arccess2011
Dołączył: 12 Lis 2010
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 Wysłany: Śro 10:51, 01 Gru 2010 Temat postu: A Parent Should Guess the Range of Ambivalent Reac |
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If you are a parent, you can guess the range of my ambivalent reactions. I played the blame game. Self-blame: I'm a teacher. Had I unintentionally stressed academic success so much that he reacted against that? I had also encouraged critical thinking. Did I succeed too well? Blaming the schools: Don't they know that each child is an individual? Can't they provide for kids who aren't well-suited to the cookie-cutter curriculum? Blaming Stephan: What's the matter with this kid? Can't he see that life is a matter of give and take, and not every moment in school will be a gem?
My main reactions, though, were frustration, fear, and hope. I was heartened when the district came up with what appeared to be the perfect response--an alternative school tailored for creative outlanders like Stephan, with hip young teachers who knew how to give space to such students while nurturing their talents. Stephan fit right in.
Then came a blatant act of betrayal. In an economy measure, the administration moved the program to another building and "integrated" it with the exact opposite model--a by-the-numbers mastery curriculum Cartier Replica that allowed students the "freedom" of moving at their own pace through prepackaged learning units. By then I was English supervisor for the district. I tried to use my insider status to protest the senseless change, but it was a done deal. Predictably, Stephan slogged through the semester with contempt for the materials and disrespect for the school system.
In Stephan's junior year the family moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where I became deputy executive director for NCTE. By this time, his verbal acuity was well-honed. He could charm, cajole, persuade, or insult with equal skill and aplomb. But the students at his high school picked up on his flamboyant nonconformity and called him queer, much to his resentment.
The academic program was no help. The administration was living under a thick cloak of delusion about the curriculum and staff. The student population was well-stocked with bright kids whose parents were faculty members at the University of Illinois. They were a genially compliant bunch, making high scores on standardized tests,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], so the lockstep traditional program was judged to be a success. Few teachers felt that they owed the students the nectar of enthusiasm, the sense that learning is, in Parker Palmer's phrase, "gathering around a great thing."
Stephan plodded on with minimal effort and poor grades, taking a strong interest mainly in the choral music program. His contrarian style often worked against his interests. In a curious rejection of an excellent English teacher's helping hand, he scoffed when she called him a "free spirit." Suspicious of praise as well as criticism, he regarded the compliment as a patronizing cliché.
By then, my wife Deborah and I had inklings about Stephan's sexual orientation and peer harassment at school. One day we learned shockingly that he was reaching a point of crisis. We found him lying in bed and weeping piteously. He shouted to us, "I am NOT queer! I am NOT queer!" We reassured him that our love was with him whatever the case, but he was steeped in a deep, impenetrable misery.
By a combination of insecurity, pride, and continuing mistrust of institutions,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Stephan refused counseling. He took refuge in his writings and would rarely share them with others. Nor would he enroll in college, take Breitling Replica Watches evening courses in creative writing,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], or participate in mutual help groups such as Urbana's Red Herring Poets. He seemed to cast himself romantically as the self-sufficient, roving bard who might be discovered by chance and published in magazines such as Playboy and Esquire. He knew at heart that it rarely works that way--that in the real world, he would need to go through the more grueling stuff of sharing, revising, and breaking into the little magazines before publishing in the big ones. That path risked the discovery of small imperfections that triggered his bone-marrow insecurity, an angst that seemed prior to and deeper than his fears about homosexuality.
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