Lynne Martin Describes How It Was When Teachers Were Teachers

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One of the ideas behind our school was to do the very best we could in hopes that it could also serve as a kind of beacon to other schools.  Not in the sense that we were better than others but because we had some kinds of freedom that the public schools did not have.  We hoped we might be helpful in that sense.

Books were published on our curriculum during the early days.  I still have some of them and they are so precious to me that I’m scared to lend them out. 

 The Course In History

The Morning Exercise As A Socializing Influence

The Social Motive In School Work

All of these were part of a series entitled, Studies In Education, meaning to summarize and reflect on what was being done. Flora Cooke wrote the introductions.

The Morning Exercise was our daily getting together of the whole school.  These grew from Francis Parker’s practice of holding town meetings with the students.  It started as the entire school coming together everyday at around 10:30 for about thirty minutes. 

The program would be some grade sharing something they had learned, or were studying, either through music, drama or poetry.  It is a lovely tradition however you can manage it.

Let me give you an idea of how things could work.  I am reminded of one time when one of my kids brought into school a dog’s head…a VERY dead dog’s head.  He’d found it in Lincoln Park and it stank but it was a treasure!  So, after the beginning of the day I put it in a plastic bag and hung it outside the window so it wouldn't smell up the room. After that, the Science teacher came and he was just great about it.  He took it home and boiled it and then brought it back and here was this beautiful, little skull which was so nice for the kids to see. 

There also was a time when I required that at least once a week, everyone would bring in a drawing they had done of any natural thing.  It could be a leaf or could be a shell; anything really because I had the idea that city children do not see.  There is an awful lot that is ugly in a big, bustling city and there are so many things that no one wants to see.

 I think there is value in the simple things, simple things like making leaf prints or rubbings with a flattened crayon.  Bring to their attention any kind of thing that you run across like a wasp’s nest, a piece of lichen, or a mushroom that you pass when walking down a sidewalk.  This practice is particularly important for city kids.

As for planning, I just assume that a teacher has in mind a prepared skeleton of first ideas she intends to present and explore.  I used to get kind of scared of those people listing endless objectives, as if they knew EXACTLY what they were going to teach.  More it is about putting a question out there and then seeing what comes of it with the children. 

This is how we discover what they need to be thinking about.  Over the years, I developed a series of binders outlining and detailing the sequence and activities by subject.  Here is one for Geometry and another filled with ideas related only to Math.  I had one for Language that might not include every activity for an entire year but certainly those ideas that got me thinking about a new or good way to go at something.

A teacher’s skeleton might include some of the ideas she thought were terribly important for children to have thought about on a particular subject.  I would start by thinking about what interested me, as an adult, about a topic.  And then I would try and try and remember what caught my interest as a child.  The resulting list wouldn’t necessarily mean that they would investigate everything. 

Teacher would also have a clear idea of a progression she intended.  For instance, by the end of the year in Math she would expect that three fourths of the children could do the such and such following operations.  She would build from day to day, creating the spelling lists central to whatever theme or topic was under study.  She would identify the age-appropriate scientific questions for experimentation.

I saved the children’s writing for them in a file until the end of the year.  I always kept my own records and I gave my own tests.  I reminded them that I was testing to see how well I was teaching something.  If they did not know an answer, it was not because they were dumb or weren't paying attention; it was because I wasn’t teaching well.  I gave a lot of tests that were open book…you could go and try to find the answer.  It is very important for kids to have a chance to learn how to do that.  From time to time let’s say, I’d give a little test on the multiplication tables and I would keep a record of what they had or had not mastered.  We wrote narrative reports and there I might say that “he tests in the upper 4^th grade level within a very able group of students.”  Or, “he is in excellent shape in all things with highest in ____and lowest in ____.  

But I notice…”

I never read the record of a child before school began.  I didn't want to be impressed by what somebody else thought about a certain child.  I wanted them to come fresh and new to me.  But I did tell the parents, 

“I do want to know anything you would want me to be watching out for or to be aware of.” 

4^th Grade studied the Greeks.  When I started teaching it, I brought in the other ancient civilizations out of which the Greeks began.  I concentrated on the Greeks in 2^nd semester.  We would do plays in costume and I did not use textbooks.  I used original sources.  I would read to them Greek tragedies.  We started out with the formation of the earth and then primitive humans, cave paintings and things like that.  For forming the earth we’d go out and look for fossils and discuss possible evolutions. 

I had loads and loads of pictures and always put them up.  We would go over to the park and sketch the bison, comparing it with the Lascaux cave paintings.  And then we moved on to Egypt not because it was the oldest but because it was the simplest of ancient civilizations to approach as a thematic unit.  We learned about the Fertile Crescent and I would have them pick any Old Testament bible story that they wanted to research and write a report on it.  We had children from many, different religions so we used these stories as literature.  For instance, they could use the flood story and I would then tell them about the excavations at Ur where there are traces of a once great flood. 

