Managing Dilemmas While. Building Professional Communities

Abstract

I am a teacher. I have taught for a quarietcenţury. Others might classify me as an educator since over a threeand-a-half decade career I have also been a superin­ tendent, a teacher educator, an associate dean in a univer­ sity's school of education, and a researcher. But it is teaching—not administration or research—that has defined my adult life. If teaching has permitted me to be a lifelong learner, performer, writer, and friend to former students and colleagues, it has also forced me to navigate moral conflicts. In teaching, I have had moments when odd tingles ran up and down my back as students' thoughts and mine unex­ pectedly joined and became one; moments when listening to students forced me to rethink a conventional notion after I had closed my mind's door; moments when it became clear that my students had touched me deeply. These rare in­ stances are, for me, like the delicious crack of a bat that sends a ball soaring into the left-field stands. Less treasured moments are those that have left me numb with the repetitiveness of teaching four classes in a row or the nagging sense that the voice I heard coming out of my mouth glazed students' eyes and drooped their heads onto desks. Other moments left me sad when I knew in my heart that I had failed to reach some students. Teachingjύstory for over a decadejn aMlack_schpols from the mid-l95Oslo the early 1970s gave me insights into my cultural blind spots and a deeper understanding of the strengths and ravages of growing up Black in urban America. Those years scrubbed away stereotypes, teaching me to move beyond the then-liberal rhetoric of being colorblind and to recognize openly the dilemmas I faced in teaching Black youth a history that had to make sense to them in their terms as much as mine. Because I was in the minority when I taught in these schools, I came to understand in an intensely personal way how my students and peers viewed Whites. Within these city schools I began my teaching career, learned my craft, and forged both personal and professional values. In the last 35_years, then, teaching has been central to my experiences as an educator. I discovered that in each teaching post I served—high school teacher, trainer of new teachers, and professor—there were common features to the craft of teaching. Moreover, deeply embedded in my teaching, ad­ ministering, policymaking, and researching have beemx>rnmon dilemmas with which I have had to cope. Yet even with these commonalities I found little sense of belongings to a community of scholars and practitioners. This afternoon I will develop these three themes: Professors and practitioners face common dilemmas; they share the practice of teaching; and ncΓprofessional community yet joins them together.

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