Toma: A day in the life

Academe, Nov/Dec 2000 by Kartus, Lisa

TOMA HELDT WRITES "NATURE VERSUS NURture" on the blackboard in her careful cursive hand. Behind her come the sounds of notebooks opening, pages rustling, backpacks swishing to the linoleum floor as the twenty-eight students in "The Handicapped in Early Childhood" copy her words in their battered notebooks, trying to emulate Toma's handwriting. It's early afternoon on September 10, 1998, and autumn sun shines brightly through the west-facing wall of windows in room 307 Graham Hall, in the College of Education at Northern Illinois University.

The chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction had telephoned her just a week before. Would she teach the course for him? He knew it was late notice, he told her, but he was in a bind. The full-time professor to whom the class had originally been assigned was ill. The department chair pleaded with Toma, reminding her that she had taught the course many times before.

It wasn't the first occasion on which the university played on her addiction to teaching, offering her the opportunity to do what she loved, while offering her less than half the pay of her tenure-track colleagues and none of the job security. The trouble was that although she knew the university was using her, relying on her good nature and credentials to solve a staffing problem, the pull of the classroom was irresistible.

Each of the students now facing Toma is in the last year of preparation to teach the handicapped. At this point, Toma is just getting to know them, and hasn't yet attached personalities to faces. Each student is also taking a methods class, which trains prospective teachers in the specifics of how and what to teach. But in this three-hour weekly class, Toma teaches the why behind the what and the how.

"Have any of you noticed a change in your personal philosophy on this"-she taps "nature versus nurture" on the blackboard with a short fingernail-"as you've learned about children and worked with them?"

Lynn, the parent of two children, raises her hand from the back row. "I know I changed my mind when I had my first daughter. I wasn't married to the father, and he chose to have nothing to do with her. I saw so much of him in her, yet she had never even met him. So I knew there was something else going on. She would get smiles on her face or even act a certain way that was really similar to him. It was sort of weird."

Toma knows that if her students can connect their own lives with the information offered by their textbook, there is a stronger chance that the fledgling teachers will see the problems of a handicapped student in context. Discussions like the one she's initiating in her classroom this sunny September afternoon create the kind of atmosphere where learning takes place. Not transitory rote learning, but the lessons that remain with us.

Toma, leaning against the small teacher's table, grins in understanding. Toma has raised two children and is watching three grandchildren develop. She understands that the invisible hand of heredity just seems weird sometimes.

As she materializes in front of the blackboard again, she says, "A lot of times, when we are novice teachers or before we have children of our own, we have a real strong feeling that this"-she points to "nurture"-"really runs the show. We think that nature has a little bit to do with it, but that this"--she taps "nurture" again---"is the big monkey on the block. You think you can take anybody and turn them into anything."

Toma is right in front of the first row of students. "You think, `If I am a good teacher, I can take all these six-year-olds and turn them into brain surgeons and rocket scientists. I can give them the manners and graces of Sophia Loren and teach them to speak nine languages. And to be patient and kind and generous and industrious and organized."' Toma is addressing the secret dreams of all teachers-to-be.

She takes a deep breath, ruffles her short hair, and smiles again. "Well, I've been a teacher now for thirty some years, and I've been a parent for even longer, and I'm now leaning in that"-she walks back to the board to tap "nature"direction. I can shape you and polish you and take you as far as your genetics will allow you to go. But I'm not overriding anything."

Some time later, Toma looks over the class, eyebrows raised. Behind the appearance of a woman just winging it and enjoying the conversation lay the practiced timing of many years of teaching, It has elements of dramatic and even comic timing. In the same way that a stand-up comedian will order jokes and stories carefully for the deepest laugh, Toma chose the order of her topics in advance, imagining as she made out her list just how the class would respond.

Is the class ready for her to pull all the points together? Or do they need more examples? She decides instantly on the former.

"Something that explains all of what we've discussed is the developmental systems approach. Have you had that in any of your other classes?"

"Yes," says one student. But most hook puzzled. You can almost see them dig around in their mental bag of notes from seven previous semesters `of classes.