Giovanni, Harper Lee, and Getting a Degree

Last Saturday we called Lori and put her on speaker phone. As soon as she answered Gio fired a question at her, “What was the precedent set in the Morse v. Fredrick case of 2007?” Lori wasn’t able to attend our study group, but we wanted her to get some of the experience. Our phone discussion continued for about five minutes or so with Gio and me alternating who was speaking. Then in a moment of laughter we both responded at once and Lori said, “Is that Gio I hear in the background?” Five minutes and she didn’t even know we were both on the phone. When we told her, she said we sounded alike, even paused at the same points in our sentences, and were beginning to become the same person.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. For the last three and a half years (and the last six months in particular) Gio and I have been mostly living the same life. We did our credential classes together. We work at the same school. We both somehow were manipulated into joining school site council at the same time (which is more time consuming this year because we actually meet), and we both just did the same Master’s program. Now, we even pause at the same points in our sentences and in loud areas with poor self-phone connection and speaker phone are voices are indistinguishable.

Over the years he has made me laugh countless times, including one time I was laughing so hard I had to dismiss myself from the classroom. Once several years ago Gio and I had to do presentations in front of our class and just for a challenge we each gave the other person a word they had to work into their presentation. My word was “inconceivable.” Now with our Master’s Degree on the line in a 50-minute oral exam Gio and I decided at some point during our responses we had to reference the novel To Kill a Mocking Bird.

I even planned out how I would use it. One of our courses was “Urban Issues,” and I recently read a passage from the novel to my AVID class. My students were very inquisitive and asked why a jury would rule against someone if they knew he was innocent. This allowed me to talk about bias, and how some people are so prejudiced they really believe things that are not true. Perfect example. And I thought I would easily be able to work into the questions that dealt with race with regards to urban education.

Nearly forty minutes into my exam and I had already dealt with the questions from that class and even discussed in detail the landmark case of Brown v Board from 1954, but To Kill a Mockingbird never led itself into one of my answers. What was I going to do? Do I really want to pass this exam and get my Master’s Degree if I fail to reference the agreed upon novel? Where is the integrity in that? My calm demeanor, thorough responses, excellent references cited from memory and great classroom examples would certainly allow me to pass the exam from the panel, but I would know. And Gio would know. And God would know.

Then Dr. Elium asked in a question that had way too many words and parts, “Most innovations that have lasted began with teachers involved in the planning. With this in mind, what meanings do you associate with the terms education reform and education renewal? Also, you just mentioned the importance of leadership from the principal; in your response could you elaborate on the necessity of the importance of strong leadership in education.”

I responded:

That question has quite a few aspects. Let me first address the idea of reform and renewal. There are always new ideas out there in teaching. In fact I recently read To Kill a Mockingbird, which is a book written in 1960, and set in the early 1930’s. In the early part of that book Scout goes to school and they are talking about the new wave in teaching, the...

I passed.