Same as It Never Was: Notes on a Teacher’s Return to the Classroom

by Gregory Michie, Gloria Ladson-Billings (Foreword)

After a decade as an education professor, Greg Michie decided to return to his teaching roots. He went back to the same Chicago neighborhood, the same public school, and the same grade level and subject he taught in the 1990s. But much had changed—both in schools and in the world outside them. Same As It Never Was chronicles Michie’s efforts to navigate the new realities of public schooling while also trying to rediscover himself as a teacher. Against a backdrop of teacher strikes and anti-testing protests, the movement for Black lives and the deepening of anti-immigrant sentiment, this book invites readers into an award-winning teacher’s classroom as he struggles to teach toward equity and justice in a time where both are elusive for too many children in our nation’s schools. Book

Genres: Education, Nonfiction

168 pages, Paperback

Published August 16, 2019

About the author

Gregory Michie is a public school teacher in Chicago and senior research associate at the Center for Policy Studies and Social Justice at Concordia University Chicago. He is the bestselling author of Holler If You Hear Me (2nd ed.), See You When We Get There, and We Don’t Need Another Hero.

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

3/10/23: Reread for a English teaching methods course, and he'll zoom in next week for half an hour. He's a full time teacher! So We read this because we in my shop had a strike this spring, and one of the conditions of Greg Michie's return to teaching middle school was that the Chicago Publis Schools had a big and nasty strike and he talks about that, and also union activity as central to Chicago teaching. He's an inspiration, as usual, as a progressive social studies and English teacher, a daily presence on social media. Teaching and learning in times of crisis.

9/18/21: Third read with an English teaching methods class, set once again in a time of turmoil, the pandemic, climate change, economic challenges, psychological stress/depression/anxiety and extremism. But this book makes it clear that teaching is never just siting calmly and drilling information into kids's heads. It's always crisis, in the world, in kids's lives, or at the very least many of them.

2/18/20: Second read with another English teaching methods class, set once again in a time of turmoil, with the union on the verge of a strike over issues of health and safety. The story is set in a time of Michie's return to teaching in the midst of a strike where former mayor Rahm Emmanuel figured as villain, and where Michie's kids in Chicago are central.

Original review 8/30/20: Greg Michie taught Social Studies and Language Arts (film, reading) in a south side Chicago middle school in the nineties and was recognized for his accomplishments with a Golden Apple Award from the state of Illinois, which in part granted him a year off teaching (which makes as much sense as suspending kids for skipping school, though it’s a kind of inverse of that). He decided to go to grad school, wrote a dissertation based on his own learning to teach that emerged into a book, Holler if You Hear Me, a fabulous book. Distinguishing features of this more recent book and his work in general are commitments to social justice teaching (which means, among other things, privileging the needs of kids over scores on standardized tests) and brutal self-honesty about his own struggles and the nature of the challenges (and joys) in the work. He doesn't identify himself as some hero, as in Dangerous Minds or any of those romanticized Hollywood fantasies.

In Michie’s next decade, with his newly-minted PhD in hand, he became a professor of teacher education, though he never felt completely comfortable there, and missed his kids, so he made the (very rare) decision to return to his middle school classroom. Why very rare? Well, as opposed to the view of those fairy tales you most often see about teaching, working in an urban public school classroom is a lot of work! Non-stop, usually something like 6o hours a week of work, some weeks. But thousands do it, because they care, and Michie returned because he does.

So what was different, this time around? Michie found there was even more testing-driven instruction (test scores as a primary form of "data") than he had recalled, pushing against his student-centered principles, and he found himself in the middle of a city-wide teacher strike amidst the expansion of profit-driven, anti-union charter schools, even as fifty Chicago Public Schools were closed by Rahm Emanuel. So why go back and teach?! Who needs this neo-liberal profiteering bs? And yet, there were the kids, that he tells moving stories about, making it clear that in spite of the challenges, he is in the right place.

I read this with my fall Intro to English Education class, and many of my students now follow him on Twitter, where is very active. If you want a little glimpse of hope for the future of schooling and putting kids first, check this guy out.

Greg's a friend of mine, he comes into my classes, but he didn't pay me for this review, though I will ask him for a beer when the Covid clears.

[Rose Peterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Something about reading Gregory Michie feels like coming home to me. After just finishing How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi, I can't help but compare the two: while Kendi challenges, Michie confirms, and certainly we need both. I first read Holler if You Hear Me in college and heard him speak a few miles away. At the time, I didn't think much of it, but in retrospect, I can trace my own career path to some of the things he said in that very lecture.

I cannot emphasize how much I appreciate Michie's writing because he is a real teacher who teaches at a real, struggling public school because we do not have nearly enough of these voices in the social justice education world. Well-intentioned teachers in the suburbs who plan and flawlessly execute lessons proliferate, but it's rare to find teachers who are working with the populations affected by the policies about which "social justice educators" teach.

