Teaching with Tim

   The following statement, made by teacher/psychologist Haim Ginot, is ubiquitous in the schoolteacher world.  I’ve seen it on classroom walls, in the syllabi of Ed. classes, and on the pages of teaching manuals.  I will quote it in full, but I promise not to use it to launch into a treatise on the student-teacher relationship and its nature:

   “I’ve come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom.  It’s my personal approach that creates the climate.  It’s my daily mood that makes the weather.  As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous.  I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.  I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.  In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized or de-humanized.”

   Let me just say that, from my experience, this statement is very true.  When they function as a group, students are reflections of their own teacher’s behavior to a profound degree, and a teacher’s power of the emotional feel of his or her classroom is immense. 

   This same type of relationship-the group reflecting and reacting to the behavior of its leader, for better and for worse, exists between a country’s people and a country’s leader.  It is a more subtle and tenuous connection, trickier to observe than the teacher/class relationship, but it’s there, even (and sometimes especially) for those who claim to ignore politics or to despise the current President.    

   I was a pretty avid Obama-phile from the beginning-I have a bumper sticker and a T-shirt, I went door-to-door during the primary and attended a fundraiser during the general election-but I maintained a certain critical distance.  I thought Obama was easily the best candidate in the Democratic field, but I had my reservations: I don’t like his position on Israel, I think his positions on gay rights and environmental regulation are too weak, and he shouldn’t have reneged on his campaign promise that he would take public financing.  And these things are still problems, I suppose.  But as I watched the inauguration with my students last week, I felt that Obama briefly transcended policies and positions, that he really did become a sort of “Educator in Chief.”  He changed the emotional weather in our country.  Like the millions on the Mall, the 60 students crammed into our classroom were watching the inauguration with rapt attention.   Maybe they didn’t understand all of Obama’s speech, but they still sensed its importance.  “Just wait,” one student said.  “Maybe soon they’ll elect a Mexican.”  Because the man on the screen had dark skin, and he was in charge of the country, the students sitting in front of me were seeing themselves and their own potential differently. 

   I’ll try not to indulge in inauguration rhapsody here.  I’m sure everyone has heard enough of that from Chris Matthews, Brian Williams, Gwen Ifill, et. al.  (and let’s not forget NPR, which has been completely beside itself for weeks).  Obviously, it was not a perfect event-the botched oath, the recorded music, Obama’s nervous giggle while taking the stage-but something real and important happened.  The nation’s symbolic moral leader, its “teacher,” changed, and the emotional weather in our country changed, too.  I think that Lincoln and JFK, despite their personal flaws and political imperfections, have shown that this may be a President’s most memorable power: the power to set the tone of our national discourse.  My inner cynic suggests that Obama will turn out to be a pushover.  My inner tabloid addict suggests that Obama has a love child, keeps coke in his cufflinks, and wants to bomb Pakistan for obscure personal reasons.  My inner radical suggests that Obama is even more dangerous than Bush: a palatable persona to cover up the sins of our Evil Empire.  But for now I choose to ignore those voices and remain happily illusioned (opposite of disillusioned?).  I am happy believing that this new President, a thoughtful, well-read person who wrote poems in college and considered writing fiction for a living, who refers to segregation as “bitter swill” and speaks of fallen soldiers “whispering through the ages,” really will make the country a better place.  He calls us to community service and involvement in local politics, and it feels right.  I know that if I feel a desire to rise to the call, others might, too.

   Anyway, I still live in L.A. and teach Middle School… Here are shots from last weekend’s trip to Ensenada and this weekend’s hike with my kids in Malibu Creek State Park.  Good times both. 

An Ensenada street-the city was a strange mix of U.S. and Mexican influences

La Bufadora ("The Blowhole"), a methane vent off the coast of Baja, blows water 80+ feet in the air.

8th graders enjoy scrambling up a muddy hillside in Malibu Creek State Park, filming site of MASH and Planet of the Apes.

(PS:  Here are two fun articles on Obama as reader and Obama as writer.)