Sleep: the final frontier

Blah, the single greatest detriment to my blogging recently has been that warm, sleepy feeling you get when you get off work. Every day, even the days I don't do a whole lot at the office, the nap-coma knocks me on my ass for just long enough so that I never feel like I have enough time to write about everything I want to write about. Frustrated at everything I didn't get done that I wanted to get done after work, I usually just say fuck it and watch basketball. And by basketball, I mean soft core. Hell, last night, it put me out at 7.30 p.m., and I didn't make it out until 7.45 a.m.

Anyways, tonight's Danny's birthday, so I got into work early just so I could roll out of here early. But, not wanting to totally stiff all two dozen of my loyal readers, here's a recent long feature article for your perusal that I thought turned out pretty well. It's about teaching, so, Leslie, feel free to call bullshit on me if I totally muffed something up.

By MATT WRIGHT

“Teaching is a high and holy calling,” intoned Dr. David Sloan.

But it is simpler than that.

Teaching is effort, and teaching is dedication, and teaching is time, the teachers will tell you.

But the two dozen education students seated in front of Dr. Sloan — listening to his invocation with bowed heads, waiting to receive their graduation pins from the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor — they already know that. They’ve been there.

They’ve run their own class-rooms. They’ve planned their own lessons. Now they just have to graduate.

But they also know that part of teaching is understanding that the learning never stops. Because if you scan the tops of their young heads, one stands out.

It holds the short, gray, curly hair of 71-year-old Mary Whitaker. The lifelong teacher who raised and helped educate her seven children, who tutored countless more, who taught her teachers more than a thing or two as a student, is about to get her degree.

“It’s a dream,” she says of her diploma, "and a dream that’s coming true.”

Philosophy, Texas-style

Many years ago, Mary Whi-taker put her dream on hold, but did so without remorse.

“I had a family to raise,” she said simply during a phone interview Thursday.

Ask her any question, and you are just as likely to receive an equally straightforward reply.

What’s next?

“My next goal is pass the test. That’s the next goal. When I get that done, I’ll think about the next thing.”

Why did you want to teach?

“I liked to be around students, and I liked to be around teach-ers.”

Why go to work at this point in your life?

“You know, it wasn’t very busy around my house.”

In the classroom, Mrs. Whi-taker sticks to the basics, as well.

“She did a lot of phonics lessons from the old school,” said Laurie Cook, under whom Mrs. Whitaker interned at Meridith-Dunbar Elementary for a semester. “The children just really took to it and took to her.”

But don’t let her matter-of-factness fool you, said Dr. Brady Peterson, and English professor at UMHB who taught Mrs. Whitaker in a creative writing class.

“Her philosophy of life was very complex and very deep, and one I found very refresh-ing,” Peterson said. “When she talked you didn’t hear cliches.

Mrs. Whitaker never shied away from an exchange of ideas, Peterson said, even while she maintained deeply held convic-tions. She was always prepared for class, and she read every book he suggested as a complement to the curriculum. Often, Peterson recalled, she came back the next day and “dumped a bunch of book (suggestions) on me.”

“She’s old-time Texas, but old-time Texas can be pretty spunky. And she’s very literate, and that’s not unusual for old-time Texas, either,” he said.

“She has a young mind, an open mind. She was, of course I’d say delightful, but she was (also) unforgettable.”

The Student Teacher

When Mrs. Whitaker, prompted by her youngest daughter’s graduation from Tarleton State University, returned to school part-time in 1998, she chose UMHB because “it was a smaller school than, say, like a (Texas) A&M or Baylor — smaller, more person-able,” she said.

“When I started back, I didn’t know how much assistance I’d have to have, and I wanted it readily available. And it was, believe me.”

UMHB’s education program also happened to be perfect for Mrs. Whitaker, with a hands-on approach that emphasized real classroom experience as the number one tool in preparing future teachers.

