Peter's Statement of Inquiry

Intro:
If everything is an emergency, nothing is. Of all the pithy witticisms bestowed upon me by my previous head of school, this one continues to hold significance for me. Especially when I think about teaching, reading, and writing. A snapshot into my brain would reveal two hemispheres alight in near-constant 911 calls and emergency fires: grades, RTI, parent-teacher conferences, constructivist methods of behavior modification, the 20th century, No Child Left Behind/A Race to the Top, writing, reading, PISA scores, NAEP scores, Lawrence Baines, SRI, Lexile levels, privatized reform, Paul Thomas, authentic assessments, using technology, etc. There is certainly nothing extraordinary or exceptional about this. Teachers are constantly juggling multiple (and often competing) demands from various public/personal realms. What follows is a statement of where I am as of this day.

Where I've been:
Anyone who has been within earshot of me at pretty much any point during the last couple of weeks is at least somewhat familiar with where I've been as a teacher. Started out in a data-centric charter school teaching test strategies to a 100% free and reduced lunch population. I taught reading and writing in test-prep formats. I did it a few years and loved it for a few years. I'm not sure 'love' is really the right word. But for reasons best explored elsewhere, the school provided me the structure and discipline I needed at the time.

I changed positions to Arlington County and started on a new path of self-discovery and transformation. My teaching philosophy slid from hardcore behaviorism to constructivism. I did away with grades, alienating myself from my colleagues and some of my students in the process. I felt like I had lost myself. I needed something to grasp onto. Some sort of philosophical or methodological rock that wouldn't disappear at the first sign of a new idea.
I've spent the last 9 months reading education history and pedagogical theory attempting to ground myself in the facts. To elevate my mood by immersing myself in the history of the profession. If only I read enough John Dewey, or learned more about the history of education reform, maybe only then would I know who I was and how I should proceed. Except, frustratingly, it hasn't worked out that way. 

Instead, the more I read, the more I write, the less I seem to know.

Where I am now:
In many ways I feel like I've created a sort of pedagogical Frankenstein. An amalgamation of specific viewpoints and reactionary politics repellant to most teachers I engage with. I don't like grades. I don't like measurement. I don't like testing. I'm coming to realize that I don't possess the skills or understanding to understand, much less convey, the nuanced complexity behind everything. Instead, I seemed to have gravitated only towards the most reactionary of viewpoints. Part of me thinks this is normal. That I have to work my way through these understandings. That I can't rush my personal journey back to myself. So now I'm desperately trying to find my place as an educator. 

Where I want to go:
I want my teaching to mirror my ethics. I want my students to use writing as a tool for understanding themselves, literature, and the world around them. I want to engage my students' families and to help them understand that my class is not a class focused on measurement or numbers or letters. 

How I'll get there:
I'm still working on this part.