If my career in higher education is curtailed, I’ll apply to teach Spanish at this school. Teaching languages to African American students is the easiest, most enjoyable thing ever. The students are very lively and participate in roleplaying and language experimentation eagerly and happily. Every one came up to me, introduced themselves and engaged me in conversation. These are high-schoolers, by the way. Normally, one doesn’t expect from them great feats of sociability with middle-aged strangers.
I’ve observed our student-teachers in an all-white school, and the silence was deafening. Everybody had the largest broom up their anal cavity. Students ignored my existence completely because nobody told them to acknowledge it.
Both ways of being have positive and negative consequences. But it’s definitely an experience to teach a more boisterous group. Out of the 10 students in the classroom today, one had to be removed by security. Three more had to be coaxed extensively to participate in group activities. Two of them were on something that made them sluggish and unresponsive. But I love working with students with behavioral issues. I’m bizarrely good at it.
Clarissa's Blog 
How do you impose order on such a class? I’d love to hear tips. Not that I’ll ever be in this situation but I’m very curious.
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One needs to be low-anxiety and have an inner sense of authority. Personable but with very solid boundaries. Have a virtuoso mastery of the material. And have low affect. I am very excitable by nature both on the Ukrainian and the Jewish side, so I have to make an effort to clamp down on all that. Flat affect, high boundaries, don’t speak fast or loudly.
The 23-year-old student teacher yesterday was doing a pretty good job controlling the classroom. She wears a burqa, which actually helps in this context because she’s visually boundaried up in the classroom. A teacher should stand out visually in such a classroom.
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I have a colleague who works with boys in East St Louis. He is tiny and skinny and he has to work with these 6 foot 2 17-year-old boys in East St Louis. He always wears a 3-piece suit with a starched shirt and one of those watches you wear on a chain in your vest. Speaks barely above a whisper. He enters into a classroom and it’s like magic. The boys settle down immediately just from seeing him because he commands such a presence in spite of being 5”4 and very tiny.
A teacher teaches with his whole persona, including his appearance. That’s why online education is such a scam. A talking head on a screen doesn’t bring the same aura as an actual person in front of you.
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\\ One needs to be low-anxiety and have an inner sense of authority.
If one lacks those things naturally, is there any way to get them and improve one’s teaching?
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Anxiety and a lack of inner authority in middle age are psychological problems. We solve them with the help of a psychologist.
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“She wears a burqa, which actually helps in this context”
How is not showing her face help? I can’t imagine taking a voice coming from behind a piece of black cloth seriously…
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No, the face is open. Maybe it’s not a burqa. What do you call this thing that’s like a robe that covers you completely with a head covering that’s long in the back?
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Sounds like a hijab to me, but I’m not totally sure whether that refers just to the headcovering or the entire body and headcovering.
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Abaya maybe?
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Yes! That! Thank you so much, I’ve been trying to remember all day.
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