The Secondary English Classroom: An Autoethnography

“I pose (and take up) this challenge: might there be some necessary place to which we can travel, somewhere beyond the scope of ‘emotional-yanking’ and performativity, where the fact of intimacy and even the presence of tears, have their rightful place in communicating the limits of what we can understand?” 

-Jessica Restaino

It is the day before Thanksgiving. I drove up to the school where I work to write an autoethnography on teaching. The halls are silent and eerie. The normal buzz and commotion of a traditional school day are all but muted save from a janitor or two passing by and inquisitively peering into my classroom.

“This dude should get a life” is what their polite smile was really saying.

I thought positioning myself in the eye of the storm might provide some rhetorical stronghold behind these words – that crafting this story from my teacher desk may unlock an “artistic and analytic demonstration of how [I] come to know, name, and interpret personal and cultural experiences” in this field (Adams, Holman Jones, Ellis 1). A bit like a weather reporter broadcasting live from the street corner where a tropical storm is flooding roads and tearing apart street signs behind them.

The truth is, I could not drum up the words. I could not put one sentence together that I liked. I would write an introductory paragraph, glance over it a few times, and then delete it outright. Kenneth Burke refers to this feeling as occupational psychosis. These “trained incapacities suggest that being there, pressed up close to [my] particular scene, can inhibit a broader view of that scene’s full complexity…proximity can actually become an epistemic hindrance” (Boyle and Rice 2). So I drove home. I excused myself from the space that occupies so much of my identity and personality. Most notably, I had to rethink the methodological approach to autoethnography that got me here in the first place. If I want to “make contributions to existing research” or “embrace vulnerability as a way to understand emotions,” then I have to remember that writing as a mode of inquiry does not necessarily mean writing is a mode of solution (Adams, Holman Jones, Ellis 38). To borrow words from rhetorician Clarice Blanco, “I learn as I write” (11). I learn to situate my experiences in a broader context of education. I have to make sense of my memories, but they do not have to outright solve issues plaguing the teaching profession in one foul swoop. 

Heewon Chang writes that “autoethnography benefits greatly from the thought that self is an extension of a community rather than that it is an independent, self-sufficient being, because the possibility of cultural self-analysis rests on an understanding that self is part of a cultural community” (26). My lived experience in the secondary English classroom is the “cultural self-analysis” that foregrounds my writing on teaching. See, I am fully immersed and deeply entangled in the American education system – a complex web with political implications, societal scrutinization, and a highly passionate workforce. I have staked enough emotional and relational capital in this industry over the past eight years to display, in function, some of the contentions I argue from. Hence, I begin this layered account with the “thoughts, feelings, identities, and experiences that make [me] uncertain – knocking [me] for sense-making loops – and that make [me] question, reconsider, and reorder [my] understanding of [myself], others, and our worlds” (Adams, Holman Jones, Ellis 47). The utility of reflexivity in journal entries, messages from students, and critical self-narratives is not to be “emotional-yanking” or “performativity,” as Restaino says, but to venture into a place of insight and perspective on the current affairs of our educational system.

Point being, I have entered into a narrow and specific research inquiry: What is the role of relational teaching in the everchanging, post-pandemic secondary English classroom? The breadth and depth of qualitative research and my experiences in the classroom has uncovered additional questions related to pedagogy, mental health, student motivation – amongst others – that will aid in triangulation of general claims I will posit within the education system. Considering, first off, how does a “pedagogy of knowing” combat diminishing student engagement? What role, if any, does resilience play in a teacher's affects? Or why is there a demonstrative teacher exodus in public education? My central focus in collecting artifacts, engaging in the research, and inviting the self into writing is to highlight a pedagogical approach that is not necessarily new or groundbreaking in the industry. But it is the hard work and investment from the secondary teacher that even in the midst of never-ending tasks outside of the classroom – Admission, Review, and Dismissal(ARD) special education meetings, cross curricular planning meetings, paperwork and grading, required professional development conferences, I could go on – that students get the opportunity to wrestle with the content, engage in the material from a nuanced perspective, and hopefully build a life-long understanding of foundational skills. I refer to this approach as relational teaching. Educational psychologist Jean Piaget would call it the Constructionist Theory. You build, or “construct”, the classroom culture and environment on the preconceived notion that you truly know your students. On display, this strategy is fifteen years later reflecting back to your favorite math teacher showing up at your basketball game or asking about your little brother by name even though you can no longer find the slope intercept of a line on a graph. Or your history teacher letting you write your paper on the cultural influence of art instead of religion during the Middle Ages since she knows you just placed at the UIL art competition. There is no additional pay stipend for showing up, there are not any administrators requiring teachers to do this, but it is the disposition through which my most transformational moments in teaching have come from. 

