April 29, 2008
Teacher of the Year shares insights at SETH
Teacher of the year Andrea Peterson spoke at AU. (Photo by Jeff Watts)
If the new kid in school has it rough, the new teacher can have it rougher. Few know it better than 2007 National Teacher of the Year Andrea Peterson. And few could be more prepared to hear her words of inspiration than the new teachers in the Washington, D.C., public schools who came to her talk at AU’s School of Education, Teaching and Health.
Many in the audience were young teachers who are honing their craft by studying for degrees and certification at AU. And many teach in District schools with a reputation as touch teaching posts.
Peterson knows what that’s like. She teaches in a hardscrabble, old logging town in Washington state that once landed in Rolling Stone magazine, but not for a good reason. Granite Falls was dubbed America’s Meth Capitol, and used to exemplify the bleakest aspects of life in the depressed small towns of rural America.
When she arrived there as a music teacher 11 years ago, not a single student in any of her classes planned to go to college. Not many of them showed up for band class, either. Of the 45 students on the attendance sheet on her first day, there were only 13 in the room, though she found the missing drum section in the closet, playing poker. The four drummers told her they never came to class until the day before the concert, “because if we go out there,” she recalls them saying, “we get in too much trouble.”
That first year was full of the kind of dismaying discoveries and missteps that could deflate the enthusiasm of any new teacher, she told an audience that included many who could relate to her stories.
Take the field trip for gifted students. In an effort to help expand her students’ horizons, she identified two gifted music students and drove them six hours to an honors’ band meet, but almost immediately after arriving, caught them smoking.
When she decided to dole out consequences by driving right back and calling their parents, naively thinking her act of tough love would be appreciated, she was met by a mother who screamed at Peterson, then defiantly handed her daughter a cigarette and lit it.
That was the culture of Granite Falls. The students took “a sick pride” in being from a town of losers, she said.
But the many challenges of her first year led her to realize something important, perhaps best exemplified by a holiday fund raiser that fell flat. She’d planned for students to make and sell simple holiday plaques. But almost no one showed up to help and those who did couldn’t even spell “holiday” or paint a snowman.
“You’d better know your students before you try to teach them something,” she says. “I’d assumed they knew how ‘holiday’ was spelled. I had assumed they could paint a snowman. But mostly, I had assumed these kids knew what excellence looks like. But they had never seen it.”
So she set out to make a difference.
The list of changes she wrought was impressive. She built up an elementary music program that started with 20 recorders and a few percussion instruments. Her students now participate in state and national competitions. She innovated with cross-curricular instruction, helping to teach math, English, science, and history through music.
But that doesn’t capture the half of it. Much of what she’s done can best be shared in anecdotes, like the story of Travis, a third grader who could barely read and write, spent much of the day in special education, and referred to himself as dumb.
“I think the only thing he liked about music was he didn’t have to hold that pencil,” she says. Then one day, he fixed a pencil sharpener that had stumped the janitors and Peterson for two years. It turned out he worked in his father’s garage on weekends. “The previous weekend, he’d earned $50 for fixing a carburetor. The kid’s a genius. He’d been in school for four years, and he thought of himself as dumb.”
From then on, she told the AU audience of new teachers, she’d call on Travis to explain how sound traveled. She’d ask him to fix the trumpets. She worked with other teachers to reach him through his own interests and talents. Travis quickly began achieving at grade level, in every subject.
To Peterson, that points out an important insight. Among the currently fashionable education buzzwords, as many of the AU graduate students in education know, are what is known as the new “three Rs.” Instead of reading, writing, and arithmetic, educators are speaking of “rigor, relevance, and relationship.”
That sounds great, Peterson said; but if you get the order wrong, none of it matters. Relationship isn’t just “a warm fuzzy to throw in at the end.” Relationship comes first. Only once she had the relationship with Travis could she understand what was relevant to him and how to reach him. And then, he could be motivated to achieve.
You never know who will reach a student, she said. It may not be the math teacher who inspires a student to finally do well in math. It may be the music teacher or the wood shop teacher, because they build a relationship through the student’s interests. Those subjects aren’t “extras.” They’re essential, because what matters first is building relationships.
It’s not about teaching to the test, she said. It’s about teaching to the Travises of the world. And that’s an insight that can make a difference for teachers whether they’re in a small town in rural Washington state or the heart of Washington, D.C.