I did want more vulnerability and more reflection, though. I felt like this was still a highly edited version of Gregory; I wanted the more personal Greg, the Greg who made clear his thought process as he wrestled with the decision to come back to the classroom, the Greg who discussed how being a professor changed his view on middle school teaching, the Greg who admits more than the obligatory botched lesson. Sometimes this felt formulaic where I wanted honesty.

At the end of the day, reading Michie's writing makes me want to be a better teacher, and that's valuable.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the ways that this book makes issues of equity come alive for my students in teacher education. The humility and reflection are welcome in a first person teacher narrative.

[Rich Farrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t remember exactly when I first read Michie’s Holler If You Hear Me. I think one of my instructors at Elgin Community College recommended it to me during a time when I was overzealous and attended office hours. Anyway, I think I read it in one sitting. Looking back, I feel like he was the first teacher who “spoke” to me about what it means to teach beyond curriculum and instruction (not that the latter isn’t important, of course). Holler If You Hear Me became a text that had a formative influence on my own teaching philosophy.

Beginning Same As It Never Was, I was thrilled to see he picks up his second stint of classroom teaching at the same time I started teaching myself and how much I saw my own attempts and struggles playing out in his narrative.

His discussion of teaching independent reading for the love of reading and not paired with a bunch of assessments was what I was trying to accomplish. His joke of a REACH evaluation where he had students perform, quite literally, a sort of “dinner theater” routine to launch the lesson is exactly something I joked about (but chickened out of doing!) when we were collaborating with Lookingglass Theater on performing arts in the literacy classroom. On a heavier note, teaching the controversy, both fumbling through a mini-unit on Trayvon Martin and trying to teach protest vs. apathy with the Pledge of Allegiance and breaking up boy/girl lines all rang true.

Michie reminds me of the good work that needs to be done and to always question what we as teachers are doing to be equitable and provide a space where students can thrive inside and out of.

[Penny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Greg Michie has hit it out of the ball park again. Same as It Never Was chronicles his return to the classroom after a decade as a university profession. He returned to the same school he was teaching at in the 90s, a predominately Latinx school, and to the middle school grades he had always taught. In addition to the very fine writing, there are two things I particularly love about this book, and they were both hallmarks of his earlier book Holler If You Hear Me. In the first place, this is no "teacher as savior" memoir, the likes of which appear every year or so. This is teacher as reflective practitioner. Michie has doubts: Will he be equal to the challenge of teaching in an even more bureaucratized system than the one he left? He is in his fifties now? Can he keep up with the paper load and challenges of teaching middle school kids? Can he adhere to his principles in the face of the standardized tests that are antithetical to what he believes about teaching and learning? Will he find the courage to resist, if necessary? He questions his decisions and sometimes invites his students into that process to learn what they think, since the activities he chooses for them impact their lives. Was this the right thing to do? Would another choice have been better? And he listens to them, which brings me to the second thing I love about both these books. In them, Michie gives voice to his students. This isn't his book alone. It is also theirs. Their lives, their work, their dreams and aspirations, their fears, and what makes each child unique are skillfully interwoven into the narrative account of Michie's return to the classroom. No sage on the stage for this teacher/writer. This is a very human book.

But there is one final point that is more true of this book than his first. Michie returned to the classroom at a critical time in our nation's history. His return dovetailed with several major events, increasing violence in Chicago neighborhoods, increasing reliance on standardized testing used punitively, a Chicago Public Schools teachers' strike (with another going on now, even as I type this, and Greg is on the picket line) and the campaign and election of one Donald J. Trump. One of Greg's students is gunned down, and Greg and his students must deal with it. Greg struggles with the increasing emphasis on standardized tests and how far he can go in resisting their heavy impact on teaching and learning. But the greatest impact by far has been the vilification and stereotyping of Latinx people by the current Administration. And that is why this book is so important and so timely. Greg Michie, by painting portraits of his students as the unique individuals that they are, by highlighting their gifts and their humanity, undermines the stereotypes and gives lie to the President's rhetoric. We meet his students, Carlos, Veronica, Leo, and Joel, among others. His colleagues, Nancy and Kim. A parent who was a former student of his and who delights in her daughter's success in school. We read the poems they write and descriptions of the videos they produce. We hear of their fears and see their small personal triumphs. They are not the frightening creatures of the President's speeches to his base.

This is a book for right now. It furthers social justice. It speaks to our better angels. I highly recommend it.

[Mackenzie Lynn]

Straightforward and no nonsense view of the current state of the education system. I would love to know more about why he chose to go back into teaching after so long. Great book with a great point of view. Teachers deserve so much more respect (and money!) than they get now.

[Sabrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are a teacher who has any sort of anxiety about going back into your school building after this traumatic year+, read this. Greg will remind you why you started and why you continue to stick with it. You got this.