Walking into a class where Victor A. Fischer is teaching is like wandering onto a field where the Chicago Bears are playing football. To the uninitiated it may look like a lot of random pushing and shoving and shouting, but beneath the apparent chaos lies a definite method.
Fischer, a teacher at Sauganash Elementary School, has his own idea of the purpose of education and his own way of getting his students to attain it. No matter what he`s teaching, however, the underlying principle is always the same: self-discovery.
He teaches various subjects: reading to 7th graders, math to 8th graders and a course combining language arts and computer science to students from 5th through 8th grades. He also supervises the school`s peer tutoring program.
”These are not disparate subject matters; they are all integrated into one,” Fischer says. ”At the base is self-discovery and learning how to survive in society.”
Students from kindergarten to 8th grade attend Sauganash, 6040 N. Kilpatrick Ave.
Sauganash Principal Sarah Schwarcz says of Fischer: ”We both see the role of the teacher not as authoritarian, but as a firm, caring guide.”
Evidence of Fischer`s popularity as a teacher comes as classes change:
Students jostle each other in their eagerness to get into his classroom.
One of Fischer`s students sees it this way: All of her other teachers wear suits, ties and other accoutrements of authority. Fischer, however, dresses in casual clothes (such as slacks and a rugby shirt) ready to be a part of the educational melee of his classroom; he says he doesn`t see education as just facts and figures to be learned in a vacuum and the teacher as the person who has all the answers.
While other teachers see students as a group, Fischer views them as individuals, a concept especially relevant at Sauganash School. Blacks, whites and Hispanics are bused in to maintain integration and to keep the enrollment figure–260 students–high enough to keep the school open.
”Because we have students from other school situations and from other language backgrounds, we put a heavy push on the communication arts program at Sauganash,” Schwarcz says.
In a 5th-grade class, for example, a girl who came from Poland a year ago writes a composition in fluent English. A child who arrived from China a month ago speaks no English but manages to create intricate colorful patterns on her computer screen.
She says standardized tests show they`re succeeding. ”It`s not how many students that are scoring above grade level that`s important, but the growth rate,” she says. ”Many of our students performing below or at grade level show 1.3 to 1.5 years of growth for each year we have them.”
To teach these children, or any children, Fischer believes it is essential to get to know each one–not an easy task when he has a different group of students every 45 minutes.
”My philosophy of education is basically that children bring to the school environment more than is visible on the surface,” he says. ”They have a past, a group of experiences–even if it`s nothing more than that a kid didn`t get breakfast and is hungry or that he doesn`t know how to punctuate a sentence. You have to be aware of that in order to successfully educate that child.
”The teacher`s job is to take the child from where he is to a position where he can acknowledge the educational tools he already has so he can refine them and use them to function in our society.”
”Mr. Fischer is trying to build independence,” Schwarcz says. ”He`s not trying to form minds; he`s allowing them to grow.”
And the sounds in Fischer`s classroom are nothing more than this, the sounds of people growing.
Take, for example, 5th or 8th graders discovering language arts and computer science. The computers are set up along two classroom walls, but the students don`t sit quietly in rows, one to a terminal. They bunch in tight groups around someone to see what he`s doing. Or shove their way into a group to show someone what to do. Or call to each other, ”Come and look at this”
or ”Oh, no! Now what`s wrong?”
”People who work with computer programming are always walking over and asking about problems, so how can you tell the students not to do that?”
Fischer asks. ”I don`t particularly like the noise, but they can`t learn without interacting. How can you tell them to stop the noise and stifle creativity and the investigation of one`s own mind?”
In the center, other students are writing compositions. But all is not quiet here, either.
It doesn`t bother him that children are helping each other. ”Working together is wonderful because sooner or later you will figure out that what the other kid corrected you can do also,” he says.
Fischer corrects the compositions in class, and by the end of the period every child will have moved a little bit closer to mastering the communication skills Fischer thinks are necessary for survival: to be able to express oneself in sensible sentences and to organize a composition with an introduction, a body and a conclusion.
The topics he assigns for compositions are purposely provocative, to get the children to think and develop emotional skills. Fifth grader Joseph Williams is writing about what he would do if, as a parent, he found his children playing with matches. After a series of low grades he finally got an A on a recent composition. ”It made me feel real good,” he says.
Fischer`s 8th-grade students are learning and then writing about how people sometimes manipulate each other in relationships. ”Mr. Fischer has been teaching us about relationships because he says they`re not going to teach us this anymore in high school and we have to learn to look out for ourselves,” says Sermed Hanna.
If he cares so intensely, almost desperately, that his students learn to survive, perhaps it`s because his early teaching experience has left a conviction he can`t seem to shake. Before coming to Sauganash School three years ago he taught at Komensky School in the inner city, where education could be a do-or-die situation.
He taught 6th graders who would go on to the upper grades when they left him. ”The chances of my students living through high school were something like 50 percent, mostly because they were killed in gang warfare,” Fischer says. ”So I guess I brainwashed myself into thinking that I was the answer and if it didn`t happen with me it didn`t happen.”
By the end of class, Fischer, with glasses perched precariously on his nose, will have maneuvered gingerly through the room, and every child who wanted his attention will have had a few minutes of his time.
It`s only by detour, though, that Fischer happens to be in the classroom teaching today. He received a degree in business administration from Roosevelt University. ”One of the options open to men about 20 years ago was to teach or be drafted,” he says. He opted for teaching, got hooked on it and eventually obtained a master`s degree in science and education with a specialty in administration and supervision from the National College of Education in Evanston.
”Psychologically, it`s hard work,” Fischer says of teaching. ”I think you have to love the experience, love the relationship, and I think that`s true with me.”
