I do love Dartmouth. I love seeing the tower above the treeline as I approach exit 13 on 91. I love the quiet reverence of the Tower Room. I love conversations about theories and books and politics and other intellectual matter over dinner at Food Court. I love learning here; some of the courses I have taken have truly changed me. I am learning how to question, how to think, how to reason, how to argue, and I am truly grateful to Dartmouth for that. But, that said, it is just beyond Dartmouth where I was really educated.
Did you know that just 20 miles north on I-91 things are different? There, hunting isn't just sport, Take Back Vermont is a campaign with consequences beyond the intellectual, and poverty is real. There, they didn't care much that I was a Dartmouth student. All that really mattered there was that I learned how to teach.
A teaching internship anywhere is a tricky thing. As much preparation as you get beforehand, you don't know a damn thing when you first set foot in that classroom. Twenty-six kids are scared, excited, happy, fighting, laughing, crying, or sick, and all the Ivy League education in the world won't get them to listen to you. But, when your cooperating teacher walks in, they shut up. You may hate this cooperating teacher, you may have read somewhere that discipline is pedagogically unsound, but you're sharing his classroom, they're still not listening to you, and his discipline works. You begin to question everything you ever learned, you begin to hate the Education Department for ever putting you in this position, and you begin to panic, because in less than 15 weeks for five whole days you will have these 26 hellions to yourself.
First, I learned the small things: how to fill out one of those Scholastic Books order forms, how to pass out snack milk, why lines are important, what faculty arguments to avoid, and what to do when a child handcuffs himself to a tree (it's best just to avoid that situation). And, little by little, I started to address the bigger issues of discipline, motivation, cooperation, and subject areas. As I started to get comfortable, so did my kids. I heard stories of moose with hooves the size of dinner plates, I saw divorce and death through the eyes of my kids, I learned to throw a football, I met parents and siblings, I learned to recognize the signs of abuse and neglect, I grew to like hearing "Miss T, Miss T, come here I need you." The hellions turned into real kids with real problems and real hopes, and my cooperating teacher turned into a long-haired, ex-hippie saint. I made it through my five solo days, and, with the help of the Education Department, I became a teacher (who still has a lot to learn).
And then do you know what starts to happen after your teaching internship is over, when you return to "real life?" You begin to resent the college that sits in its ivory tower and argues the existence of the teacher prep program. You begin to fear that the administration sees research as the only priority. You begin to worry that the college will stop educating and only produce. You begin to hate that a committee so removed from the Education Department and teaching and students and me --a committee that I am not allowed to join -- presumes that it can know what is best for the department. You begin to grow appalled that a committee can't see just 20 miles up I-91 to a classroom that educated me.
Teaching. That's what this Education Department debate comes down to, when it's cleared of political rhetoric and bullshit. Dartmouth, is teaching too pre-professional for you? Is having fifth graders looking to me for their education not academic enough? Am I not well-rounded, even though I can teach math while finding out why Stacy comes to school with black-eyes, or teach social studies while showing why the blood and guts of war is scary, or teach language arts while controlling an argument that could lead to punches and keeping an eye on the leaky roof, or teach science in a school district riddled with politics and tension?
We breathed a collective sigh of relief when word of last year's ed department review came back: "The department should be strengthened." No more feelings of illegitimacy, no more need to justify my interest in education, no more anxiety of supporting a "dying" department, no more wondering how and where and when I will learn to teach.
But we must have been too hasty, for I still have to justify my teaching experience last term. I have to justify my education to my college because Dartmouth can't see just beyond itself.