We studied Hammurabi around the time of Abraham. I had them keep a time chart of key characters and I gave them important dates to include, with details.  We’d add on to these every few days and used them to think in terms of time and how things change but not in the sense that they had to memorize it all.  I used to create crosswords using dates they could then look up on their time charts.  Using the cross number puzzles was a way of helping some of those dates stick without requiring that they learn them by rote.

I remember that around the time of Christmas somebody would ask, “Now what was happening in Egypt around this time of year?”  I had histo-maps.  Do you know those?  They are wonderful things.  You can get them at the Field Museum.  They show histories pictorially, histories of civilizations.  So, we studied the Fertile Crescent up to about the time that the Persians were poised, at their peak, looking toward Greece.  Then we went all the way back at 2^nd semester and studied the Minoans, the Miceneans and then historic Greece up to the death of Socrates.

Here is a source I used during 1^st semester, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to Old Testament, Editor James B. Pritchard, Princeton University Press 1955. 

I would use this and shorten some of the most ancient stories and then produce one as a play for a Morning Exercise performance.  I did a lot of summarizing, cutting down, mimeographing and giving children copies of the original versions of ancient things.

I had a strong feeling that if you were asking them to write beautifully, you needed to give them the experience of beautiful words.  In 4^th grade we learned cursive so our daily handwriting practice, wherever possible, came out of the literature of the people we were studying.  Inevitably, during the formation of earth, someone would say, “There ain’t nobody to be quoted.” (Laughter)  So, I always gave them, 

“And the earth was without form and void…”  Lines like that are what we used for handwriting practice and I kept them all in a binder full of typed quotations, spanning historical topics for the year.  This gave them short fragments of something lovely to work with.

I built up quite a collection of artifacts.  I’ve got everything from lava that Leakey found in a gorge to reproductions of very old things.  After a few of the more fragile got broken, I learned just to carry them around so children could look and touch.  It is very important to do this.  And it takes time to build up good supplies and to know which you really are going to need and use.  None of this should be rigid because things change as the teacher learns something new about a subject and incorporates it.

Parents were given the dates, roughly, for when we would celebrate a birthday like Apollo’s and for that a father came in with his little Irish harp and played a fragment of ancient Greek music.  Once parents come to know they really are respected, you come to find out that they have talents that bring great value to the classroom work.  We’d put out a notice saying, “This is the theme.  Is there anything you might be able to contribute during this quarter, related to this topic?”

After I’d been teaching the 4^th grade unit on Greece for awhile, there was a magazine article saying that I’d never been there and it quoted one of my students as saying that when he grew up he would be sure that he took me to Greece.  About six months after the article appeared, I got a letter from the Greek government inviting me to come for a visit.  So, I toured for six weeks.  Pure Cinderella!  I went during the summer, visited a camp and met with their country’s head of education.  

I inherited the 4^th grade Greek theme but I could make it anything I wanted to.

Lynn Martin was a teacher for 30 years at Francis Parker School.  She was noted for her teaching of the culture and history of Ancient Greece.

The government of Greece honored her in 1960 with an all-expenses-paid trip to that country. 

Interviewed  August 20, 1989 by Kathy Irwin 

The SchoolHouse Was A Log Hut

The schoolhouse was a log hut, where Colonel Wheeler used to shelter his corn.  It sat in a lot behind a rail fence and thorn bushes, near the sweetest of springs.  There was an entrance where a door once was, and within, a massive rickety fireplace; great chinks between the logs served as windows.  Furniture was scarce.  A pale blackboard crouched in the corner.  My desk was made of three boards, reinforced at critical points, and my chair, borrowed from the landlady, had to be returned every night.  Seats for the children - these puzzled me much.  I was haunted by a New England version of neat little desks and chairs, but, alas! the reality was rough plank benches without backs, and at times without legs....

There they sat, nearly thirty of them, on the rough benches, their faces shading from a pale cream to a deep brown, the little feet bare and swinging, the eyes full of expectation, with here and there a twinkle of mischief, and the hands grasping Webster's blue-black spelling-book.  I loved my school, and the fine faith the children had in the wisdom of their teacher was truly marvelous.  We read and spelled together, wrote a little, picked flowers, sang and listened to stories of the world beyond the hill.

W.E. B. Du Bois

Diary of A City School Kid

They are shooting in the projects again, and my neighborhood looks like a bullet-ridden section of Sarajevo, only here there will be no peace-keeping forces to provide us safe passage. On the first day of school we will walk or ride bikes over spent shell casings, shattered glass, bloodstains and abandoned auto parts, hoping we don’t get caught in anybody’s crossfire. Other kids with shiny faces just like mine, in nicer parts of the city, will travel safely and confidently to their education destination. There won’t be one ounce of fear swirling in the pit of their stomachs, no hyper-vigilance, no need for eyes in the back of their heads. I pretend I am a stealthy Ninja with secret powers. I breathe deep from the core of my being and try to remain calm and alert because that is how I will stay alive.

