Hankins' Cacophony to Symphony: Memoirs in Teacher Research

I chose to respond to Hankins’ article, Cacophony to Symphony: Memoirs in Teacher Research. While reading this article, initially, I was interested to see in what ways the stories of three particular students from her classroom put her in touch with her past. I was curious to read how, if at all, her life experiences overlapped, intersected, or opposed the lives of her three students who had each been effected by crack and/or alcohol, and came from homes absent of one parent who was in prison.
As I continued to read, I found myself making a strong connection between my own thoughts when I encounter a child in the classroom that throws my mind back to, sometimes, painful memories from my life, and Hankins’ practices of writing about experiences in her life (her sister, parents, towns from her and her families past, her thoughts about ‘colored children’). It seemed necessary, indeed, for the author to allow herself to surrender shame or denial, in order to awake suppressed thoughts or notions about her family and self. She gathered several harsh and discordant memories that once were a cacophony and blended them harmoniously into, what I perceived as, a bittersweet symphony that helped her recognize how she could change her views of these three ‘crack babies’.

It gave me insight into using memoirs and written recollections of past experiences to shape or revisit philosophies I have about students coming from particular backgrounds. It shocked me to think of the prejudices this author grew up hearing, and how growing up in such an era would have influenced my practices as a teacher. I questioned what experiences from my childhood, adolescence, and present life may have snuck up and covered me, like the feeling mentioned in the Maya Angelo quote that Hankins referenced to describe her feelings of racism.

Hankins tells of how she grew to see parents as people ‘walking in and out of pain, in and out of joy, in and out of socially constructed prisons’, just as she was. This touched me as a clear reminder of what aspects of humanity are lost within the bureaucracy of schools, and how easily judgments are made that create walls and barriers between parents, teachers, students and schools. To sit and reflect on one’s experiences, from even before birth (family history) to everyday occurrences that presently consume an educator’s life, allows us to step back and find many ways we can relate to students we once felt so segregated from. I believe the point is that doing this may not come with ease or speed, but that the time it does take to ‘make sense’ of the correlations between my life and those lives that enter my classroom is part of the growing process. This growth is something I personally feel is essential because the growth that can come from doing so gives us the opportunity to reshape the messages we send to students. Possibly, the messages I as an educator would send to students, before journaling memoirs, were so negative that they contributed to a widening gap between teacher and student, school and home.

Even moments after finishing the article my mind was flooded with memories of my sister’s hatred for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades. I sifted through the memories of her classrooms and the teachers she had for those grades. Thinking about the heartache and later pain she came out of those precious years with, chokes me. But it chokes me until I am caused to gasp for air, and I realize it is my want to ensure that will not be the outcome of any child I have the privilege of teaching.