New teacher finds her classes upset parents in Nevada town

National Catholic Reporter, March 24, 1995 by Robin Taylor-Hagen

This is my first year as a credentialed teacher. I worked hard last year to earn my "official teacher" status. I took classes ranging from educational psychology to multicultural education. I taught classes in Sacramento, Calif., area schools and spent hours preparing lessons according to a form our university professors suggested. My master teachers and supervisors encouraged me. I wrote a reflective paper for one of my classes and said that I was glad that I had discovered teaching, that I loved it and loved my middle-school "kids," as most new teachers call their students. There was no place else I wanted to be.

I was lucky. By late April, I had a job, two full months before I finished the credential program. I was to teach eighth-grade English and ninth-grade Spanish in a middle school in a small Nevada town, just a mountain range away from Lake Tahoe. Kids here were "good," people told me. Mostly, they were white, middle class and innocent. They didn't bring weapons to school, didn't belong to gangs, didn't swear in the classroom as some of my Sacramento students did. My biggest discipline problems would be spit wads and gum chewing

By August, my new husband and I had relocated to a high desert community close to the school. We rented a house with a backyard where I could be alone at night with the stars and wind. Hawks sit on telephone wires by the freeway, and every day I see three or four on the drive to work. Cows graze in the pasture. It is safe here. It is quiet. Life should be good.

More than ever, I am struggling. I have struggled to be a teacher who brings the presence of Jesus into the lives of her students. I have wanted to be his eyes, his voice, his ears, his heart in my classroom. I have taught reading and writing to my English students, but I have also tried to help them think about their lives and their world and the way things are and the way they might be.

We did research projects on Nobel Peace Prize winners. We analyzed the speeches of Martin Luther King. We learned about pacifism and violence, and the kids were stunned by Gandhi's nonviolent movement. "My did he keep going to jail?" they asked. "Weren't they stupid to keep marching if they knew they were going to get beaten at the end?" Good questions. They didn't find any easy answers. These eighth-graders had glimpsed something of the wild paradox at the heart of the gospel.

Christian parents of some of my English students are angry about this curriculum. The have called me. We have had conferences. They are upset that we talk about "values" in the classroom. They do not understand why I included "controversial" figures like Gandhi or concepts like pacifism in my lessons. They are not happy with some of the short stories we have read, including Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," which is a chilling account of a society's unthinking compliance with tradition. My job, they say, is to teach grammar and spelling and literature that is safe. It is not my place to "tamper" with their children's beliefs. That job belongs to them alone.

They do not know that I am a Christian. If I told them, I am not sure they would believe me. Their understanding of our faith is so different from mine. They know what is right, what is wrong. My ideas on economic justice and environmental education are dangerous. They do not like multicultural education because it teaches that "other cultures are better than our own." God would not approve of this. They have drawn lines and we are on different sides. I am the enemy who must be stopped in God's name.

So I wait for the next round of angry-parent phone calls and continue to teach peace and justice. I share Latin American literature and those controversial short stories. My students look at pictures from my travels in Guatemala and Mexico, and we talk about my friends there, and their poverty, and how they gave so much more to me than I ever gave to them. We discuss maquiladoras and international corporations and immigration and cheap labor. They know about Rigoberta Menchu, who was the first indigenous woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Her picture is on my wall, right by the American flag.

I am not sure how long I will teach. It is hard and I can think of other jobs that have been easier, like slinging cocktails in a bar on the beach in Waikiki. Maybe the journey will take me someplace else soon. For now, though, I press ahead and look for grace. I have no other choice.