In the Classroom: First Do No Harm
Recent conversations with my 4th – 8th grade colleagues about the teaching of writing has me reflecting on my own practice. And as I do, the same overriding precept keeps coming to mind: first do no harm. This belief underlies every choice I make about what and how to teach, guides me in decisions about whole group lessons, conversations with individual children about their work, communications with their parents, and is deeply ingrained into the very core of my being as a teacher. Why, you may wonder, is that? Sadly, it is because a teacher unknowingly did harm me, causing me to be terrified and incapable of writing for twenty years.
This may surprise those of you who know me today as the author of professional books and articles for educators, reviews at the New York Times Book Review and elsewhere, blog posts, and a forthcoming book for children. But that is now. Then was 1970, my senior year of high school. Coming from a family of academic writers, I'd always liked writing and thought I was pretty good at it. Certainly until then, despite my miserable spelling, I'd always felt appreciated and supported by family and teachers. But that year I was in an AP English class taught by the drama club advisor, someone we all admired beyond all reason. You know how it is in high school — that one incredibly smart teacher, Oscar Wilde-like in his witty snarkiness. Sure, he was often scathing, say telling us he didn't know what any of us were doing in the class, but somehow it didn't matter. He was brilliant and, in spite of all the harsh talk, he made us feel brilliant too. I was certain, by the end of the year, that he'd concede, confess that we weren't all that bad after all.
But then there came a day that is still vivid in my memory decades later. It seems embarrassingly pedestrian today, but that is why it is so important to describe. Because it is just the sort of thing we teachers can easily do, things that affect our students in ways we can't imagine. On that day my parents told me that this teacher whom I admired beyond reason, had recommended I not take a part in the spring play because I needed to "work on my writing." Theater was then my passion, and the idea that this godlike teacher thought my writing was so problematic had me miserable. I had no idea what he thought was wrong with my writing as he never volunteered to help me and I was far too in awe of him to ask. Instead, I'd stay up until 2 AM hopelessly trying to "fix" it even though I didn't know what needed fixing or how to do it.
At college things got worse. My poor performance in freshman English soon had me attending a weekly remedial writing tutorial with the head of the English department. She diagnosed my problem as emotional and felt she had no cure to provide. And so I came up with my own solution — to stay away from the always-enticing English Department offerings for the rest of my matriculated life (and I've one undergraduate and two graduate degrees). I read voraciously on my own, took intellectually stimulating courses in other departments, and would looked longingly at the literature offerings in the course catalogs before quickly turning the page.
When I became a teacher I was determined that nothing that I would do would ever affect a student of mine in that way. I saw to it that they did loads of the sort of joyful writing I had done when young (before THE INCIDENT) — reports, stories, poems, reviews, and more. My introduction to the writing process in the early 1980s was nirvana. So were computers.
Yet I was still not a writer myself. Oh, I went through valiant attempts to go through the process at teacher institutes. And I had to write, of course, for graduate school, for parents, and so forth. But deep down I knew that I was a still a fraud, still that person nailed by her high school AP teacher who needed to work on her writing. Until 1990 when I saw an announcement for a fellowship to study children's literature at Princeton. I wanted to do it — badly. And so with the support of a teacher-friend, I wrote the required essay and was accepted — one of fifteen out of the over one hundred who applied. It was a watershed experience for me. For once I'd written about something I cared about, truly cared about, and I'd written well enough for a professor at Princeton to pick me. Me. After that I started writing seriously. I came across the child_lit list serve and wrote extensive and opinionated posts on all sorts of things. I wrote my first book for teachers. I was told often that I was a good writer. The curse had been lifted, but it took twenty years.
I still remember that high school teacher with great fondness. He was such a grand character and introduced me to some wonderful writers and playwrights. He never had a clue that his passing remark to my parents did what it did to me. And that is what I take away from this — as a teacher you have to be so careful, to build a place of security in your classroom and with your students, to be aware of their sensitivities, their weaknesses, and support them in every possible way as developing writers. You must, try to be aware as you can be and, most of all, try to do no harm.
