{"id":257,"date":"2021-06-09T14:18:42","date_gmt":"2021-06-09T21:18:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/dean.richards\/?p=257"},"modified":"2021-06-09T14:18:42","modified_gmt":"2021-06-09T21:18:42","slug":"teaching-with-love-a-conversation-with-columbias-dr-mary-ehrenworth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/dean.richards\/2021\/06\/09\/teaching-with-love-a-conversation-with-columbias-dr-mary-ehrenworth\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching with Love: A Conversation with Columbia’s Dr. Mary Ehrenworth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Can you tell us about one of the teachers in your life that had the greatest impact on you as a student?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The teacher when I was young was my English teacher Mrs. Hodge – she was my teacher in 8th grade.  She was the first teacher ever in the history of the district to do book clubs.  It was so radical!  No one had ever done anything like that!  In my district, as early as the third grade, we all read Charlotte\u2019s Web<\/em> and then we all read Little House on the Prairie<\/em> or something like that.  The fact this woman came in and said, \u201cWould you be interested in choosing your own books to read? We didn\u2019t even know what to say!  \u201cYeah. I guess.\u201d  It was such a beautiful thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And she also did something that was incredibly radical at the time, which is she let us choose who we wanted to read with.  Which was such a relief because I was in middle school and I was terrified of half the kids in my class.  Half of them I really adored, but half I was terrified of, so the idea that she would let me choose what I wanted to read AND who I wanted to read with was just so terribly revolutionary.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that was part of the reason I fell in love with her – because of course you fall in love with your teachers – and then I fell in love with English, and then I fell in love with teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why did you decide to dedicate your life to education?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike some of you who chose your careers really early, I did not do that when I was young. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was actually finishing a doctorate in art history, and working at the Metropolitan Museum and teaching in a very privileged school.  It was such a privileged existence – I walked across Central Park to go to school; I spent most of my days with kids and in the museum looking at beautiful things.  One day, I just happened to be invited to a salon with Maxine Greene, and you might not know her but she has an amazing book called The Dialectic of Freedom<\/em>.  She was the first woman philosopher at any Ivy League University, and she was this amazing woman.  She was in her 80\u2019s and she ran the Lincoln Center for Education and somehow, by the end of the salon, she invited me to take the next day off from school.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She picked me up in the Lincoln Towncar and she took me to two schools in the Bronx – one was Riverdale Country Day which was like the school I was teaching at – a very elite, privileged, independent school.   And the other was a high school less than half a mile away that had something like 261 kids in its freshman class, and it graduated 13 of them.  It had bathrooms that were always locked or doors that were always left open so kids had no privacy.  There were metal detectors.  There was not a book in the school that kids could read.  Maxine finished the day with me and then she literally said, \u201cMary, I think you need to do something more meaningful with your life.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went home that night and dropped out of my doctor program and re-enrolled in Education and Curriculum Theory at Columbia. And that was it.  I decided that I wanted to work inside education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you tell us about 1 or 2 of your biggest ah-ha moments around inequity in education?  When and where did that awareness begin for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That episode with Maxine Green was one of them.  I was in my late 20\u2019s – it\u2019s amazing the things you just don\u2019t know, or are blind to…some of us live these lives of privilege and I did not know that NYC has some of the most segregated schools in the country despite Brown vs. Board of Education.  That day with Maxine was one of the most eye-opening days for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a second moment, fast forward five years later and I\u2019m in Washington D.C. and I\u2019m with a whole group of principals.  We\u2019d been touring schools together trying to figure out how to give feedback to teachers.  And there\u2019s this boy whose desk is off in a corner, by the side of the room.  I ask why he is separated from the rest and I expect to hear that he has an IEP and he works best in a quieter space, or to find out he has chosen to locate his desk that way.  But instead the principal turns to me and says, \u201cOh.  Well, he\u2019s homesexual.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was twelve years ago!  This was not fifty years ago; this was TWELVE years ago and it was just so heart-wrenching.  And the bigger thing that was so heart-wrenching is that the people around me – the people that knew – didn\u2019t protest.  That was a huge eye-opener.  Inside public schools, there is huge amount of work to do in terms of equity, but also in terms of compassion.  Also in helping affirm kids\u2019 identities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think I thought that because I did my doctorate in queer theory and in gender theory, and I had done a lot of work with Critical Race Theory at the time that I understood the issues.  But this was now 18 years ago.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For all of us in education there is a whole new generation of people to know and read.  We need to know Abram Kandid, Betinna Love, Gholdy Muhammad, Zaretta Hammond.  There is so much new thinking in Critical Race Theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be alive and to be an educator now means you\u2019ve got to be reading again.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In your opinion, what was the watershed moment for turning our attention towards equity in education?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a question I find hard to think about.  I think about Judith Butler and how she talks about the mundane violence that happens every single day in schools.  And Betinna Love\u2019s amazing book We Want to Do More than Survive<\/em> about abolitionist teaching. There are so many micro-aggressions that are happening every single day.  Sometimes in the hallways and in the caterias, sometimes between adults and children, sometimes between children and children.   It\u2019s not like I look back on one single political moment as I think about the humiliation and suffering that kids should not have to endure in school, but do.