“Public love is confused with things like affection, kindness, politeness. I am talking instead about a love that is fierce, powerful, political, insistent. Authentic public love necessarily demands conflict, tears, and hurt, because our transition to freedom and to more human ways of being requires that we call ourselves out in order to call others in. It requires that we be willing to confront one another, and that we be willing to listen generously when we are being confronted - letting go of our personal feelings for a commitment, instead, to the shared goal of freedom.”
- Carla Shalaby, Troublemakers (172-173).
Carla Shalabys closing remarks in “A Letter to Teachers,” the final chapter of our class read Troublemakers resonated with me in many ways. Her ideas about the importance of love struck me not only because of how real I felt they were, but also how complicated and challenging they could be in a real school environment. She calls us as educators to question ourselves, what we have been taught and our own personal biases, and to find better ways of reacting to difficult situations.
Interestingly, one of the topics that I always found myself wishing we covered more in our education classes at Saint Michael’s College has been classroom management. The idea of going into a new classroom and having to create a positive learning community, to establish a strong and respectful individual relationship with every student, is intimidating to me - mostly because there will always be situations that I cannot prepare for or anticipate. Students will ask hard questions that I could never expect, or discussions will derail and go in directions that I am uncomfortable with and that is a daunting prospect. I wished that we could spend time in our classes discuss potential problems that we might encounter and how to deal with them so that I could go into teaching with a “toolkit” that included a response to every imaginable challenge to my authority. I am being a bit facetious- I do not have the desire or even the personality to be much of an authoritative figure in a classroom, but at the same time I worry about being able to establish the classroom environment that, in a perfect world, I would love to cultivate.
In Troublemakers, Shalaby presents a perspective that is vastly different from any that I had previously read about. She writes that there is no alternative; we as educators can either prepare our students for prison or for freedom. “Isolating and excluding young people—the regular way—is most useful if you are preparing them for our prison culture,” she writes (Troublemakers, 174). I understand what she says both literally and as a metaphor. Not only are schools often a direct pipeline to prison for impoverished and underprivileged students, but they also fail to encourage curiosity, spirit, inquisitiveness, and self-discovery. Teaching our students to fit in and to follow the rules will only result in uninspired young adults who know how to keep their heads down and make their way through the system. I know because I was one. Instead, we need to be working to create a generation of students who are passionate, creative and free-thinking.
Shalaby argues that really the only way forward as an educator is to “be love (Troublemakers, 172).” This is an important goal, not an easy one. It is far easier to implement rules and classroom norms and then punish the students who are not able to follow them. But now is the time to step up and embrace the challenge. We as educators need to call “troublemakers” in, not out, as the saying goes. We need to consider that perhaps the inability of certain students to follow the rules is not so much a behavioral issue, but a problem with the way our classroom or school community functions, and act accordingly. We need to be willing to step outside our comfort zones, to accept ambiguity, and to welcome challenging discussions.
Again, this is not an easy task, but it is a necessary one. Shalaby writes that we need to prepare students for the world we want, not the world we have now. Of course, there is a balance that must be found here. There are certain abilities and critical thinking skills that I would hope every student is able to learn and practice before they finish with school. But I fully agree with Shalaby in terms of systems of thinking and behavior. It is hard to teach students how to be free; for many, myself included, that is a highly daunting task. For me, this simply means learning to see and accept the whole student as they are. My role as an educator is to take a step back, admit that I personally know very little about the world, and accept my role as a guide working alongside students towards the goal of discovery and freedom.
Shalaby argues that really the only way forward as an educator is to “be love (Troublemakers, 172).” This is an important goal, not an easy one. It is far easier to implement rules and classroom norms and then punish the students who are not able to follow them. But now is the time to step up and embrace the challenge. We as educators need to call “troublemakers” in, not out, as the saying goes. We need to consider that perhaps the inability of certain students to follow the rules is not so much a behavioral issue, but a problem with the way our classroom or school community functions, and act accordingly. We need to be willing to step outside our comfort zones, to accept ambiguity, and to welcome challenging discussions.
Again, this is not an easy task, but it is a necessary one. Shalaby writes that we need to prepare students for the world we want, not the world we have now. Of course, there is a balance that must be found here. There are certain abilities and critical thinking skills that I would hope every student is able to learn and practice before they finish with school. But I fully agree with Shalaby in terms of systems of thinking and behavior. It is hard to teach students how to be free; for many, myself included, that is a highly daunting task. For me, this simply means learning to see and accept the whole student as they are. My role as an educator is to take a step back, admit that I personally know very little about the world, and accept my role as a guide working alongside students towards the goal of discovery and freedom.
Works Cited:
Elias, M. (2013). The School-to-Prison Pipeline. Retrieved from https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/spring-2013/the-school-to-prison-pipeline
Shalaby, C. (2017). Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School. New York, NY: The New Press.
