed issue, “Teaching under Fire,” are authored by people who were willing to think and write about difficult issues that they might not have thought deeply about if they had not started to express themselves. Writing about struggling with conflict takes us into uncertain territory that we need to explore in order to address the complex dilemmas that face us every day in our classrooms.