Mike Rose: What It Means to Care in a Classroom

UCLA Research Professor of Education Mike Rose has published an essay for The Washington Post’s “Answer Sheet” blog on “What It Means to Care in a Classroom.” Adapting an example from his 1999 book, “Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America,” Rose shares the story of Elena Castro, a bilingual teacher in Calexico, and her signature methods of caring for her students’ circumstances as well as their academic progress. 

“The way I see it, care in teaching is a special kind of care,” writes Rose in the blog post. “To be sure, there is a positive regard for one’s students, a commitment to their social and emotional well-being. But there is another element to care, one less frequently discussed, and that is a commitment to students’ cognitive development. You are using your mind to foster the intellectual growth of others, to help them become better readers and writers and thinkers.

“Before COVID-19 pushed the realities of schooling into our kitchens and living rooms, we were surrounded by enchanted talk about a digital deliverance from the stodgy, old brick-and-mortar classroom,” he writes. “While some of what we see Elena Castro do could occur online with a tech-savvy teacher and adequate technology equally distributed among students — these are two big conditions — there are other elements of Castro’s caring brilliance that could not be replicated on a screen.”

Rose relates Castro’s approach to her teaching, saying that, “Castro assumed ability and curiosity in her students; learning, in her belief system, was an entitlement. As she put it, “You can’t deny anybody the opportunity to learn. That’s their right.”

“Bilingual education gained special meaning in this context,” writes Rose. “There is a long history in California schools, and Southwestern schools in general, of Mexican culture, language, and intelligence being deprecated. 

“Bilingual education was not just a method; it was an affirmation of cultural and linguistic worth, an affirmation of the mind of a people that had significant pedagogical consequences.”

Rose shares an anecdote about how Castro, while consulting with a student on a story that he wrote, learned that his family life was in disarray. Abandoned by his mother and sent to live with an ailing grandmother, the child could scarcely concentrate on the assignment at hand. Yet in a caring but firm way, Castro emphasized the big picture for the student, in the face of his present lack of security at home.

“This was beyond anything she could influence,” writes Rose. “It was telling, though, that Castro didn’t entirely let up.

“She told him he could talk to her anytime he felt sad, and that she would ease off a little — on him, I suspect, more than herself — but that ‘they both had a responsibility to teach and learn,’ and that the best thing he could do was to learn what he could so he would someday be able to take care of himself… In Castro’s mind, the consequences for this child’s future of not learning to read and write and compute were too great to ignore, even in sorrow. “All this was what it meant to care,” concludes Rose.

Professor Rose delivered a Presidential Session at the 2016 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), speaking on “Writing Our Way into the Public Sphere.” He was named to the Spencer Mentor Network in 1998.

Rose has appeared on more than 200 national and regional radio and television outlets, including Fresh Air, Bill Moyers’ World of Ideas, Studs Terkel, NPR Weekend Edition, and Tavis Smiley. He is a regular contributor to the Washington Post’s education blog, “The Answer Sheet” by Valerie Strauss. His previous books include “The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker,” and “Back to School: Why Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Education.”

Professor Rose is a member of the National Academy of Education and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Grawemeyer Award in Education. He has received awards from the Spencer Foundation, the National Council of Teachers of English, the Modern Language Association, and the American Educational Research Association.

To read, “What It Means to Care in a Classroom,” in The Washington Post, visit this link.