Making the Grade:by Paul Tamburello
Nation building on a small scale
A monthly column in the Brookline TAB
Wednesday, October 8, 2003
Please, thank you. You're welcome. I want to hear those words ringing in my ears all day long in my fourth grade classroom. That's one way I'm constructing bridges, delivering utilities, and establishing communication systems in my little nation in the "village" at Pierce School. And I'll bet that's how scores of other little "nations" across town are being built in the first month of school. Iraq isn't the only place where nation building and infrastructure are critical.
Help each other out, share when you can, accept people for who they are, not what they look like. These guidelines are the hot and cold running water of our classroom. Yes, I know we're living in a "high stakes" school environment and that we need academic rigor but we need social rigor as well. The social protocols that teachers model and expect are the medium in which learning takes place. We just pour them like cement into the foundation forms of our little classroom nations.
Listen to what others want, know what you want, be prepared to give a little, get a little. The late speaker of the house Tip O'Neill famously observed, "All politics are local." He'd probably agree that nation building starts in classrooms, too, and would puff heartily on his cigar as he considered ways to get this 'bridge building bill' through Congress.
You don't have to have a seat in the United Nations to help build a nation, even though there are enough languages represented in most Brookline schools to qualify for immediate entry there. Where did United Nations President Kofi Annan learn about consensus and about sharing wealth, whether of knowledge or of know-how? Who taught him? Likely it was a teacher in the schools he attended. We've heard that it takes a village to raise a child. Well, I suppose that teachers are equivalent of village elders. We're raising children so they can in turn manage their own villages. One goal of education is to mold responsible, informed citizens... nation building by any other name.
Think about the point of view of the classmate sitting next to you; when you disagree, learn to negotiate. Classrooms, and the alliances and small work groups inside of them, are the budding public utilities of our little infrastructures. Include others in activities. Don't follow the crowd if they are doing something they shouldn't be doing. Teachers don't just preach these concepts. They show students the strategies to solve social problems as well as math problems. More cement poured into the foundation.
Learn to accept correction. Correction helps you whether it's with your work or with your behavior. One of a teacher's roles is to set limits of acceptable behavior and apply consequences for not acting within the limits. There are limits and laws in a democracy, too. Children feel secure within a defined structure. It varies from class to class, teacher to teacher, but it's there. Structure provides the net for kids to get up the nerve to leap off the academic high dive for the first time. It helps kids take learning risks. It prepares us for citizenship in a nation.
Do the right thing. Like countries, many classrooms have mottoes. Walk around any school in Brookline and look for them posted on classroom walls. In our little fourth grade country at Pierce School, the class motto "Working Hard Feels Good" has been a permanent fixture for more than 20 years. By working hard, I promise my students (and remind myself) they'll discover how much they can really accomplish. I remind them that failure often precedes success. All of us can relate to how it feels to plug away at something until we 'get it.'
You are part of many communities in your life. Your family is a community, your neighbor hood is a community, our classroom is a community, our school is a community, Brookline is a community, our whole country is one vast community. We're all connected in some way, either by culture, customs, language, or government. We need citizens to engage civilly in community discourse. True, working for the common good is sometimes messy and nuanced but so is a democracy (and even a town meeting!).
Community is the metaphor for the larger world, into which teachers want their social and academic lessons transferred. To successfully build a nation in another part of the world, we need to recognize how we do it in our own country, one classroom nation at a time. We're incubating the future right here.
Paul Tamburello is a new regular TAB columnist.
http://www.townonline.com/brookline/news/opinion/bt_colbrpault10082003.htm
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