Mrs. Roberts—Model Teacher For Our Times: Part II

There will never be a feel-good, overcoming-the-odds feature film about Mrs. Roberts and the energy and commitment she brings to her classroom.

I have spent time both in Mrs. Roberts’ classroom and in private conversation with her. What strikes me most is her genuine belief in raising the bar for all children, her faith that no matter their skills, they will rise to meet expectation.

Whatever their academic records reflect, Mrs. Roberts treats all of her students as if they are in a gifted program. When my daughter was her student, third-graders with substantial academic deficiencies learned to recite long, complex poems, including Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven.

When Mrs. Roberts assigned Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, a poem that is not only linguistically complex but almost totally nonsensical—with words that are not words to hang onto but odd, vaguely Anglo-Saxon sounds infused with intuitive meanings—I worried about a boy who sat next to my daughter.

From a limited-English-proficient household, “Jordan” (not his real name) struggled with reading and math and scored low on academic measurements. And yet when it came time for him to recite Jabberwocky, he stood in front of his class and confidently performed the entire poem without stumbling.

It is a rare and precious gift to enable the kind of child who routinely gets left behind in the American public school system—who is perennially saddled with low expectations—to visualize an alternate image of himself and his capacities.

In Mrs. Roberts’ classroom, my daughter and her peers learned about and recreated art in the style of Mondrian, O’Keefe, Van Gogh, Matisse and Seurat, among others. The class held an artists’ reception in the school library, where the kids’ art was taped to the walls and propped on bookcases.

Wearing berets and smocks, the students served sparkling apple juice in plastic champagne flutes and offered cheese and crackers. While my daughter took me around the library to show me the artwork, I noted one particularly beautiful interpretation of Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

It was Jordan’s. He stood alone, his parents unable to attend the reception because of their work schedules. I could tell him with complete sincerity how much I liked his painting. Mrs. Roberts’ students learn at a young age that there are unique avenues to beauty and to interpreting artistic context.

By formalizing the presentation of their efforts, the students in my daughter’s class learned to take pride in artistic expression. And all of their lives they will carry that satisfying feeling of familiarity upon seeing the works of some of the great masters of 19^th- and 20^th-century Western art.

I could give many other examples of what makes Mrs. Roberts a model teacher. Her skills in the classroom could—and should—serve as a template for how to stimulate the minds and souls of a diverse student population.

And yet, sadly, the qualities that make her special are being buried by a simplistic, appallingly conservative measure of what it means to be a superior educator.

To be continued.

If you missed Part I of this series on Monday, "Why We'll Miss Mrs. Roberts—and Dahlia Heights," you may read it here.