Tom Rademacher teaches high school English at the Fine Arts Interdisciplinary Resources (FAIR) School in downtown Minneapolis. "[H]e teaches us that our thoughts matter," wrote a student who nominated him, "and that we are capable of anything we want to do with our lives." Rachemacher wins a $6,000 prize and will serve as a teacher ambassador in the state for the next year. On his home page on the FAIR website, he notes, "I know I'm doing my job right when a student says I don't act like a teacher." So what's his classroom like? "On bad days, it's a mess," he admits. "On good days, it's a mess with great questions. I have a rule that I will not try to teach my students anything they could look up on the internet, which means we're often pushing each other towards pretty challenging work and conversations."It seems like one of the first things you did after being named Minnesota Teacher of the Year was write an OpEd piece challenging people to stop bad-mouthing others involved in K-12 education and focus on what matters: how to improve kids' experiences in the classroom. On the evidence of your tumblr site, this isn't a new message from you. Do you feel the conversation about improving schools has reached a stalemate? What can taxpayers/voters do to support what you call "third options"?
I don't know if stalemate is the word I would use because there are so many people out there, individual teachers and organizations, who are finding and implementing solutions. Still, we've seen some common-sense bills die because of politics buried deep under the conversation, and we do see too many really important conversations and debates about school derailed by name-calling and attack politics. There are people working too hard to win a battle that, really, doesn't exist or at least isn't the most important thing to our students and their success.
People need to demand a better conversation, and they need to make sure better questions are being asked. I think the conversation is struggling largely because active teachers are not part of it enough. Teachers don't have the luxury of feeling like answers are easy because we work through the complexities of the problems every day. If you hear something on the news that sounds too good to be true or too awful to imagine, know that there is a counter-story out there somewhere. If you have a question about education, ask a teacher, and if you're involved in making decisions, ask 10 or a 100 teachers. The real story of what's happening in our classrooms is as important for finding solutions as it is for illustrating struggles, and those stories need a central role in the conversation.
You're writing "a book about teaching (with jokes)"? Where are you in the process? What inspired it?
I'm about three-fourths of the way through a first draft. It's taking awhile mainly because I made a promise to myself that I would not write or talk about teaching unless I am actively in the classroom. I have time to write over the summer, but anytime you haven't stood in front of a room of kids for more than four days, it becomes hard to imagine what it is like, and it's hard to write about authentically. I'm writing the book because it took a long time before I felt like I really belonged in teaching. I felt everything too hard, took too much home with me, ran out of patience too easily. I learned a lot by making spectacular mistakes in my first years of teaching, and I think I have a lot to say to newer teachers who may be joining the profession who want to teach in a different way than they were taught.
What do you most enjoy about teaching and your day-today work?
In 20 minutes, I will have students in my room, and I have no idea what will happen next. There's a level of adventure and exhaustion that comes with the sheer mass of humans you work with every day, and a profound level of pride that comes with watching them do something they didn't know they could do or see something in a book that you've never seen--pride that comes with being trusted as someone who cares about them outside of your room.
What University of Minnesota English classes or professors do you most remember and why?
During my first semester of my freshman year of college, I lucked out and got into an intro to poetry writing class with Michael Dennis Browne. He's a man who cares so deeply and equally about writing, teaching, and people, and he taught me more about all three than any teacher I've ever had. I remember the way he would sit in the front of his room with a little metal cup of water, closing his eyes when students read their work, and finding pieces of beauty, pieces of music, in some pretty rough poetry.What are you reading or what have you read lately that you think is great?
My students are reading Daytripper [a graphic novel by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon] right now, and I get to spend many minutes every day sitting and listening to them get so worked up and so passionate about it. It's a phenomenal and beautiful work of art, one I read by myself and loved, and one I increasingly enjoy the more I get to see other people enjoy it. My students have been tweeting with the artists back and forth asking them questions.... It's been really cool.
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