Struggle is Where the Growth Happens

Kristina Sanborn, Traip Academy, Kittery, Maine
Executive Board Member, Maine Council for English Language Arts

I’m going to let you in on a secret:
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After teaching for 12 years, I still question whether or not I am doing a “good” job teaching and if I’ve been bringing in belonging, community, and connection to my lessons. I’ve struggled through moments where students certainly were not honoring each other’s backgrounds, nationalities, sexualities, race, intelligence, etc, enough that I almost said I couldn’t contribute to this newsletter. Then I realized that the struggle is what needs to be shared. 

The struggle is where the growth happens. Even if the growth feels slow, I know that each time my students enter my classroom, I am pushing them to challenge their thinking, while also honoring each other’s diverse backgrounds and experiences. I cannot be the only teacher who has a classroom full of boisterous young people who occasionally cross the line with their humor. I know I am not the only person who has had to stop class and have an uncomfortable, but necessary, discussion about why someone’s “joking” comment was hurtful and inappropriate. 

Those of us who have taught freshmen in high school know that a first-semester freshman is quite different than a second-semester freshman. First-semester freshmen are like untrained puppies–cute, lovable, but boy, do they try your patience! Then the second semester rolls around, and there is a noticeable change in their maturity and ability to handle the routine of high school. Despite the headache that first-semester freshmen can cause, I adore them. I love helping young people learn to navigate high school. 

This year, I was faced with a much different group of freshmen than ever before. I had one of the most diverse groupings in front of me and immediately struggled to build community the “right” way. Gestures, jokes, and innuendos flew around my classroom during the first few weeks of school. I sent students to the office, contacted home, and had many one-on-one discussions about why a behavior was deemed unacceptable. At one point, I felt like a teacher in a sitcom when I sent a student of color and a white student to the office because I didn’t know how else to stop their racialized teasing of one another. I was mortified that these students thought it was okay to treat each other this way. And, it wasn’t just racialized teasing, this group would dig into each other given the smallest mistake someone would make: if a student asked a question I had already answered, they were “an idiot,” if someone had trouble starting on a writing prompt, they were “stupid.” Additionally alarming were the comments about physical image; if someone needed a snack, they were “fat.” It was all becoming too much, and this was back during the second week of September!

Yet, within this same class, we would also have moments of belly laughter and connection, especially over what we were reading together. The fact that their young, female teacher was reading from a whole-class novel told through the point of a teenage boy (I don’t think I need to elaborate here) entertained my class to no end. The students would come in on a Monday and genuinely be interested in what their peers did over the weekend. We all thought it was cute when a group of boys continuously obsessed over the Sonic movie they had seen and kept drawing the character in their notes. As wonderful as our moments of connection were, it was the moments of tension that created a rollercoaster for me that I knew I had to address. So I did. 
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I called a class meeting to discuss the norms we needed and why we were going down such a dangerous path with our behaviors. I was immediately met with:

• “But she’s my friend, she knows I don’t mean it when I’m calling her fat!”
• “Well, we are stupid, have you seen our writing?”
• “He is Asian, so why can’t he make jokes about himself?!”
  
  

Their remarks broke my heart. I was devastated for these young people who thought it was okay to treat each other with such disrespect and cruelty, and who thought the excuse of “it’s okay, I’m joking” was enough to pacify such hurtful behavior. And so, we talked about it. We talked about the feelings they experienced when their friends crossed the line with jokes; how something can be funny right up until the point that it isn’t, and that there’s no going back from that. That’s where most of the students felt like they could relate, and that is what helped us push through the uncomfortable nature of the conversation. With a few awkward laughs and many solemn head nods, we were able to get to the point where we could agree on four norms:
In this class, we do not make fun of:

1. Intelligence
2. Race
3. Body Image
4. Sexuality

It wasn’t perfect, but it was the right start for us. The class took it upon themselves to monitor each other and call each other out when someone would attempt to use one of the topics for humor. We still found plenty of laughter, but in much more appropriate ways. Instead of increasingly focusing on what separated us, we became a unit, so much so that another teacher remarked to me, “Your class is so bonded. I love it!” 
This rollercoaster of a class has continued to keep me on my toes into this second semester, but I realize as I write this that we have combated so much of what caused tension at the beginning of the year because we’ve become a community and found a sense of belonging during our time together. We are indeed bonded, and I do love it, even on the days it’s taken uncomfortable moments and conversations. The feeling of family that we have during our 70 minutes together is worth it.