The Sunday Post on Ethical ELA is a year-long series featuring contributions from English language arts educator-scholars from across the country. In this series, we hope to expand notions of what secondary English language arts is, can do, and can be. Explore past posts on our “Teacher Ed” page.
I have recently had the joy of attending a back-to-school open house at a rural high school in the southeastern United States. Normally when I write something like that, years of teaching secondary school worm their way into the tone of my writing and the whole thing comes off sounding snarky. This time is different. I state with all sincerity, and one-hundred-percent snark-free, that I felt truly thankful to be standing in a high school ELA classroom on Wednesday night wearing slacks and a button-up shirt at a time when I would otherwise be warming the familiar shape I’d worn into the cushion of my couch, admiring the way my feet gracefully rested on the coffee table yet below my sightline to the television. I can attest that whatever expectations I held or whatever ghosts of open houses past I dreaded visiting in the night, I was thankful to have been present.
Prior to the evening, I was warned ahead of time by the principal that back-to-school nights in this area were sparsely attended, and the attendees for the high school would most likely be a small group of parents with incoming freshmen in tow. The principal and I talked about attendance in rural, low-SES areas and he shared familiar efforts of getting folks to attend by offering food or other incentives to come by. I listened to what he had to say, ran it past the finely-tuned statistical analysis that is my own experience and said to myself, “Yep, that checks out.” I came that evening expecting to see a couple dozen students meander silently through vast empty hallways like an education-themed rendition of Hopper’s Nighthawks. On that front, I was disappointed.
Students came. Not just freshmen, but, as far as I could tell, the entire gamut of classes were represented at the school. I was in a classroom for sophomores and juniors and I met a steady stream of students and their parents who were genuinely enthusiastic about being there and talking with the teachers. I actually mean the students. They talked. They were interested. I would even venture to say that they seemed eager to be back in school. It was one of those moments in my teaching career when I felt acutely how special it was to be a teacher and how wonderful it was to teach something like English that readily provided an avenue for these young folks to bring all of who they are into the classroom. I think I left that classroom more jazzed about secondary ELA education than I had in a long time (and I do recognize that using the expression “jazzed” does date me, placing me chronologically somewhere among dog-eared copies of Catcher in the Rye and episodes of The A-Team).
It was one of those moments in my teaching career when I felt acutely how special it was to be a teacher.
I’ve thought about this off-and-on since that night and the question that I keep kicking around in my head is “Where has this been?” I think back to the open houses that more closely aligned with my original expectations of the evening: students dropped off to quickly pace off the steps that lead from one class to the next so that they can more efficiently navigate the salmon ladder leading to their English classroom at the end of the hall when school starts. The students at this recent open house reminded me more of young children coming to school: wide-eyed and impatient to be surrounded by their peers in the classroom and learning. I could see a clear parallel there, though with less fingerpainting and elephant toothpaste. But the parallel existed and I can only wonder how great it would be if we could capitalize on the moment, kindle in these students as they come back to the classroom a recognition of the skills and knowledge provided in ELA as invaluable to pursue anything that they are interested in and would want to attain in life.
Of course, it’s not too hard to work out the change to the scholastic environment that has given a different perspective to returning to the classroom in person for students. The past year (and change) have been times of uncertainty and dread for the world, and adolescents are often in a position lacking resources or options. They may more keenly feel the terror and the unpredictability of a global pandemic.
To say that these young people are reassured by having the stability and familiarity of school around is not particularly profound or revelatory. That is true. This could be the last time I am asked to be a guest blogger. It certainly doesn’t seem to fit the caliber of entries that precede my own contribution or those that will likely follow. In my defense, I had long considered and prepared a post on my own research looking at high school students’ ability to synthesize multiple sources of information, including their own lived experience, and why the latter was integral to ethical practice in ELA. But then there was this open house.
The past year has been a string of global, national, and personal tragedies which has left me often looking for one bit of good news to cling to like a bit of flotsam after a wreck at sea. I see that night now as a moment where I am reminded that these are young people already living in an uncertain limbo between childhood and adulthood while also navigating new, uncertain, and deadly waters. Given the context, I do hope you forgive if I seem to be waxing sentimental, but there is at least one practical application I can see here. This is a good moment to realize that when these students enter our classrooms in the fall, we can be another adult in their life that will break the storm waters a little for them and show them that we are as eager to see them as they are to see us. We have an opportunity to seize on the enthusiasm they have to be in school and show them that our classes are places that will feed their lines of inquiry and communicate to them, “You are heard and you matter.” This is not new, it has been said before, but it’s not every night you have the joy of attending an open house at the beginning of the school year.
About the author
Dr. Jim Carroll Hill is in his first year as a member of the English department faculty at Northern Michigan University. He earned his Ph.D. in English Education from Virginia Tech in 2020. While raised in southern California, Jim taught middle and high school in North Carolina after completing his bachelor’s degree from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. He went on to acquire his M.A. in Reading Education and his doctorate in English Education from Virginia Tech. Jim’s research interests are centered around educational approaches which bring students’ unique lived experiences and prior knowledge into dialogue with texts during learning to aid meaning-making and how that can be communicated to educators as concrete practices for the classroom.