Here, I suggest three constructs to focus the synthesis of my research. First, is the state of the (education) union. Next, is discussions on teacher mental health and self-efficacy. Last, is on relational teaching. 

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On the State of the (Education) Union

Grading is transactional;

I’m gatekeeping a letter grade for those

Who deserve their post secondary dreams to be met.

At least that’s the lie some of my students believe.

It's not fair to the hours I put into it, honestly;

What scares me 

Is when I believe them.

See, subjectivity is the issue;

It’s hard to use a rubric to explain

That their peer said the same thing they said

Just in a more effective way. 

Math is objective

Science is objective

Multiple choice is objective.

Writing has nuance and craft.

It has voice and it has pliability.

The feedback I offer is to strengthen their skills

To sharpen the arsenal they are building

But usually it’s the reason for condemnation or evidence for angry emails

Maybe there is a way to solve this

Maybe not.

I borrowed a methodology here from Alison Lukowski, Justin Nicholes, and Cody Reimer in their work “Grading Writing: A Poetic (Auto)Ethnography” to zoom in on my lived experience in the secondary English classroom. I hesitate to apply broad strokes or hasty generalizations on the system at large, but the work from Lukowski et al. resembles similar thematic lamentations and frustrations. 

As we broaden our scope and zoom out a bit, these pains from my poem feel rampant in the teacher workforce. CBS News Texas published an investigative video piece in which they interviewed six teachers with a collective 130 years of experience in the field. All of whom, however, recently quit the profession due to the growing concerns over pay, mental health, and poor working conditions. One teacher shares that his panic attack during a state exam “felt like he committed treason” (CBS Texas 4:41-4:48). All six teachers reflect on the paradigm shift they felt in their field to a point of breaking. Call it the politicization of school board meetings, losing the inherent trust of the community, or low level learning standards after Covid-19, highly qualified teachers are leaving the profession in droves. Texas Tribune puts it this way:

“Over the last two years, Texas’ public education system has been through the wringer, from shifting to online classes and debates about making masks mandatory to the ongoing tensions over how race and sex should be taught in schools to, most recently, the renewed discussion over school safety in the aftermath of the mass shooting in Uvalde where 19 elementary school students and two teachers were killed. Teachers have been at the front lines of all of these issues — and it’s taken a toll on them. Texas has long had a teacher shortage, but the consensus is that the pandemic has made it worse, pushing teachers to their limits and out of the job” (Lopez 1).

Research in a 2022 Vox piece covering the teacher shortage crisis in America identified that “44 percent of new teachers leave the profession within five years” (Cineas). Although I survived the dreaded five year statistic, it almost got the best of me. We were returning to campus for the notorious 2020-2021 school year of blended learning with Zoom and in-person students. Teaching in that setting was like an old-timey Western shootout. Some drunk cowboy swings through the saloon doors picking a fight with any young teacher he can get his hands on. In my defense, I was just there trying to enjoy a moonshine with some coworkers but perhaps I did look at him the wrong way, although I think the truth is, I looked inexperienced in that pedagogical model and had learners not interested in breakout room discussions. See, he had the real firepower in his double barrel holster: social distancing protocols, contact tracing, civic and political unrest. All I had was the jagged beer bottle I smashed on the bartop: relationships and a desire for students to write authentically and discover their own writing language. Here is a journal entry of mine from my experience that year:

April 23, 2021

Covid-19 has absolutely turned the world upside down. Death is so cruelly palpable and legitimate human-to-human contact, or the lack thereof, has spurred on a seismic mental health crisis which was technically already a crisis. A mental health crisis crisis, if you will. Moreover, public education, in which I find my employment and usual enjoyment, has not been immune to hitches in the wagon that Corona Virus has caused. Since August 2020, I have been brought to tears so many times desperately missing what used to be of my classroom; I’ve struggled to get my learners to understand some of the most rudimentary English skills -- pronouns and shit. The crux of all this, and I believe this to my core, is authentic relationships have been utterly removed from the classroom to accommodate for the hybrid model of learning we are in (zoom calls synchronously linked to their class schedule). And I know my students are just as miserable as me. Engagement is at an all-time low; stress, anxiety, and fear is at an all-time high. I just don’t know what they look like to see it on their face. Still, nearly eight months into the school year, I wouldn’t be able to recognize the majority of my students if we rant into each other on the street. Of my 153 students, 18 of them come in person.

