More is Caught than Taught
By Jeff Sapp
“More is caught than taught.” I remember hearing that in Sunday school as a young child. Oh, you may think you’re teaching me about simile but, in reality, you’re teaching me who you are. Teacher as genetic scientist. Student as Dolly-the-sheep. Cloning yourself.
There were two first-grade teachers at Criss Elementary School and I don’t know how in the world I found out at the ripe old age of six that Mrs. Lowers was the evil one. I knew it, though, before I met her. Maybe my brother, who was in third-grade, told me as a warning. Mrs. Lowers gave me my first spanking in school (my first!). We were coloring a Halloween ditto of a hissing and scrunched-up witch cat. What was my gross offense that got my six-year old butt a beating? I colored my hissing cat yellow horizontally and brown vertically. That’s it. That’s all. And I got a beating because Mrs. Lowers said, “You either color up and down or across but you never do both on the same picture! It’s wrong!” So she beat me. I learned well my first year of school her curriculum of fear. She thought she was introducing me to the letters of the alphabet but she didn’t realize that the letters spelled “Teachers have all the power.
Third-grade wasn’t much better. Mrs. Radabaugh had hard lessons for me. Oh, I’m not talking about the long division. You see, it was in third-grade when I was nine that Danny Smith sashayed up to me on the dusty pebble-filled playground at first recess and hissed, “You’re poor white trash.” Those old salty tears hit me instantly and I stood there trying to blink them away and I remember that Philip Cramer laughed and said, “He’s crying like someone just threw a handful of playground in his eyes.” And that’s exactly what it felt like being told you’re poor without being ready for it. I had no idea – absolutely no inkling whatsoever – that I’d spent the last eight years being poor. And it was after the Danny Smith hiss that I distinctly remember math taking on a whole new meaning as I realized that some people were “Greater Than” while others were “Less Than.”
Fortunately, sandwiched between first-grade’s Mrs. Lowers and third-grade’s Mrs. Radabaugh was Mrs. Munchmeyer in second-grade. She didn’t mind even a little bit that we sang “Mrs. Much-a-Bunch-of-Fritos” right to her face. She’d only smile. And every morning of second-grade we’d sneak into her room early and hide under her desk, in the coat closet, and behind shelves of books. “Where are my students?” she’d gasp and we’d explode with glee like a water-balloon that couldn’t hold any more water. She thought she’d only taught me how to read, but along with that immeasurable gift, she also taught me of the first possibilities of a life lived with joy. Any laughter in my classroom today is firmly rooted in Mrs. Munch-a-Bunch-of-Fritos’ classroom.
After my awful year of math in third-grade, I was lucky to have high-school algebra with Miss Halfhill. She was effervescent about algebra and life and seemed to think my last name was Einstein. She was wild about balancing equations and obsessed about balancing lives. It was my very first successful year with math and…if you care to know…I ended up teaching algebra myself. She taught me “Whatever you do to one side of the equation, you do to the other side of the equation.” It was, you see, my first lesson in Karma, that the years of terror in my childhood would be followed by years of the purest joy in adulthood that I could ever imagine.
I remember my first year of teaching in the early eighties. Still running from the poverty of my childhood, I thought that fancy clothes would cover my shame. In the eighties it was all about being preppy and I wore all things argyle. After the holidays I had parents playfully coming and telling me that all their children wanted for holiday gifts were argyle socks. It didn't feel so playful to me because I just remember this shocking truth hitting me like a ton of rocks: "Oh my! They are looking at my socks! What else am I unconsciously doing that they are picking up?"
That was the moment I knew that "more is caught than taught." Students are even noticing what socks we wear! To this very day I understand that "more is caught than taught" is one of the great truths of my teaching. If my students notice my socks, they also note every tone, every attitude, and every bias. Everything speaks.
Well, all of this is to remind you of this teaching secret hidden in plain sight. The school year may end but the curriculum of your Self will go on as long as that student is alive and remembering. Teacher as heirloom.
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I’ve always felt that fine tuning begins with the selfhood of the educator. That’s what this old story that I once wrote communicates to me, that students are “reading” us every single day and they are catching who we are by how we live our lives.
Powerful. Frightening.
Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory views child development as a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment, from immediate settings of family and school to broad cultural values, laws, and customs. You’ll learn more about it in the first reading for today’s session. My story above, though, certainly speaks to the Mesosystem of my own childhood schooling experience. And that is just ONE of many complex systems of relationships that surrounded me as a growing child.
This is really similar to something else you learn deeply about in Phase 1 of our program, and that is Moll’s idea of the Funds of Knowledge. The concept of “funds of knowledge” is based on a simple premise: people are competent and have knowledge, and their life experiences have given them that knowledge. You can get a great introduction to Moll’s work right here: Critical Practices for Anti-Bias Education: Family and Community Engagement.
There are just SO many things we could focus on this week because, obviously, Bronfenbrenner’s system covers…well, everything! This week is a bit of an hors d’oeuvres of topics, but we’ll focus on the educator’s temperament, the educator’s interaction with guardians, and hot topics and pop culture. So many juicy and interesting topics!
We’ll focus in on Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems and end up blogging about how we would teach what some refer to as “controversial topics” in our classrooms…and, also, think about how we’d use pop culture to grab students’ attention as well. Delicious topics to ponder!
Let’s do it!