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are a few key teaching moves you would love to see happen in every classroom in America?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first thing I would say is Belle Hook\u2019s idea of teaching with love.  For this job, you have to love kids and you have to love the work you are doing.  If you do, then that love is contagious and it\u2019s transformative.  If you love books, your kids will love books.  If you love reading, your kids will learn to love reading.  If you love writing, your kids will learn to love writing.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Love is at the center of teaching being a beautiful job and if you stop feeling that love, then it\u2019s time to take a break for a little while if you can.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other key teaching move would be the notion of mentorship, of seeing ourselves as being on our kids\u2019 sides.  How are we mentoring their growth as writers? How are we mentoring their growth as thinkers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We need to be open with them that we are learning all the time too, and it\u2019s hard.  When you share with them that you\u2019re reading a book and it\u2019s hard, just like they\u2019re reading a book and it\u2019s hard, that communicates to them that we\u2019re all on the same learning path instead of communicating to them we are the experts and they are the apprentices.  We, too, are always learning and that role of mentorship is really helpful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are some of the pedagogical lessons you have learned from Covid-based education you hope to see brought forward to in-person classrooms?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That teachers and kids can innovate at incredibly radical rates that we didn\u2019t know we could.  Is it causing huge psychological strain on every kid and adult?  Of course it is! Are we exhausted and overwhelmed?  Yes, we are!  At the same time, there are things to keep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was working with a classroom of fifth graders the other day.  They are back in school now, but they have decided that they like meeting with their book club virtually.  The group decided they are going to meet on Wednesday nights from 7-7:30.  And these kids – using choice and agency to make choices about what will work best for them – is a beautiful thing.  They are recording their sessions and sending 2-3 minute clips to their teacher. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group next to them was made up of mostly language learners and they have decided to meet asynchronously.  They are using a Padlet, and they are making notes to each other that way. That is working so well for them.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two years ago, we would have said, \u201cYou are meeting Wednesday at 10:30 because that\u2019s when I have English class.\u201d  But the notion that kids and teachers can give each other more independence, but can also use technology in such a way to give students more agency, has been an eye-opener.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are things we should have been doing before but we just weren\u2019t, because we didn\u2019t have to.  Paul Anderson, who is one of the great thinkers and leaders in science in education, co-led an institute with me at the start of the pandemic.  He said, \u201cConstraint leads to innovation.\u201d  I was really struck by that.  There were so many constraints in Covid, but out of those constraints, there was a lot of innovation.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other thing that has been super interesting – and I would be curious to find out what kind of experiences you had in Bend – was that there were some kids who had been very quiet in class, but when learning went virtual, they found ways to be heard.  In virtual education, there were ways to democratize talk by pulling out the social strains.  Much of that was about situational introvertism.  And we want to keep looking at that, and thinking about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then the last would comes from the fact that a lot of classrooms I work with are very writing heavy.  And that\u2019s a good thing most of the time; that\u2019s how kids become strong writers.  Tony Wagner (The Global Achievement Gap) <\/em> has shown writing is one of the seven most important skills you can have in your professional lifetimes.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because we were virtual, there were a lot more kids explaining things orally.  You might think that, if you had them writing about something in science, you then assume they don\u2019t know that much about it because of what they wrote; but when they spoke about the subject, it turned out they knew a lot.  When you write a literary essay, that is not capturing the same exact of understanding as when you talk about a book.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using more talk activities to help kids practice their writing, and access what they have to say, is a valuable lesson for us to think about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who are some of your favorite authors discussing issues in education today.  Are there any texts you would especially recommend?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For high school teachers, my team has been reading Felicia Rose Chavez\u2019s book The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop <\/em> and she\u2019s writing part memoir and part recommendation about what she would like to see changed in writing workshop at secondary and college.  She\u2019s writing about her experiences teaching writing at the university, but everything she\u2019s writing about we\u2019ve inherited at the high school level.  How can you make the teaching of writing more invitational and more transformative for more young people.  It\u2019s really humbling and really beautiful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My other recommendation is Gholdy Muhammad\u2019s Cultivating Genius<\/em>.  I was sort of forced to read it twice – the first time I read it, I got everything out of it I was already comfortable with.  The second time I read it, I began to realize there were many things that were challenging some of my own teaching norms.  She teaches us that every kid has some kind of literary heritage that we should be bringing back into classrooms.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any final words of advice for teachers, Mary?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teachers should not be so hard on themselves.  Teachers have taught in extraordinarily versatile ways for a year and a half now – and it\u2019s exhausting.  There have been moments of real beauty but sometimes they\u2019re hard to see because you have in your mind all the things you used to do.  Focus your mind not so much on going back, but on going forward.  There are a lot of different ways a classroom can look, and there are a lot of different ways students can learn.  Forgive yourself and appreciate these small beauties you have created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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