“It was great. It was absolutely great,” she said. Her professors and classmates, she said, were never anything but courteous, respectful and supportive.

Mrs. Whitaker, who lives in Chilton, near Waco, first interned in Ms. Cook’s third-grade class in the fall of 2003, before doing her student teaching in Cameron.

In both cases, she liked what she saw.

“The thing I liked about both of them was the teamwork,” she said. “They all worked together for the children to learn. That’s a necessary ingredient.

“They were willing to put in the time to get the job done correctly, and that’s what it’s all about — you’re going to have some time put into it.”
At Meridith-Dunbar, she was doing more teaching — to the children and to Ms. Cook — than learning, Ms. Cook said. Mrs. Whitaker was just a natural, whose experiences in life gave her an intuitive grasp of how to control the classroom and connect with students.

Ms. Cook said that she learned “a great lesson” from her so-called intern’s educational philosophy: just teach.

“She just felt like teachers were bogged down now with testing and things that you have to teach. She said, if we all just taught children, then all that’s going to come,” Ms. Cook said.

In particular, Mrs. Whitaker hammered home phonetics and handwriting, giving students the tools to read and write and letting their young brains learn on their own.

“Handwriting was so important,” Ms. Cook recalls. “She said, ‘You all have so much to say, but if no one can read what you’re trying to say, they’re not going to care.’ (The students) were all over that. It just hit home with them.”

Professor Peterson said he often felt the same way in his classroom.

“There were times when I felt when I was learning more from her than she was from me,” he said. That was just from watching the way Mrs. Whitaker engaged and encouraged her classmates.

And even though the first-hand, one-to-one teaching was ideal for Mrs. Whitaker’s style, it does not prevent her from seeing bigger pictures.

“The mandates that come down from the legislature sometimes take a lot more time than a teacher has,” she said, before offering her own policy proposal.

“I think that our legislators should have to teach two weeks — and I don’t mean sit and observe the classroom. I mean get up in front of the class and do all the planning,” she suggested.

Across the department, students and faculty alike champion UMHB’s experience-based approach to education.

“We are totally field-based,” said Dr. Sloan, who is a counselor in the education department.

That focus has led to partnerships with several schools in Central Texas. Education students now also go through one-semester internships before their normal student teaching.

Andrea Beasley of Red Oak, who is in Mrs. Whitaker’s graduating class, was among many students to cite the internships and student teaching and the best preparation for teaching.

“You can’t really just go into a classroom without experience,” she said.

One suspects Mrs. Whitaker would offer the same advice to legislators.

Next Semester

Mrs. Whitaker has forgone the honorifics of Saturday’s com-mencement ceremony, although she shrugs off the question of why.
“For one thing, I didn’t sign up for it.”

So what if she won’t take her short, slightly stooped yet highly energetic frame across the stage; she already knew the basics of teaching, even if she had to learn a few mechanics, said Ms. Cook.

“Her pleasure is just getting that “A-ha!” moment from the kids. That keeps her going and keeps her wanting to do it,” she said.

Mrs. Whitaker said she would begin shopping her degree, which is in kindergarten through fourth-grade education, around Central Texas — once she passes her certification exam, of course.

And once she has her own classroom, she won’t be looking to change the world. She knows better than that.

“I don’t want to sound flippant or anything, but somebody has to teach these children to survive in this world, and maybe I can help do that,” she said.

But, as always, she’ll still be looking for answers to her curiosities.

“If you’re in public school today, you see that some of these children need so much guidance. I’ve never understood why, if you’re going to have children, you’re not going to raise them,” she said and then paused.

“And no one’s answered that for me.”

Not that anyone who has worked with Mrs. Whitaker would be surprised.

“You got to understand,” Dr. Peterson said as he tried to sum up oldest student, “being a Texan means you can sit on the porch chewing tobacco and reading Shakespeare at the same time. She had that kind of quality.”

Shit, I'm late ... as always.