After a year of practicing law in the pursuit of commerce (my second stint as a litigator; the first one lasted eight years), I am returning to the high school classroom.  I am excited and a little nervous at the prospect.  In my first go round as a teacher, I taught social studies at Urban Academy in New York City, a small public high school that affords its teachers immense curricular freedom and that graduated students based on performance assessments – analytical papers, science and research projects, solutions and explanations to applied mathematical problems, public presentations – that truly assessed their college-ready skills.

This fall I will be teaching at Beacon High School, a larger school across town that shares Urban Academy’s educational philosophy.  It is a member of the New York Performance Standards Consortium of schools committed to developing real student skills, sparking students’ intellectual curiosity by encouraging teachers to “teach to their passions”, and assessing them through authentic student work.

I will be teaching three courses at Beacon – 10th grade Global History, 11th grade American History, and a 12th grade elective on International Political Economy.  There is no prescribed curriculum – I get to make it up in consultation with my teaching colleagues. Beacon’s freedom from the state Regents examinations in social studies – the result of a hard-earned waiver – allows for a thematic approach and a deep exploration unconstrained by coverage considerations.  

I have been spending a good deal of time the last few weeks reading and thinking about exactly what I should teach.  In my Global class we will be looking at the ideas of civilization and empire that have shaped the modern world, taking an in depth look at Spain and Latin America, Great Britain and India, and the Ottoman Empire.  For American History, we will examine the Constitution in great depth through the ratification debates, founders’ correspondence, and Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers and continue forward to the present by studying Supreme Court cases on government power, economic regulation, foreign affairs, equal protection and freedom of speech.  The 12th graders will look at international economic systems and globalization, from the philosophical underpinnings of Adam Smith and David Ricardo to today’s issues.  All classes will do extensive writing and revision, developing the skill of using evidence to support conclusions.  The students will engage in debates, make presentations, and have varied avenues to demonstrate what they have learned and accomplished.

The school year seems like a tall order.  So why am I returning to the classroom?  First and foremost, I missed teaching and being around kids.  Their daily discovery and exuberance (even the irrational kind) is infinitely more interesting and fun than responding to opposing counsel’s requests for the production of documents (yes that’s what lawyers do).  I recognize that education is my professional passion.  But if I had to adhere to a daily lesson plan from the state or district, or if I had to spend the entirety of my day cajoling students to memorize the minutia of history in order to pass an exam, then the kids themselves would not have been enough to lure me away from the law.  The opportunity to explore and design curriculum corresponding to my own intellectual interests using primary and important secondary source material rather than exclusively textbooks is a crucial element in making me want to teach.

The chance to “make a difference” in young people’s lives is what makes teaching a calling.  But working in a community of learners that prizes real intellectual development and creativity, and having a level of control over what you can do on a daily basis, is what sustains that calling.

I think that my experience has relevance for the policy questions that the Forum and its conveners are addressing.  It is no secret that the key to the success of our system of education is in recruiting and retaining talented, highly educated, inspiring and inspired teachers.  The talent of the workforce is the key to the success of any business.  Public schools are never going to outbid financially the private sector for human capital.  But by creating schools that respect the individual judgments of front-line educators, that trust those teachers to find the ways to get students to meet overarching standards, and that actually support instead of undermine rich intellectual work, government would attract and retain more of the best and brightest into the teaching force.

Making decisions about students, teachers and schools largely on the basis of standardized test scores ultimately is detrimental to the kind of education all young people need.  In teaching American History, should I simply strive to make sure that kids know that Brown v. Board of Education stands for the magical principle that education cannot be “separate but equal” so that they can get that question right on the history Regents; or should I take the time to have students know not only the holding in Brown, but also understand the arguments and critique the lower courts’ reasoning in, and discuss the ramifications of the then pending Seattle and Louisville school districting cases as I did the last time I taught a government class?   Several students in that class wrote analytical and research papers on that subject for their graduation assessment in history, going through multiple revisions. They also argued and judged the cases in a class “moot court”.   I think those students’ understanding of the Equal Protection Clause, and the skills they had to master in order to successfully complete the performance assessment, were vastly superior to the state of affairs under a traditional textbook cover and test scenario.            

I am fortunate that I am going to teach in a place where I will have the time and the option to pursue the deeper, richer course.  We need policies that make that kind of intellectual inquiry the norm and not the exception in our schools.