The Day Race Walked Into The Google Classroom

The post below was written in late June in a FB group called “Teachers Using Google Classroom.” There were many posts written by teachers discussing the state of race relations in America and a debate ensued about whether it was our role to discuss it as educators. Below was my response.

In my senior year of high school in 1992 at Saint Peters Prep I was taking a pre-calculus class. My teacher was a man named Mr. Kenneth Dandorph. He was, at Prep, the most legendary, feared and respected teacher there was. So when I saw I had him for my math I took a deep breath. Ok, I took a very long deep breath LOL. Long story short I got my ass kicked in class that year . It was hard and he pushed the hell out of us. Math was not my strength and there were many days I spent with him for extra help before and after school. He used to say “Sometimes you have to fall on your face before you can learn.” Well I can tell you I learned a lot because I spent many days falling on my face. I spent most of the year in his class angry, frustrated and full of doubt. In fact it was until I passed the final exam that I passed the class for the year. To say I never want to see another math class again is an understatement. Yet I can also say, without any doubt, that Mr. Dandorph remains the greatest teacher that I have ever had.

You see Mr. Dandorph was a Vietnam veteran. He saw the worst of the worst. So when he came home from the war he became an educator. More importantly he brought the realism of what he learned there and in life to his classes and how he taught us. Mr. Dandorph was more than a math teacher. He was a teacher teaching use life through math. Whether he knew it or not he was raising us boys into men. Let me say that again: Math was not his priority. Using math to teach us the harsh lessons of life, that we would carry with us to this day, was. It is a trait that I believe is missing within our profession of education the most.

In today’s time, society and even our profession can lead us to believe that to be an effective teacher should be measured by our level of mastery of our content area. That and, of course, classroom “management.” While there is no doubt that the ability to teach one’s content is central to our effectiveness as educators, it is not the end all be all. Also key to the success and effectiveness of the educator is the degree to which we can create and cultivate human relationships and development within our students. Where we believe we are just as responsible for influencing the life direction and moral compasses of our young people as we are their level of mastery of the content we espouse.

To this day I, along with the thousands of fellow “Prepsters” that have come through his class, have remained loyal to him. Because those lessons, as hard and as though as they were, have withstood the test time and gained in relevance. Even as we debate and joke about what the hell is the relevance of “Y=Mx + B” to a bunch of 40 year old trying to pay NJ property taxes (Ha!). As I now enter into my 24th year in the educational profession his influence, along with that of my mother and father who are legendary educators in their own right, remains at the core of my teaching philosophy: prioritizing the lessons of life. In my opinion this approach, in our time of global and civil unrest, is needed now more than ever. Especially in the courageous conversations that we as educators must facilitate with our young people around the topic of race.

I know it took a second for me to get to the bigger point I was trying to make so forgive me. That said, race has always and still remains one of the scariest topics for educators to delve into with their students. It is understandable why. Yet our world continues to show us the dangers of avoiding these hard lessons and conversations. So I say to my fellow educators, who are trying to determine whether the issue of race is something we should be speaking and teaching about in our classes regardless of the content we teach, yes we need to have the courage to have these conversations.

Our role is to grow the minds of young people. Our role is to help develop them into the amazing people we know they can become. But we must redefine the measurement of “amazing” beyond grades, college acceptances and future careers. Instead we must also cultivate them to become young people with a great sense of compassion, understanding and love for others. For those that hesitate or question if this should be our role please know that this is not an “either or.” instead we can teach our content and build students who master both content and a sense of compassion and understanding on the issue of race or any of the other issues that has engulfed our world today. The greatest educators, historically, are the ones who have traditionally interwove content with life lessons.

To be an educator is to be someone of courage and boldness. In truth is not courage a constant in our profession? So lets continue with that same sense of courage, without apology, our discourse. Because that is how we make a better society. Besides. When did you ever know a young person to say: "The teacher that influenced me the most taught me Google Classroom."