Recently I sat in the back of an inner city Memphis classroom and watched a young 23-year-old teacher with total command of her classroom. She engaged her students in a dynamic and interactive teaching style I had never seen.
The teacher is an example of the job being done in our schools by Teach for America, an organization that recruits passionate young people, teaches them how to be great teachers, and sends them into our toughest schools.
The leadership style embraces a philosophy that advocates setting goals that are both ambitious and feasible. It reminds me of the style discussed in Good To Great by Jim Collins, with references to setting big hairy audacious goals. It works for business and its working for students.
She was excited, gesturing, acting out words and enunciating in Spanish. She pulled them into her lesson plan with her hands and her energy.
She had earned their respect and participation. It was like watching Sidney Poitier in the Blackboard Jungle, except the teacher was white and the students were black and, I sensed, mildly unfamiliar with someone who cared so much about their learning.
And whenever the noise level in the classroom started to rise just ever so slightly, each time there was even a hint of impending chaos, she commanded them to “atención,” and they fell quickly in line repeating only the Spanish words she required.
I took satisfaction in that part because I remembered observing in my own children’s classroom and being occasionally horrified by how they were sometimes robbed of an education by those who had come to disrupt and teachers that did not have this young woman’s command of the classroom.
The disrupters never stood a chance. Not today. Not in her classroom. Everyone was learning Spanish. Even the older guy sitting in awe at the back of the room learning Spanish for the very first time in his life from his daughter.
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