Opinion: How a Summer School Fellowship Opened the Door to My First Real Classroom Job

Since I was 16, I knew I wanted to be a teacher, so I was thrilled to pursue a teacher development program this summer as a junior at Virginia Tech.

Like so many before me, I decided to go into education because of a teacher — in my case, Hillary Hollandsworth, my high school English teacher, who inspired me to wrestle with what sort of positive change I’d like to see in the world and empowered me to dream of what a better world could look like.

I was accepted to the Uncommon Schools Summer Teaching Fellowship program and assigned to teach six high school students world history during summer school in Newark. I always knew I wanted to teach at a school that educates students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, so I was eager to learn more about the curriculum, instruction and classroom management. After seven weeks in the program, I’m fortunate to say that I wasn’t let down.

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I had tutored students before, but this was my first experience teaching in a classroom. I was overwhelmed during the first few days. My ice-breakers to get to know the students were a failure, and I was concerned they would think I was too dull and become disengaged. I tried to battle my fear by remembering the practical strategies for effective teaching I had learned in my training, such as how to prepare lessons and respond to students’ mistakes in the moment.

I asked my supervising teacher for guidance. She recommended allowing more time for students to talk with each other in pairs about complex questions that related to my lesson’s content. After making time for more peer-to-peer conversations, as well as having whole-class discussions, I found I was starting to reach the students. I experienced further success after putting in the time to build rapport with students through small acts, like greeting them in the hallway, as well as having lively discussions that gave them a chance to voice their own ideas around the academic content. These discussions were integral to improving student engagement, and it was at those times that I grew the most as a teacher.

One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned is that for whole-class discussions to be productive, students must have a depth of knowledge related to the topic beforehand and have precise guidelines on how to communicate during the discussion. If these prerequisites are met, the insights that emerge from students are surprisingly thoughtful and makes one reassess what young people are capable of understanding.

When students can see the relevance of what they’re learning and connect it to issues they deeply care about, they become passionate and thoughtful. The greatest example I experienced was during a discussion about nonviolent resistance movements and Mahatma Gandhi’s tactics. During the discussion on peaceful resistance, students connected Gandhi’s approach to the current forms of civil resistance that African Americans engage in around police brutality. One student said, “I used to think that violence had to be used. Now I feel like there really is another way.” Another student, reflecting on why Gandhi’s organizing was effective, brought to the attention of the class that “Black people used to be part of a strong community, now Black people are more going solo.” This led to a conversation about the importance of building strong communities and the opportunity to create solidarity among members of different races struggling for justice.

What amazed me even more was that this insightful discussion occurred while I was doing the least amount of speaking, just throwing out a question or occasionally reiterating what students had said. The program had taught me how to enable students to have highly productive discussions, by ensuring they have enough background knowledge and facilitating these conversations to ensure no student is dominating or left out. I gradually grew in my confidence and comfort level in leading the classroom and adding my own flaIr to what I taught.

I believe that teaching history is part of raising civically minded students. One example was our closing discussion on the Industrial Revolution. After lessons about the horrors of child labor and the abuse of women workers during that period, I asked my students during a discussion about what this history teaches in terms of developing and using technology for social good. To my astonishment, one announced to the class that the inequalities found in the Industrial Revolution occurred because of the lack of democratic input around developing and governing technology. One contemporary parallel they came up with is current issues around cellphones.

It was in moments like this that I felt most connected to my goals around civic education. Over time, as I became more experienced and received feedback from my instructional coach, I was able to help students recognize connections between the past and the present. I also grew in my ability to create a sense of community with my students and to respond to each student’s learning style. For example, some needed multiple verbal recaps of the information, while others needed extra time to read the documents we were studying.

After my training this summer, I am just as committed and proud of how much I have learned to become a better teacher. Now, I can say with pride, that I’m starting to follow in Ms. Hollandsworth’s footsteps.