birds with one stone and used electives in the New York University doctoral program to take
the courses I needed for teacher certification.
When I started teaching, I took a crash course in classroom management from a veteran
teacher, and this helped me become much better organized. Because of my own experience
as a beginning teacher, I focus on the importance of providing students with a structured en-
vironment and developing organizational skills in my teaching methods classes. I especially
remember one education professor whose lessons and readings gave me a broader under-
standing of what it means to be a teacher. He had an interesting, student-oriented style and
he made the philosophy of educators like John Dewey seem both concrete and alive. The in-
troduction to Dewey was important for me because the approach to teaching used at
Murrow High School was based on Dewey’s ideas.
The special thing about Murrow High School is that it is a public school in New York City
with a very diverse student body that emphasizes that teenagers need to experience free-
dom. Students have independent time built into their schedules when they can sit in the hall
reading or talking with friends, can go to the library, or can work in an office. I think kids
need freedom so they can learn to take responsibility. Of course, there are problems. Some
students don’t deal well with freedom, and they actually mess themselves up. Murrow is a
pretty middle-class school, and I am not convinced its practices would work in a more trou-
bled school or a school with a high concentration of students with weak academic skills. In
communities like the one I teach in now, students have high aspirations, but they do not
have role models who have been successful in school. They often do not understand the
work that is necessary to perform at a high academic level. They need teachers and adminis-
trators to provide greater structure. But I think as kids adapt and perform better in school,
increasing freedom and individual responsibility is an important goal.
The most important part of my education as a teacher was getting an opportunity to
teach and getting feedback from my students. At the beginning I taught only communica-
tions classes, but at the end of my first year I was assigned to teach social studies as well. In
the communications classes, I had my students work in groups and produce projects, but in
social studies I tended to tell the kids what I wanted them to know. My students finally asked
me, “How come downstairs with communications your classes are so exciting and upstairs
in social studies you are so boring?” So I said to myself, “Let me change.” I was teaching
about the industrial revolution at the time. Instead of just telling students about the period, I
had them act as factory owners and workers and they loved it.
I learned how to be a teacher by discovery and reflection, by acting as a teacher in
school, and by discussing ideas about teaching with my supervisors and in my education
classes. It made sense that my students would also learn through this process. Instead of
telling them information, I gave them things to examine as historians and I asked them ques-
tions to guide them through the process of analyzing and understanding the past.
Later, I became a more effective teacher when I studied teaching and supervision tech-
niques at Bank Street College. I learned how to organize groups and make learning fun, but
more important, I realized that being a successful teacher means always learning yourself.
Teaching is something you have to work hard at all the time. Many young teachers say I can
do this or that already so I do not have more to learn. “I’m good already.” But there is no
such thing as being a finished product as a teacher. At a minimum, you always have to work
at being good because your students are always changing and challenging you.
My approach as a teacher today is to set up situations for students to examine, individu-
ally, in groups, or as a class, so they can learn from experience. As a teacher educator, I try
to model what I do as a high school teacher. Sometimes my teacher education students get
frustrated because they want me to tell them what to do or what to think. I always partici-
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