Carlos was the first in his extended family to graduate from college.  He was one of my advisees.  I found out a few years ago from Student Records and the Registrar’s Office that once a student is assigned to you as an undergraduate that student stays with you until you retire.  If the student comes back for graduate work, you are the person they contact for advising.  Carlos came to see me as soon as he transferred in from Muskegon Community College, met with me on a fairly regular basis during his time at GVSU and we have maintained contact on and off since he graduated.

When I first visited his classroom in 2008 at Muskegon High School, he was somewhat isolated in a building across a courtyard from the main high school building.  His classroom was an open-air affair on the second floor of the library.  Like many teachers he started his time at Muskegon with no permanent classroom.  He was a “traveling” teacher. He had to organize his lessons for the day and carry or push his teaching materials around the building from classroom to classroom. I have met no teachers in my career who prefer to move from room to room. If you forget something or find that the lesson needs a change in materials you cannot simply walk over to a shelf or to your filing cabinets and retrieve what you need.

At that time in his career Carlos said he arrived at school around 5:30 AM every day to prep for a 7:45 start and he left school at 3:30 or 4:30. This daily regimen did not count wrestling season.  Carlos wrestled in high school at Muskegon High School and he was proud to show me his wrestling record that still adorned the trophy case near the gym. During wrestling season Carlos spent 80 hours a week at school.

Like many teachers Carlos greeted his students individually when they entered his cubicle/classroom.  He had two preps, U.S. History and Geography, mostly freshmen students, and Global Issues, mostly sophomores and juniors.  He told me that the administration talked him into using the “History Alive!” curriculum and what hooked him and his students on that curriculum was a “trench warfare” simulation.  I used this particular simulation in my methods class several semesters.  The basic set-up was to create facing trench lines from the desks, have the students make paper wad “ammunition” and at a signal, one side would stand up from behind the trench line and throw their paper wads.  The results were “devastating” when the student/soldiers cleared from their cover.  They were open targets.  The telling moment came when the other trench was ordered to stand.  Knowing what happened to their classmates it was easy to tell by their body language that they did not want to expose themselves to “certain death.”  Lesson learned.  Carlos said that after the simulation his students “nailed” the essay about trench warfare in World War I.

Carlos exhibited a good sense of humor with his students.  He described his own teaching style as “teacher as coach.”  Carlos used multiple methods to focus his students’ attention, from “ssshing” to asking them to quiet down to the “teacher stare” and the silent treatment.  Each method worked to refocus his classes.

Muskegon High School at that time was set up on a regular semester schedule with fifty-five minute class periods.  Carlos complimented his students on their behavior when it was appropriate for him to do so and he made a statement that “learning can be fun or it cannot be fun.”  In other words, learning is what you make it.  In the group activity that followed Carlos gave good instructions and then repeated and reinforced the instructions throughout the activity.  He did announce a deadline for the students to do research but ended up doubling the amount of time, mostly due to the fact that he gave each of the groups his personal attention and was not able to make it around to all the groups in the time limit he had set.

Carlos’ classroom was outfitted with a computer on his desk, a wall-mounted television and bookshelves.  The bookshelves held his college notebooks, almanacs and old encyclopedias.  He said he needed to refer to his college notebooks frequently because the older text did not provide the detailed information he wanted to share with his students.  The school district did not purchase the History Alive! text that accompanied the teaching materials that Carlos used. More than once I have encountered teachers in school districts with fewer financial resources not buying teacher support materials.  This situation extends to not having enough textbooks for every student to take home, just a classroom set, to having textbooks that are severely outdated and many times books that are falling apart at the seams.

Carlos’ classes were predominantly African-American with a small number of Hispanic and Caucasian students.  There was a slight change in the ethnic diversity of his classes throughout the day, as there was with the gender make-up of the individual class periods.  It was obvious that Carlos had a good working relationship with all his students.  He joked around but they all knew when he meant business.

At one point in Carlos’ second hour class it was obvious that a student simply wanted Carlos to give him an answer to a question.  Carlos’ response was, “You need to meet Mr. Webster,” in other words the student needed to take on the responsibility of finding the information on his own and not have Carlos just give him the information.  Through my years of contact with Carlos it has been apparent that he wants his students to be independent learners, responsible for their actions and their own knowledge accretion.