That last few sentences from my journal still haunts me. I do not mention in this entry just how little videos were used in our zoom meeting. This is one of my third period English classes with twenty one people on the call, three students in person, and I am the only one with my camera on. It was Zoom Groundhogs Day.

I could not let that ole cowboy win. I thought about it time and time again, do not get me wrong. But if I gave up, it would be giving up on my identity. It would be giving up on my formal training. It would be giving up on the education system at large. So yes, I did finish the 2020-2021 school year and completed the much maligned five year mark, but not without looking like that barfight got the better of me. Brian Lopez with the Texas Tribune notes that “In a Charles Butt Foundation poll of 919 Texas teachers last year, 68% said they seriously considered leaving the profession in 2021” (22). It is important, for me, to remember the picture of my third period English class is just that, a picture. A snapshot into the status quo of teaching through a pandemic. The secondary teaching field has course corrected pedagogically since then, but that does not mean the overworked-underpaid teachers are not hurt, disoriented, and distraught. 

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On Teacher Mental Health and Self-Efficacy

I am fearful writing this section

I am scared it reads like I have it figured out

None of us really do.

But I lean in

I learn to be resilient

At least I try to bounce back.

I believe in my content area

I know students need someone in their corner

Now more than ever.

How do I find it in myself?

Is this all just a false bill of goods?

Am I yelling into the void? 

Echoing the poetic style from before and embracing the inward-outward methodology of autoethnography, I look to offer boots on the ground insights on mental faculties in the education space. Especially as I peer out to examine and study the culture of teaching and mental health. My fear is that this perspective reads as utopian or cheesy self-help bull shit. Rather, it should be understood as a disposition; a lens to approach tackling a field littered with strife and division.

I want to be clear about one thing: being a teacher requires mental fortitude. I cannot cut it any more simply. I am hesitant to be so brash, but it is the truth. The storms have hit. Community trust is fractured. Issues identified in the previous section make it clear there is a need for response. Secondary teachers do not have to have it together at all times nor are they not offered grace and forgiveness when they do not, but resilience and self-efficacy are prerequisites to sustainability in our field nonetheless. I know this because I lived it first hand. My name has been read out loud at a school board meeting with thousands of viewers for offering a collection of diverse authors. I have been the subject of a student led blackmailing gone awry. So how do I bounce back?

“Writing About Emotional Experiences as a Therapeutic Process” by James Pennebaker suggests that the disclosure phenomena in psychological studies can indeed be extrapolated to writing as opposed to just talking. If I trust what Pennebaker contends – that the power of prose resembles the therapeutic process of talk therapy – then I take back the hurt and trauma of my experiences with these words that I write. Call it catharsis, or even healing perhaps, inviting the self into conversation over teacher mental health provides opportunities for others to “understand these experiences and the emotions they generate” (Adams, Holman Jones, Ellis 39). In other words, I get to own the rhetorical power behind my story; I labor over this text and let tears splash down on my keyboard while the ramifications of PTSD and anger exit with the written word.

The American Psychology Association defines self-efficacy as “an individual's belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments (Bandura, 1977, 1986, 1997). Self-efficacy reflects confidence in the ability to exert control over one's own motivation, behavior, and social environment” (1). I am still learning to lean into this idea. Self-efficacy is not quantitative, and I have certainly never been required to attend a professional development that teaches tangible tools to practice it. However, approaching the weighty work of what happens in the secondary English classroom has to be prefaced with the teachers ability to trust in their effectiveness in engaging their students. 

“Resilience as a Contributor to Novice Teacher Success, Commitment, and Retention” by Melanie Tait offers analysis of personal efficacy and emotional competence to build resilience as a teacher. Tait insists that resilience is a key factor in understanding the mental health of the education workforce. Denotatively, resilience is relatively straightforward: “the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness” (Oxford). Resilience gets sticky when examining the connotation of its application and the attempts at measuring it in function. How does a teacher practice resilience when they feel stuck in a perpetual state of burnout? Authors Christine Agaibi and John Wilson describe resilience as a “very complex psychological and behavioral process” (196). In their work titled “Trauma, PTSD, and Resilience: A Review of the Literature,” there are four implications that will contribute to an informed disposition for teachers dealing with mental health concerns: 

• Understanding posttraumatic resilience is critical to successful treatment 

• Posttraumatic resilience can be implemented through training programs to reduce the effects of traumatic exposure

• Posttraumatic resilience can be learned

• Posttraumatic resilience characterizes psychobiologically healthy survivors (212)

It goes without saying, but the mental health landscape of the American teacher workforce is fucking messy. But what if teachers could be taught resilience? How can they become healthier versions of themselves by buying into it? For me, choosing resilience and self-efficacy is often tough – a lens that I am learning to embrace. But research indicates that this mental disposition, although relatively unmentioned in rhetoric and composition scholarship, holds an important stronghold on mental fortitude in the educational landscape. If we teachers are going to champion the future of our field, taking back the narrative on teacher mental health is at least a start.

