I Used to Think; Now I Think
Anne Taite Austin
The hardest and most significant lesson I learned as an educator came in my second year of teaching. A wayward student found his way into my office during my second year of teaching, and while he has long since graduated high school and college, he has become a symbol of my educational philosophy.
When Sam came to see me, he was a jaded and lost teenager. His bleached-tipped hair, baggy pants, and wallet chain stood out against the usual accoutrements adorning the rest of the student body. His attempts to distinguish himself were deliberate. As he would remind everyone willing to listen, his life had been riddled with obstacles including divorce, alcoholism, and economic misfortune.
Sam, who was very bright and wise beyond his years due to the adversity he had faced, struggled to adjust to the demands of FCDS. His sophomore grades did not reflect his wisdom and potential. As a young teacher, I struggled to have him accept consequences, buckle down, and “try harder.” At the end of his tumultuous tenth-grade year, I sat in a final faculty meeting and worried out loud that we had not made any strides. A fellow teacher turned to me and said, “We do not always see the fruits of our labor. You may never see your students reach the potential you dream, but that does not mean it is all for naught.” I nodded and all but dismissed the comment. I had yet to learn this lesson myself, and I desired instant rewards for my hard work.
Serendipitously, that summer I had the opportunity to attend a professional development program in New York City. The organization that caught my attention was Schools Attuned, part of the non-profit All Kinds of Minds Institute based in Chapel Hill, N.C. Its mission is to better equip educators with the knowledge and skills to meet the diverse learning needs of today’s K-12 students.
My Schools Attuned experience shed much-needed light on my work with Sam. As Dr. Levine, the co-founder of All Kinds of Minds, matter-of-factly declared, “To treat everyone the same is to treat them unequally.” In my limited experience, I had never considered this – I assumed that fairness meant treating my students the same despite how obvious it had become that individual minds call out to be treated differently. I thoughtfully considered this pedagogy and committed myself to implementing it with my students in general, and with Sam in particular, the next year.
My approach to teaching Sam – by leveraging his strengths, experiences, and affinities to help him overcome educational challenges – worked. He took ownership of his learning and expressed a commitment to working through challenges now that he felt “someone gets me and isn’t just talking to me.” Sam helped me understand that the traditional educational philosophy of one-size-fits-all had more than likely been inappropriate for quite a while given new understanding of the brain’s development and how one’s environment can affect each individual.
Good ideas take root quickly. Within a year, Forsyth Country Day School committed to training its entire faculty in the program that altered my education paradigm. Soon after training our staff, the school was awarded a prestigious contract to be the training facility for schools in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. To date, the site has worked with more than 750 educators from 19 states and seven countries. With a team of energetic facilitators, I was able to tell Sam’s story within a broader framework that illustrated how success in the classroom can be achieved through teachers who are knowledgeable and accepting of the principle that all minds are different.
Sam’s last two years at the school were indeed rocky at times, but when he walked across the stage at graduation and gave me a quick high-five, I knew that I had not seen the last of him. Every year, in fact, another “Sam” walks through the doors of Forsyth Country Day school, and I feel confident that our teachers are equipped with a philosophy that embraces, values, and rewards all kinds of minds. One of my mentors swears that we reap what we sow, and Sam is a testament to this. My time with Sam reinforced my belief that good teachers make a difference in the future of their students, even if we don’t always get to harvest the crop.