The Contents of My Backpack

Abstract

As Mr. Goldman empties his backpack, his philosophy of teaching spills out, along with an interesting assortment of odds and ends. IT IS AN unassuming L.L. Bean daypack with two large compartments in the back, a smaller forward compartment, and a little zippered pocket in the very front. The color is a shiny but somewhat muted metallic blue. My last name is scrawled in faded blue marker on the silver reflective stripe that runs across the pack's face. Fully loaded, it weighs a good 20 pounds. I wear it in the ultimate uncool fashion, high on my back with the belt firmly cinched around my waist. I have spent over half of my career as a migrant teacher, working in other people's rooms rather than having a space of my own. My backpack has become my mobile classroom. As a teacher I carry all sorts of things with me to work: my hopes, my knowledge, my prejudices, and all of the emotional baggage of my own experience. And it helps me to also drag around a large pack full of assorted junk. My inspirational welcome to teaching math talk was not going well. Four faces looked back at me -- three women, one man, all in their early 20s. They appeared to be no more confident in their grasp of the subject matter than they had been before my presentation, possibly less so. For these interns this would be their first real taste of teaching on their own. At least two of the four have confessed to being mathaphobic. All of them had requested English for their first assignment. I placed my backpack on the table. After the presentation of the formal agenda and my carefully prepared overhead transparencies, the backpack looked almost dramatic. OK, I told the interns, much of what we have been talking about has been theoretical. I believe in theory -- you have to know why you are doing what you are doing. But the truth is that nothing theoretical is going to be all that helpful to you right now. You need some I had their attention again. All four stared at the backpack as if they were expecting it to get up and do a little dance. It just sat there, heavy and solid, listing slightly to one side. are my tricks; you will need to develop your own. But the first rule of survival as a teacher is to learn to be a good thief. Steal whatever you need from wherever you can get it. Most of what I have here I have stolen and adapted from other teachers, things I've read, workshops, and advice from strangers on the street. If any of these things look like they might work for you -- use them. Teaching is about heart and soul and knowledge and skill, but when it comes down to it, none of that matters unless you master the physics of the classroom. You have to control time, space, and stuff. These three things will make or break you, and the choices you make about how to deal with them will determine what kind of a classroom you will have. There is no magic to controlling time, space, and stuff, but there are a lot of little things that you can do that make a world of difference. Tricks. It helps to have a bag of tricks. This one, this monstrosity of future back problems, is mine. Outside Front Pocket Item 1: a kitchen timer. Possibly the most effective classroom management tool that I use. Much of teaching involves getting students to do what you want them to do within certain time restrictions. If you let them, students will spend the entire class period looking for their homework. The timer changes everything. My current timer is of a simple circular design in a school-bus yellow, it has a magnet on the back so that I can stick it on the chalkboard (most chalkboards are magnetized), and it dangles from a string so that I can hang it coach-style around my neck. I used to have one that looked like a hamburger, but I dropped it once too often. For most people, standard time units like five minutes, half an hour, 15 minutes are meaningless. …