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On Relational Teaching

My hands were tied behind my back

Like a perp being shoved into a cop car

Virtual learning stole my every way of knowing

But I was the one under arrest?

I engage to earn the right

I engage to build trust

I engage to make an impact

I engage because it is the right thing to do.

Sometimes I look at all the hurdles in the way

And wonder what it is all worth;

To hand out gold stars and pats on the back?

Is student discovery and self-actualization possible?

What if a kid was truly known?

Like for who they really are

I am clinging to a connection in the age of disconnection

My hope is that their writing resembles that.

I will never stop hoping and hoping for that.

James A Berlin in “Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories” elucidates that when we are teaching writing “we are not simply offering training in a useful technical skill that is meant as a simple complement to the more important studies of other areas. We are teaching in a way of experiencing the world, a way of ordering and making sense of it” (776). The cry of every composition teacher should reflect Berlin’s sentiment. However, as discussed previously, there are a litany of forces in opposition to secondary students' understanding and practice of writing as a way of experiencing the world. To name a few I have seen first hand: diminishing motivation, large language models like ChatGPT, grading subjectivity – the list is extensive and ever growing. So what can a teacher do to have students thoughtfully engage with the content knowing full well the pervasive hurdles previously established? I turn to Ann E. Berthoff’s findings on a “pedagogy of knowing” to lay the foundation of what I call relational teaching. It is an extension of strategies that push up against a “pedagogy of exhortation” – the idea that teaching is just a transactional relationship between the teacher who imparts truths, or absolutes, to the student who then memorizes and applies them to their lives. 

Building authentic relationships is the key to unlock the writing from students that embrace abstraction and their ability to learn “how meanings make further meanings possible” (Berthoff 4). Relational teaching is an investment in knowing students for who they are. It is the additional work that unfortunately falls by the wayside on the already full plate secondary teachers hold. Career teacher and motivational speaker Rita Pierson shares this exchange in her Ted Talk with over 6.2 million views “Every Kid Needs a Champion”:

“A colleague said to me one time, ‘They don't pay me to like the kids. They pay me to teach a lesson. The kids should learn it. I should teach it, they should learn it, Case closed.’ Well, I said to her, ‘You know, kids don't learn from people they don't like’” (Ted 1:22-1:40). 

Pierson is playing up the laughter here but the tinge of truth is palpable. Students need someone they can rely on. But relational teaching is not a popularity contest by any means. I have never been more challenged by the thought of trying to establish impactful connections with hundreds of students. Here is a tough exchange with one of my soccer players who I know needs the metaphorical arm around his shoulder:

Relational teaching does, however, broaden the scope of student possibilities, especially in the age of disconnection, isolation, and comparison. Having someone “in your corner” can truly change the way a student views the content area and how they fit into it. Here are a few notes and messages from students that have discovered their ability to write, built confidence in who they are as people, and have experienced the world in authentic ways:

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Conclusion

I am desperate for students to engage in their thinking; to write authentically and discover their own language. By and large, every secondary English teacher is calling out for the same thing. We are, though, facing the significant uphill battle I covered extensively. I use these stories, invite myself into the bigger picture, and engage in the research to build a collection of hyper focused attention on problems ailing the secondary education system. I sought out to discover the role of relation teaching in the constantly evolving English literature and composition space. Pointing to a relational approach to teaching, while embracing a lens of resilience and self-efficacy in the midst of trauma, is how I have situated my experiences in the larger education conversation. I do not want to offer a false sense of solutions or utopian arrogance, rather I hope to offer insight and perspective from someone on the frontlines of an educational system. 

I am learning about dealing with trauma from surviving teaching through the Covid-19 pandemic. I am still learning how to teach students like Camila how to write well. I want Chase to know I believe in him. I am leaning into resilience and self-efficacy as a disposition in this field. I have to remember that the reflexive journey to uncover my narrative surrounding the education system is important to the larger research picture on the secondary English classroom.

It is year eight of teaching now. I have driven home from the school where I work to find reprieve and comfort in the words I have written. I try every day to disrupt those damning teacher exodus statistics; prioritizing an effort to understand how the year of hybrid teaching and everything else in between has changed my mental and emotional state, and how to make sense of it moving forward. Essentially, This is just the start of figuring that out.

I will never stop hoping and hoping.