At Cornell University, I majored in psychology and sociology, but I was learning so as to teach. Upon graduation in 2005, I planned to start a new school. But I needed to learn how to teach, and for that I needed experience teaching. I applied for a job as the Vocational Technology instructor on Vinalhaven, and returned to the school I had left 13 years ago, when I began home schooling after the fifth grade. Public school and I hadn’t clicked, yet there I was, hoping to make public school work for kids who felt it wasn’t working for them. Most of the people who find their way into a vocational program make up a group to which I once belonged: the disengaged students. Such students are in a minority, and they struggle when faced with traditional academics in a classroom full of more typical learners. Requiring more one-on-one attention than they can get in a large group, disengaged students may distract others and are themselves generally frustrated and unhappy.
In the Vinalhaven Integrated Voc-Tech program, we mix organic chemistry with current events, granite quarrying with math. These are identified “at risk” students. Though there are huge differences between them, and between them and me, we share one thing in common: we didn’t, don’t, and won’t fit in the mainstream system. We each have our own reasons, but none of us fit well in a normal classroom. Many people, including my younger brother, enjoy and do very well in the classic high school setting. Not us. The point of public education is to best suit the needs of the most people, and the American system does that. But there are those of us who need something quite different. Such people are at risk: at risk of giving up on the whole American dream, of dropping out entirely; of becoming non-members of society. The risk is real, the costs potentially astronomical. We need an alternative.
Since the school year began, my expectations and approach have been repeatedly adjusted. Initially, I explained things the way I learned them, disregarding proximal zones of development. When a student exhibited disordered thinking, I talked about cognitive distortions. Oops. “Distorted cognition” made about as much sense to my class as “porcine detumescence” would to the average American. Scale back on vocabulary, take more steps and make fewer leaps. However, one element has remained constant. I told my class on the first day, and occasionally I remind them, my goal is not to fill their heads full of facts and figures, nor is it to keep them constantly grinding under a heavy workload. The object is to achieve what I found for myself in the outdoor classroom of my youth: a joy of learning, an engagement of curiosity, a satisfaction from living. What these young men have learned from their experience so far is that “school sucks.” I see schooling, when suitable and functional, as the fundamental greatest accomplishment of society, and learning as the best aspect of being human. I am teaching to learn.
Teaching how to learn, to want to learn, to pursue learning, is a passion of mine, is my life project, and is half of what gets me up early in the morning. The other half is teaching so as to learn, and I am deeply grateful to my students and to Vinalhaven High School for all I have learned so far as a teacher. With guidance from the school administration and from my students, the program has evolved to include more appropriate work and different assessment tools, such as having students do work on the board and photographing their progress. There is still infinite room for further development. Rather than a separate new school, I am now working in collaboration with the existing school to create a new branch, to meet the needs of people like my students and myself: an alternative, partially outdoor, largely hands-on, multi-disciplinary education for those who don’t fit in. Close to the old school and closely affiliated, my dream project of the past several years is beginning to take shape. A space dedicated to expanding minds, even those of highly cynical 17-year-olds, where I will continue to learn to teach, and teach to learn.
Tristan Jackson teaches on Vinalhaven.