During lunch that day in 2008 Carlos mused about his job and his future.  He said that less than 50% of his students were college bound and they came to school with multiple problems in their lives.  He also mentioned the district’s declining enrollment, problems with meeting “Adequate Yearly Progress,” teacher “buy-outs” and re-staffing.  At this point in Carlos’ career he was up for tenure the following year.  Pre-tenure time is always unsettling for teachers.  After having spent three years on your profession, you might, for very little explained reasoning, find yourself out of a job.  At that time in 2008 there were very few open teaching positions.  Michigan was losing hundreds of thousands of people and Muskegon had one of the highest unemployment rates in the state.  On top of that Carlos was piloting the History Alive! curriculum, basically on his own, with no teacher support materials and no real coordination between faculty. On top of that the district had no real curriculum overall and what the teachers were doing was not aligned to the state content expectations.  Carlos’ one saving grace was because he was piloting the curriculum there were no common assessments that he had to use based on what the rest of the social studies staff was doing. Carlos also related to me that last year, on a Friday, midway through the year, he was informed he was going to be teaching a new class on the following Monday.  A staff member had suddenly left.  Here he was in the early part of his career, stressed about tenure, working 80-hour weeks during wrestling season and saddled with a new class preparation.  Beginning teachers have enough stress without facing that kind of scenario.  Carlos’ situation was better than some beginning teachers in that he had only two preparations.

At one point in a class Carlos was called away for an I.E.P. meeting.  A substitute walked into the room and in that time with Carlos away a “lock down drill” was announced.  I was an unwitting participant in a “lock down drill” when I was making a regular observation for one of my education seminar students in the previous year.  In that case I was outside of the school, and familiar with the fact that most school buildings lock their doors during the day, I tried to enter by pushing a button with a camera eye on me.  There was no response so I tried another door on the main building.  Still nothing.  Based on my visit with Carlos in 2008 I knew that his building was connected to the main building by a sky bridge.  Innocently I walked over to that set of doors and found one open.  I walked down the hall and was headed toward the staircase on the left when I heard a voice ask me, “How did you get in here?”  I turned to see an armed, uniformed officer and a staff member walking down the hall toward me.  Without moving I explained the open door and where I was trying to go.  I had my Grand Valley State badge on my jacket.  The officer thanked me for the information on the door, but said I had to leave the building until the “all clear” signal was given.  In a few minutes I heard an announcement over an outdoor speaker and I again pressed the door entry button and was granted admission this time.  As I entered the office the secretary had a big smile on her face and explained that she had followed me since I left my vehicle in the parking lot and witnessed all my attempts to enter the building.  Funny for her, a little disquieting for me.

Back to the lock down drill in 2008.  As the drill proceeded the librarian walked into the classroom cubicle and explained to the students that they were supposed to go to the stairway in a real lockdown and that they would be protected there in a locked stairwell.  The substitute had no idea that was the protocol and a student asked, “What if this had been real?”  Great question.  How does the administration know and keep track of substitutes and how are the substitutes apprised of lock down drills? With the number of subs in a building in an urban area every day there is bound to be a communications breakdown.

Carlos returned from his meeting after ten or fifteen minutes.  The sub was able to get some work out of the students, but probably not the amount of work that Carlos would have in that time.  No real surprise there.

2008 Video Interview

Defining Success

Carlos’ immediate answer to how he defined success in the classroom was, “I think first and foremost, the relationships with my students.”  He quickly followed that priority with how well his students understood what he was teaching and how well he knew the content.  He added that, “for me, for success, if they are living up to expectations that they had and that I had…” (Flores’ video transcript, 2008, p.1)  Based on the fact that he taught two preps for different grade levels he also mentioned that having students more than one year helped in building relationships with students.

Content, 2008

The second part of the success question I asked in 2008 was Grand Valley State’s role in the teachers’ success.  Carlos answered by saying that some of his success he attributed to the fact that studying did not come easy for him and that hard study helped him learn.  He added that he was a thirsty learner and he was motivated to learn as much as he could.  His lack of an educational environment growing up provided the spark to learn as much as he could.

Like other former students in this study, Carlos was using his college notebooks to supplement his textbooks and other teaching materials.  Many of the teachers in the study had their unit plans from the teacher-assisting seminar on their bookshelves, as well as content and pedagogy class notebooks.

