I’m writing the final chapters of my novel about a Connecticut teacher who moves to Texas for her husband’s job and has to deal with micromanagement and censorship by her administrators. Although that’s never happened to me—I was lucky enough to teach in a period of relative autonomy and few culture wars—I realize that bits and pieces of my own experience certainly have “leaked in.” I find myself looking at the current climate in schools, even in “woke” Illinois where we live, and wondering what it would be like to teach now. That’s led me to explore what drove me to teach in the first place, what I believe is important for teaching and learning.

I ended my years in the public schools a very different teacher from my earliest efforts. I wrote about that evolution in the previous entry, but there my focus was on the ridiculous concept that anybody can walk into a classroom and teach effectively without good training – thanks, Wyoming! [see previous blog]

Today I find myself preoccupied with the importance of fostering critical thinking. In my novel, my protagonist routinely gets in trouble because she encourages students to think and question, and parents and administrators feel she’s displacing the parents and telling students what to think. Not at all. The best teachers encourage students to think for themselves. They don’t want their learners to parrot their parents or their teachers. I believe that the main purposes of teaching include helping learners to read deeply, to understand how to find and evaluate information, and to develop critical thinking habits of mind that help them draw their own conclusions. Too many use the culture wars as a blockade for that kind of teaching and learning.

The only time I enjoyed history in my public schools happened sophomore year, when Mr. Vance challenged us to read books like The Armada about the attempt of the Spanish Armada to invade England in 1588. Garrett Mattingly tells the story of the people involved; Mr. Vance urged us to look at what they did and why they did it, then what we could learn from that. The rest of my social studies classes required memorization and recitation of facts without much context and purpose. Discovering political science classes in college, classes that focused on the why and how and what we can learn from that, was a revelation to me. I loved being encouraged to make those connections.

Later in my career, I pushed students to look at the big ideas that arose in the literature we were reading. What does it mean to be a good person? Do we have enough free will? What makes a society just? How does power corrupt? And so many more. While other English teachers gave multiple choice and short answer semester exams, I’d select one big idea and ask my students to trace it through the works they’d read. I allowed them to prepare and bring a 3 x 5” card with notes [but not a magnifying glass!] to the exam. They never knew which big idea I’d choose, and they often met with fellow students to discuss and evaluate the works, exploring all the big ideas they could find. Reading their responses showed me that they’d learned about the world from the literature, that they could use those learnings to be better at asking and answering questions themselves.

State standards developed with teacher input can be invaluable in building a common core of understanding, but teaching to the test does not encourage critical thinking. Too often teachers focus their teaching on improving student performance on a prepackaged exam rather than enhancing their understanding. This approach doesn’t even allow enough time to develop critical thinking skills. If we want a thoughtful populace, we need to support teachers who teach students to ask questions and to develop and be able to justify their answers.

I was driven to write my teaching protagonist’s story to ease my own frustration with the wrong-headed direction of public education. A form of useful therapy, the writing also has pushed me to be clear in my beliefs about teaching and learning. I miss the classroom. I miss those “ah ha” moments my students sometimes had. I wish I could believe that such efforts are still practiced and valued for many students now and in the future, but news stories from too many states suggest that’s a pipe dream.