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Veronica
and Nguyen were two students I taught years ago at an Albuquerque High. I recently heard a teacher say, “Teachers are the primary agents for
learning in schools.” We should hold
all teachers accountable for student learning.
As a young teacher in my first teaching situation this was also my
opinion that teachers are the most important component to students learning,
but this was before Veronica and Nguyen. Teachers are important, but they are
not the primary agent for student learning.
It was the first day of classes. Veronica
walked in, looked around, sat down and said plaintively, “God, is it boring
in here.” Every ten minutes for
a whole year Veronica announced that class was boring. Nguyen, another student in my classes, never seemed to be bored.
I flinched every time Veronica said, “God, is it boring in here.”
I kept thinking that if I tried a little harder she would come
around—she never did. She
graduated and I never saw her again. I also do not know what happened to Nguyen—I lost track of
him after he graduated.
I still remember his ready smile as he absorbed every lesson. Nguyen was one of the Vietnam boat people who left ahead of the
communists. Over the course of
several months I got to know him better. His parents had been farmers in Vietnam, neither could read or write.
Until five years earlier Nguyen could not read since he had never
attended school. When he arrived
in America, he was put in an inner-city school in Los Angeles and then moved
to Albuquerque. He quickly
climbed the educational ladder, to where he was an on-track sophomore.
Veronica was born in Albuquerque. Both parents worked and were high
school graduates.
One day I gave Nguyen a ride home and met his parents. They spoke halting English but wanted to talk to me.
Nguyen translated their questions, which centered on Nguyen’s school
work. I said he was a model
student, one of the best. They
beamed. Later I asked Nguyen what
would happen if he got a bad grade. His reply caught me by surprise. “Dad would beat me until
his arms gave out. Then Mom would
take over until he could continue.”
I immediately asked, “Do they beat you often?”
“No,” he said, “they don’t have to beat me, I work hard at
school to make them proud of me—they don’t understand math and English,
but they know if I have been working hard. They really care about me.”
A few days later I tried to schedule parent-teacher conferences. Over a couple of weeks I called Veronica’s parents five times.
Each time I got the brush off. Her
mother finally said, “You’re the teacher, so teach Veronica and leave us
alone.”
I never met Veronica’s parents. I asked Veronica, “What would your parents do if you got a bad
grade?” She smiled slightly,
“They don’t even look at my grades.” Veronica got a C and graduated.
I
asked her if she was going to college. “No,
college is boring.”
Nguyen, on the other hand, got a college scholarship. The last I heard he was in biology.
This is the point, I did my very best for both students—I never quit.
In both cases it didn’t matter. Nguyen was going to be excellent regardless and Veronica was going to
be bored.
I learned that the most important component to student learning is not
the teacher, it is the family. Having
a good teacher helps the student, but having parents that care and demand
effort by the student is far more important.
It would make a nice ending to this story to say that Veronica is a
cashier in a store making minimum wage and Nguyen is a Ph.D. Researcher making
big bucks. But as I have said, I
lost track of them many years ago. Still,
that is the way I would bet—Nguyen has prospered and Veronica is now paying
her dues for not working hard in school. But what of their children? Assuming both got married and have children, I suspect Nguyen will take an active role in the education of his children and Veronica will not. Nguyen’s children will do well in school while Veronica’s do not. And what about their children’s children? © 2001 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. |
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