Who is Really Harriet?
Exploring High School and Engagement
In the last week, I’ve been a high school physics teacher, a high school math teacher, and a high school physical science teacher and all I can think about is “Harriet Tubman.”
Each time I entered high school classrooms, the lesson plans were almost exactly the same. In the physics class, a paragraph directing me to hand out a worksheet, with no structure or pedagogy present. In the math class, no lesson plans at all. They just left a note stating that another teacher would come and demonstrate what the students would be asked to do and that I “should just repeat” what I saw. The physical science teacher had a paragraph and worksheets. In all three cases, most students opted out of the assignments and the worksheets were left on tables, on the floor, in trash cans, and in rare cases in the bins where they were asked to turn them in.
Three different schools with the same outcomes. The most recent case, the physical science class, was absolutely fascinating to observe. The first hour, we had TikTok money phone videos. Talking to the actress, she explained that she shoots a video each morning during class. I looked at her in disbelief. Every day? Everyday. During class? During class.
How exactly was this student getting away with publishing TikTok videos daily while the teacher was instructing? How did the teacher not look at this student’s ability to record and market herself as an asset and consider how to integrate this into the instructional environment? HOW ARE WE STILL DOING WORKSHEETS?
Then I looked at the mountains of ungraded worksheets. I told the aspiring influencer to keep getting money and watched the hands of the analog clock slowly tick during the block period. I advised her to get to work. She didn’t. The bell rang and the students scurried out of the room. A few ritually engaged students turned in the worksheets that were left. Most sheets were left on the tables. I gathered them and returned them to the pile.
The next period I had a prep which gave me the opportunity to reflect. As usual, I put my headphones on. The band “Harriet Tubman” had just dropped a rather impressive album with Georgia Anne Muldrow. The band is named in honor of the abolitionist, feminist, spy who was famous for freeing enslaved people in the United States. The sounds of the album guided me to question what I had experienced in the last few days as a high school teacher. I thought back to my time as a math teacher earlier in the week. It was the most bored I’ve been this school year. The teacher had left no lesson plans. Instead, another teacher stood in the front of the class and rattled off a bit about some formulas, the students wrote the information down, and then the teacher departed. 10 minutes tops. No interaction. No collaboration. No questions. The kids wrote analog notes on random pieces of paper, notebooks, and loose leaf sheets. They were less garrulous than other high school students I’d observed. I attribute that partially to the old-school rows the classroom was arranged in. I couldn’t move around the classroom freely to talk like I like to, and neither could they. It was a totally forgettably unforgettable day. Harriet wasn’t coming through that door. There was no freedom and no hope of any.
When the next physical science class came in, I again passed out the worksheets that wouldn’t be done. The threat that “this is going to be graded” is almost laughable when I say it to students who have little interest in the assignments. I circulated throughout the room and found a young man sketching characters in his sketchbook. His work was exquisite and I asked him what his plans were. He said he wanted to be an art director. We conversed about DC’s Absolute Universe while he freehand sketched Remy LeBeau. He was authentically engaged, just not interested in the worksheet he had been assigned. (Perhaps the kids can free themselves?) The class period ended and I collected the worksheets that were left behind. There were more of them than in the previous period.
The final period, I met two rather impressive young ladies. They were juniors and had, through summer school and night school, been able to graduate a year early. We chatted a bit about how and why they had devised these plans. They explained they were tired of school and wanted to find the fastest exit. Given the evidence in the classroom, I could see the attraction to this idea.
I did attendance about halfway through the period and came upon a young man in the back. I asked his name so I could mark it off the sheet. He told me that his name wasn’t on the list.
Why are you here? I have a free period and I come into this class every day. I was incredulous. She’s cool with you just chillin’ in this class? Yeah, I go to sleep.
I agreed to let him stay as long as he didn’t cause any problems. True to his word, he went to sleep.
There was a group in the front having just the best time. They were all EL students playing a game in Spanish. I attempted to engage but they spoke so fast I couldn’t understand them. My interruptions seemed to annoy them so I just let them be. There had been no differentiation on the worksheets. At least two of the students had limited English proficiency. I wondered how they were being served in an analog-forward classroom.
The period ended with the least number of worksheets completed. I went around the room picking up packets and returning them to the desk. When I organized them into piles, it was as if I never passed the pages out to begin with. I went around the classroom, tidying with my headphones on. These students had developed strategies to free themselves from the monotony they had experienced. Perhaps it’s not the students who need to be freed. They seem to have found their own paths to independence. The troubling part is this: the adults in the system believe they are Harriet. They revisit the same instructional strategies in the hope of convincing students that freedom lies at the end of a worksheet, when learners are already making their own ways out.