Strategies and Methods, 2008

Another feature of Carlos’ college preparation that he credited with his success was the amount of writing he had to do for his college classes.  Carlos credited his SWS (Supplemental Writing Skills) classes with improving his writing and being able to evaluate his students’ writing.  Again, he related the impact of the trench warfare exercise through the History Alive! curriculum and how that process helped students understand and explain the content.  It was obvious that Carlos knew that writing is a process and he gave his students multiple opportunities to sharpen their writing skills.

Carlos related that he felt confident and well prepared for the mechanics and processes for running his classroom based on his courses from the College of Education, things like bell ringers and classroom management.  When asked whether he had time to work with his students on historical thinking and why those processes mattered when studying history he said that was step 47 in all the other things that he was required to do by the administration and the state (P.6, Flores video transcript, 2008) and dealing with the challenges of working at an urban high school with students who brought multiple problems to their learning.  Carlos thought the History Alive! curriculum approached historical thinking through the use of visual artifacts and documents but that he didn’t have time to really develop in his students a solid foundation for historical thinking.

Grand Valley has consistently placed their teacher candidates in two different schools and at different grade levels for the two semesters they are in the field practice teaching.  In Carlos’ experience it was very beneficial to be placed first in a middle school in Grand Haven and then at his home high school in Muskegon.  Carlos was an exception with his student teaching placement.  Seldom are students placed in their home high schools, even if there appears to be a future opportunity for employment there.  Carlos related that he gained good experience dealing with problem students on a smaller scale with less problems in the Grand Haven middle school, and that experience helped him apply those skills on a much broader and more numerous level at Muskegon High School.

Pearls of Wisdom, 2008

At the end of every video interview in both 2008 and 2015 I asked the graduates to offer “Pearls of Wisdom” for our current students with the thought that I would share these videos with my students every semester.  I have carried through with this thought and my current students commented favorably to the point that they would like access to all the videos from both sabbaticals.  Working with the Digital Archives in the Grand Valley State University Library those videos have been uploaded to a database and soon the transcripts will also be available.

Here were Carlos’ thoughts in 2008:

Carlos:  I guess your personality.  Keep that on your front burner.  Having a positive attitude and when I say that, the best thing I can say is be able to laugh at yourself.  If you can do that in your classroom, you can provide a classroom where people can feel comfortable and they’re not afraid.  I think that there’s the best possibility for discipline.  If you can laugh and tell them a story that makes them laugh at you and it opens up a comfort zone that I find that is one of my biggest tools so they can talk and it’s not something that they can’t say because “it’s the teacher”.  So, they can ask questions and that’s a big part of my classroom atmosphere.  It’s something that’s very hard to do and I spend a lot of time planning.  It’s hard with a new teacher.  You get asked to do a lot of things.  “Do you want to do this, do that?”  We tend not to say “no” because we want to show our value because we do these things.  Working 80 hours a week can affect how you do things.  You’ve got to find time to plan things and it’s not always easy.  Planning and your classroom atmosphere are my biggest suggestions (are very important).

Richard:  And you’re saying, like you said before, Sundays is pretty much prep time, especially since during football season (he coaches football and wrestling)…

Carlos:  Yeah, Sunday I’m in here correcting papers.

Richard:  And you say, typically you are here til 3 or 3:30 every day and your last class is out at 1:30 basically.

Carlos:  Yeah, I get here pretty early in the morning, trying to get some work done to usually 3:30 or 4, sometimes later.  After 4 you kind of get a little punchy.  And one day on the weekend…now that the season is over, I come in on Saturdays and Sundays.  Of course, during the (wrestling) season, Saturdays I’m gone, Sundays I’m back up here trying to catch up for the week.  So, it makes it tough sometimes.

Richard:  Anything else that you would like pass on to future teachers?

Carlos:  You know, it’s a hard job.  I wouldn’t say it is not, but it’s a very hard job, but when you see success in a kid, it’s cool.  I have a kid that is going to Michigan and I see him on Saturdays (plays for the football team) and I don’t regret helping him write those essays to get into Michigan.  I have a kid wrestling at community (college) right now and I’ve had a number of kids come in happy that they’ve got into college and I’ve only been here 3 years, and I can’t imagine someone who has been here 15 (years), what they have seen.  You know there’s a lot of bad, there’s a lot of down things that can wear on your spirits and I promise you they will.  Like your life gets in the way and you know it takes away from you…it’s not just a job…it becomes a life style for you, but to see a kid at Western or a junior college, that’s good stuff.  It’s quality…it keeps you coming in the next day.  When the times get tough, they do, I promise you they will, when you see success it kind of builds you back up for why you are here.  It’s not to cover content or do good on a test…it’s something bigger and that’s why I’m still here. (P. 9, Carlos Video Transcript, March 2008)