When I get to school, if I get to school, breakfast will be waiting. It will be a good breakfast which I don’t want to lose due to a nervous digestion. Last year, someone at headquarters tried sending us donuts and sugary cereal but The Moms would not have it. There were big arguments and tons of rowdy meetings which resulted in The Moms retaining control over our meal program. That means my morning menu will include some rotation of true scrambled eggs, homemade biscuits, sausage or bacon, juice, sliced fresh fruit cup, pancakes flipped on a grill, hash browns from peeled potatoes, toast out of a toaster, tacos rolled by hand, oatmeal with raisins and cocoa scented with tiny marshmallows. In other words, real food prepared from scratch by real people. Maybe this is the love + nutrition that we require in order to survive the violence outside. Lunch is much the same with salads we actually eat and an absolute minimum of processed foods. Believe me, I dream of these meals and I smell them in my sleep, when I can sleep, which is when the gunfire isn’t so loud and relentless.

Lots of schools around here won’t open this year. They have been turned into private academies, charters or sometimes even into condos. Once they were known by famous names like Harriet Tubman Elementary or Cesar Chavez Junior High or Julia Richman Senior High but that’s all gone and forgotten. Others were bulldozed to make way for apartments that no one around here will ever be able to afford, leaving us surrounded by strangers with historical and social amnesia. Last week some kids got letters saying their district was out of money and couldn’t say for sure when things would start up. Parents and teachers marched down to city hall and picketed with big signs but so far, nothing has changed. The Moms call it a standoff that we are lucky to be out of but now I worry every time the mail arrives that we may be next.

Yesterday, a shooting happened right in the middle of a basketball game at the community center. Two guys were killed so now that gym is off limits and there is yellow, crime scene tape everywhere you look. I am sick of it. I want someplace safe to play where parks aren’t gang turf, ball diamonds aren’t vandalized, and recreation workers aren’t furloughed leaving us with no bats, no balls and no umpires. Is that too much to ask? I’m trying to have a childhood here. What playground space there was at my school, got turned into a parking lot. It wasn’t much to begin with since the junkies used it at night for shooting up, leaving infected syringe litter all over the blacktop. Our adults had to sweep all that away which was yuck, to say the least. But then one morning drug guys came roaring around the corner, leaning out of car windows with sawed-off shotguns. Their fire fight got so crazy that staff cars took bullet holes the size of frisbees and that was the end of off-street parking. Now if we want “recess”, the neighborhood men escort teacher and students a block over to a green space where we run like the wind, while they watch our piled-up jackets so nobody steals them.

The grownups look proud of us when we step out into the community and they should because they have lots to be proud of. Plenty of them own their own homes and keep the front sidewalks as clean as a kitchen floor. They plant flower and vegetable gardens and run businesses like tire shops, sandwich shacks, beauty parlors, parking lots, car repair, even an old hardware. I take walkabouts, I pay attention, I listen and I ask questions. I’m curious about what they do and how they keep it going year after year. I know just where to go when a class project calls for batteries, magnets, pulleys, mirrors, scales, electrical switches, sandpaper or seed packets.

We even have a library that sits in the middle of a burned-out block. It looks more like a bombed-out block but at least it has stayed open and busy for nearly 100 years. Its name is the Frederick A. Douglass branch, with art deco designs on the first floor and a theater in the basement. Yes, a theater for stage plays with curtains, microphones, lights and speakers that let audiences hear what is being said. Last year a rich man came to visit us at school. He said he had grown up nearby, with a dad who was killed in an accident and a mom gone all day at a factory where she sewed clothes. He didn’t have much to do for fun so he hung out at this library. They got to know him so well that the ladies collected books about things that interested him which was mostly snakes. No matter how lonely or invisible he was feeling, he knew there would always be snake books waiting for him at the big, circulation desk. That made him feel like somebody and eventually, he grew up and became somebody. I believe his story because this library acts the same way to this very day.

The violence I encounter takes place inside my safety zone, on streets I know very well, in front of people who recognize me and look after me. I’ve memorized how to duck and cover and I have a choir of angels making sure I stay in one piece. But what about the kids who have lost all that? How many of them will get hurt before someone figures out that it is never safe to make children strangers in a strange land? Their nearby schools have been shuttered and where they now must go, they have never been before. When something jumps off, because it always does, what then? Who has their back and who protects their heart from feeling frightened, lost and alone? It is scary enough to walk past a familiar homeless center, housed in a church basement, and watch angry men with sticks and clubs push down the steps and into the shelter looking for someone they want to beat up. What if you don’t know the location, the director and the clients, like I do? It is a peaceful, positive, protecting program…most of the time. But when that’s not true, a child’s imagination takes over and nightmares begin and the journey to school turns terrifying and everything connected to learning becomes just one, long-lasting anxiety attack. And don’t get me started on the rival gangs, their colors, signs, turf and trouble. Ask around because the parents of these kids are affiliated members who don’t like each other and who kill each other regularly. That definitely will not change anytime soon.

Mary was a little lamb

Her fleece was white as snow

She got assigned to a dangerous zip code

Where grown men feared to go.

So we followed her to school one day

It was against their rule

But who would route her life this way?

Only a bureaucrat or a fool.

It made the children scream and shout

When the bullets hit the wall

We tried to cover Mary, but too late,

We watched her fall.