Editor’s note: To read profiles of all 2015-2016 Blackboard Awards honorees, click HERE!
Jonathan Sabol
English
The Hewitt School
Tell us about some of the special joys and challenges you’ve experienced as a teacher.
As an English teacher, I value the opportunity to pass on the love of literature that I have had since I was a child. My students often ask me how I can read a book more than once, and I tell them that the books I assign are rich with meaning, and that I often find something new in them each year. When I see my students connect with a character who speaks to them, who helps them to understand their own place in the world, I feel like my job has real meaning. Many of the ninth graders I teach denounce Rochester when he demeans Jane (though they often forgive him as Jane does in the end), or applaud the Wife of Bath when she stands up to her belligerent husband, because they can sympathize with these characters. In literature, my students find role models, life lessons, and a safe place to practice the skills they need to live well. It’s a joy to watch them make these discoveries alongside me.
As an academic advisor, I value the opportunity to cultivate a relationship beyond the classroom. The students I currently advise are graduating this year, and I’ve seen them grow tremendously since I began working with them as ninth graders. They have talked with me about their struggles and their triumphs, shed tears and erupted in laughter, made mistakes and found redemption. My advisees have won and lost elections for student council, practiced for track meets and musicals, cajoled their classmates to perform meaningful community service, organized and led conferences attended by student leaders from peer schools, bonded with one another at bowling and laser tag, and tackled difficult classes as they made their way through the college admissions process. It’s a real joy to have seen them complete their high school journey – and I’ll miss them when they’re gone.
Long hours (I commute from NJ), working through the weekends and holidays to grade papers or generate lesson plans, these are some of the challenges of teaching, but I accept these difficulties because I genuinely love what I do.
Please share a special project or achievement (or two) that you are particularly proud of from this year.
For the past few years, the ninth graders have worked on an interdisciplinary project that celebrates Modernism in the visual arts, music, literature, and other disciplines. It culminates in a public performance that the students put together largely on their own (with a little help from their teachers). I’ve had the pleasure of seeing girls read with great conviction the sound poetry of Hugo Ball, or recite the war poetry of Siegfried Sassoon while other students bring his words to life in an interpretive dance. While this year’s project is still in the works, I’m looking forward to seeing the girls stage a scene in a WWI hospital that includes one student reading a pro-war poem by Jessie Pope and another student respond with an anti-war poem by Wilfred Owen. Bringing these texts to life requires the kind of understanding that students don’t always get when they write about them in more traditional ways.
With Stephen Rose, a colleague at Hewitt, I went in November to the National Council of Teachers of English Conference to present a paper on the work we have done with the Modernism project, and I was proud to share this work with other teachers from across the country. We had the opportunity to discuss a project that succeeds only because so many Hewitt teachers, students, and even parents, who choreographed dance numbers and designed costumes in the past, have participated so willingly in this event.
As an advisor to the literary magazine, I’m always proud of the printed publication that arrives every May. This year, our student editor, Nicki Feldbaum, put together an impressive collection of art and writing about the theme of transformation. She and the other girls in the club worked with such wonderful synergy throughout the year that I began to find my own role as advisor rather extraneous. They selected and edited the student submissions, they designed the layout, and they added a DVD of students reading their own poetry and students commenting on their artistic process. I take great satisfaction in knowing that Nicki and the rest of the editors and staff did this work on their own.
Over the course of your career, what do you consider one or two of your greatest accomplishments?
I earned a Ph.D. in English from Fordham University and writing the dissertation was probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this path to other high school teachers, but I am proud to have persevered in the end and completed the process.
While I was working on my Ph.D., I spent several summers teaching at a program called Summer on the Hill. It was my first time teaching on the secondary school level, and I’m proud of the work I did with this program – and proud of what I learned about myself as a teacher along the way.
What drives you? What keeps you motivated and committed to being a dedicated and hard-working educator?
Teaching presents me with new challenges every day, and I like having a job that never feels tired (tiring, yes, but never tired, stale, or humdrum). The lessons I teach change from year to year to respond to current events. This year, in a course I am teaching called “Dangers of a Single Story,” which focuses on Caribbean and African literature, we looked to poetry for solace in the wake of the police shootings of black men such as Michael Brown and the protests that followed. Have you ever heard Martin Espada read “Imagine the Angels of Bread”? It is something I discovered when looking for a way to speak about these events, and my students and I found ourselves moved by its impassioned plea.
I’m now in my second year as a department chair, and thinking about the English program across grade levels has presented new challenges that I am still grappling with. How much grammar do we teach? And how do we teach it so that it really improves student writing? These are two of the questions I’m currently trying to resolve. Fortunately, I work with such accomplished teachers in my department that I never feel as if I’m alone in answering these questions about curriculum.
Any special advice for parents on how they can best support their children academically at the grade level you teach? And more generally? And how they can have the most productive relationship with their children’s teacher and school?
As a high school teacher at an independent school, I see students face the pressure of college admissions. For the most part, they push themselves extremely hard; they’re driven, they have high expectations, and sometimes they discount the need for rest or proper nutrition. I sometimes find myself reminding them to take a break, to have some fun, because I fear their narrow pursuit of straight As can become unhealthy. It’s a fine line – both parents and teachers want their children/their students to succeed, but sometimes we also need to encourage them to do the things that bring them genuine pleasure.
I encourage parents to talk with their children about their classes. Ask them what they are reading, what they are writing, what they love (or don’t love so much) about their classes. If they’re willing to talk with you, just listen to what they are saying. Even if students are dissatisfied with something in the classroom, talking it through with their parents is, often enough, the activity they need to find a solution to the problem on their own, which more often than not starts with the student reaching out to the teacher herself for clarification, support, etc.
If parents feel like they need to reach out to their child’s teacher, I encourage them to take the time to listen to the teacher, too, because the teacher and your child will often present slightly different versions of events. It’s important to triangulate a little bit, getting the most accurate read by checking multiple sources. Teachers also love to hear from parents when things are going well with a student (we don’t often get these calls!).
Finally, if your child asks you to participate in a project, make the time to become involved. Some of the best projects my students have submitted have paid homage to their parents or their grandparents, featuring them in video clips or sound bites that have moved me more than anything else I receive.
