The following is a guest post written by someone who is not me who has finished their first term teaching at a prestigious boarding school which is not the one I teach at. 

Open letter to [someone’s] students:

Congratulations on making it through another term at [school]! I know I was technically your math teacher, but right now I want to talk about all the politics we covered. 

To begin, let’s define politics (I’m still a mathematician, after all!). Today’s Wikipedia says:

Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status.

As a class, we are a group of people, and it had to be decided how we would spend our time together. As a teacher, I am part of a department and an institution which again has to make many decisions. I have power over my class, but my department and the institution have power over me. Everything is subjective; everything is political.

My first political act was to allow your lived experience to have more weight than my theories. I was forced to make some decisions before I met you. Once I met you, I asked how you felt about our math curriculum and method of delivery. I asked you what made you feel safe or unsafe in the classroom. I made decisions about the class structure based on what I learned from you. That was political.

My second political act was to prioritize your learning over anything else (other than your well-being, but anything that jeopardizes your well-being necessarily harms your learning, so I felt prioritizing learning, as your math teacher, was not in conflict with my values or your needs). What are the things that get in the way of learning? Grades!!! Stress! Competition! Lack of safety! Lack of mathematical support!

Grades!!!! 

You told me that one of the most stressful things about your high achieving school is that you can’t mess up.  If you mess up on one test it can be impossible to get an A in the course. I responded with “in my class you will always have access to an A on your final grade, you just need to learn and demonstrate learning by the end.” That was political.

You told me that in addition to how you can’t mess up it was terrible how at your high achieving school, you can’t get sick. There is no time here. There is no time for healing. Students who have serious enough health issues to merit intervention will get institutional support in the form of a dean emailing their teachers saying “please be kind.” Personally, I choose kindness at all times! If you ever emailed me saying you were sick, my reply was: Please rest!!! Please take care of yourself! We will deal with the math when you are ready. That was political. 

My most questionable political act, which was not exactly on purpose, was that I let us fall behind. Some classes more than others. This was probably a mistake. Or rather, five years from now when I have a better handle of everything, I suspect I will not let us get as far behind as we did. I will be able to adapt more strategically to student needs. But what happened was we were all exhausted. We were all exhausted and you needed a break from the pressure. I listened to what you needed and I knew it would fall to me to deal with it later, and I did. This could have been done better, surely, but I did everything I could to listen and respond to your needs, to assume you were doing your best, and to make sure you were not penalized for my mistakes. I respected that we had a relationship and if I am going to hold you to a standard, I have to do my part to prepare and support you. That is political. 

I am telling you this because I think it is important, but also because I have a favor to ask of you now. A political favor. It is a favor that I ask only if it feels right and true. You don’t owe me anything, but remember politics is about activities associated with making decisions in groups.

Some number of you got higher scores with me than you would have received for the same work but with other teachers. Some number of you may attempt to use this as evidence that it’s okay not to grade harshly. Good! Everything is subjective, everything is political, and you earned those high scores by learning new skills. Many teachers, especially in math, have taken the political stance that grades are objective, and worse many view an A as indicative of not needing support. They want to be able to distinguish between “got it right the first time” and “got it right after some help.”

They want to distinguish between “learned on a predetermined schedule” and “learned on an occasionally delayed schedule.” That is hardly objective, and your experience says it’s not necessary.

There is this fantasy/nightmare harbored by many that a teacher not viewing an A as objective means everyone automatically gets A’s and nobody ever does the work! They believe this even here, as hard as it was to get here, as hard as it is to be here. This is not my experience, and I do not think it is your experience.

So what I ask of you is this: If you find yourself referencing our class, especially to an adult who is willing to blame high school students for their own stress, be political in your word choice. Again, I value your experience and your truth and I want you to be honest, but if this context fits then I would ask you to include it: whatever skill you didn’t perfect in my class was because I was new and didn’t have the support I needed, and was not because I didn’t properly motivate you with the specter of low grades.

But more than that, I would ask you, if you can, to make the political choice to feel confident in your grade and your abilities. Everything is subjective and everything is political and you do not need to agree with teachers who think an A means “never made mistakes.” What kind of a world are we creating if we’re trying to pretend that mistakes aren’t essential to being human? You are all extremely capable. You deserve support. You deserve the equity and inclusion you were promised in the brochures. 

I ask you, if you can, to make the political choice to go into your next class knowing that your voice deserves to be heard, your questions deserve to be asked and addressed, you deserve to feel safe in the classroom, you deserve to feel like you can make mistakes while learning, you deserve to be allowed to learn every day independent of the assessment schedule. You deserve a two-way street of accountability with faculty.

I learned so much from all of you, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Your teacher,

Not Dr H