2015: Orchard View High School

In the fall of 2015, I found Carlos at Orchard View High School.  He was the JAG/MIS coordinator.  This program was a combination of a federal program with an outdated curriculum combined with Michigan Works. “Jobs for America’s Graduates (JAG) is a state-based national non-profit organization dedicated to preventing dropouts among young people who are most at-risk.  In more than three decades of operation, JAG has delivered consistent, compelling results – helping nearly three-quarters of a million young people stay in school through graduation, pursue postsecondary education and secure quality entry-level jobs leading to career advancement opportunities.”^[1]  Michigan Works! is a workforce development program in the state of Michigan.^[2]  Carlos heavily revised the JAG curriculum to better suit the needs of his students at Orchard View.

Carlos explained to me that he left his old high school for two reasons: 1.) because he saw standardized testing as the wrong way to measure teaching and learning in the classroom and 2.) because of salary issues and workload.  Carlos negotiated his job with JAG/MIS and apparently received better pay and benefits than he did at MHS, although I did not push him for details about the pay and benefit differential.  Similar to Muskegon Carlos saw poverty as the biggest challenge for his students.  His class sizes at Orchard View were small, about 15 students or so, but he thought if he could coordinate better with the office, he might get more students enrolled in the program.  He admitted that his teaching style with the students in the program might not work for other teachers.  The students were laid back, but Carlos accentuated organization as one of the foundations for success in life.  Along with that organization came a definite routine for Mondays. Carlos’ program focused on organization skills and finding students jobs, both for the summer and during the school year.

Beyond the two reasons stated above for why Carlos left Muskegon High School he told me that several of his students there had been killed, including a young woman, and others were in prison now.  At the same time, he related a story about a former female student who called the day she graduated with honors from Howard University and was now working for National Public Radio in China.  That said, Carlos missed teaching content, especially U.S. History.  Now he teaches personal economics.  He misses coaching, especially since he rebuilt the wrestling program during his time at Muskegon.

Early in the first class I observed Carlos set goals for the week.  The students had to achieve something and they had to verbally commit to achieving that goal.  The students organized notebooks and presented them for Carlos to check them.  Literally this was a “check”.  The students had to “balance” their achievements and failures for the week.  Carlos walked through the class as the students added up their “salary” for the week.  One of the students was dozing off in the back of the classroom and Carlos suggested that this student’s goal for the week might be staying awake in class.  There was humor in Carlos’ voice when he made this statement but I could tell he was serious at the same time.

One of Carlos’ students was currently taking classes at Muskegon Community College and Carlos was planning to take his class to MCC in the next few days so that they might become accustomed to the idea of going to school after high school.  The class makes other college visits too. Carlos wanted a college education to mean something to his students. He wanted more for them. He hoped that they were focused on more than a diploma and they challenge of a sizable debt. He was hoping that his students, through more education would escape the cycle of poverty that comes with little education and a minimum wage job with no future.

I was involved in a similar program one year at Grand Valley State University with Grand Rapids Public Schools and freshmen involving Project Citizen, a program developed by the Center for Civic Education^[3].  In that program inner city students came to the Grand Valley State campus in Allendale to present research on a public policy matter that concerned their schools.  Many of these students had never set foot on a college campus and neither had their extended family.  One female student remarked to me at the end of the day of presentations that she had decided to attend college and hoped someday to become a lawyer.  She admitted that before her involvement in this program she had never thought that that college was an option for her.

Carlos took many steps to insure that his students had a chance in life.  He would pick students up and bring them to and from school and from their jobs.  He told me later that he had some funds to buy an occasional backpack and other items for his students. He maintained contact with the students over the summer through the jobs program and he told me that these summer jobs have led to school year jobs and jobs after graduation.

Besides college visits, Carlos brought in guest speakers to discuss careers.  He suggested to the students that he might invite a person to speak about computer coding as a career, something that might appeal to all the online gamers in the class. At this point in the class I glanced back at the sleeping student in the back of the room and he was now filling out his paperwork.

There was much kidding back and forth between Carlos and his students throughout the day, but also there were obvious signs of respect that went in both directions.