Alexis Wiggins had been teaching for 14 years when she did something radical: she shadowed a student for a day. Actually, she did this twice, once with a 10^th grade student and once with a 12^th grade student. She did everything they did during the time she shadowed them. If she had to jot down notes from the board, she rushed to get it all down. If there was a test that day, she took the test (there turned out to be one on each day). She did Chem lab with her “host student.”

Wiggins did this as part of a new role she’d taken on that year as High School Learning Coach. The school had created this position to better student academic outcomes by working with teachers and school administrators. The principal was the one who suggested Alexis Wiggins attend a full day of classes, to see for herself what it’s like to be a student.

After reading about Wiggins’ experience, which mirrored my own high school experience as a student, I wondered why her findings, expressed as three key takeaway points, were so surprising to her. Wiggins’ referred to the experiment as “eye-opening.” For me, however, her findings were consonant with my personal high school experience, which is probably the reason I did not do very well in school (with the exception of English, which no one could ruin for me).

“Key Takeaway #1

Students sit all day, and sitting is exhausting.”

I remember the squirming in my hard wood and metal desk. I remember trying not to squirm and having a contest with myself in which I had to hold perfectly still for whatever time period I chose. It took so much energy to try to hold still that I couldn’t focus on what the teacher was saying. It took so much concentration to just sit.

I’d look around the class and it always seemed to me that I was the only one with this problem. I found that in winter, I could wear my parka and pull the hood around my face and go into my own little world of thought. It was the only way to sit still, and for me, that was the best I could do. It would have been impossible to both sit still and pay attention in class.

I would come home exhausted and bleary-eyed, every single day. Too bone-weary to have some fun and lighten up. The next day, I got to begin the whole cycle all over again.

Alexis Wiggins talked about mandatory stretching, including some hands-on active class work, and maybe tossing a Nerf ball around between classes. But I really don’t know if this would have helped me. Sitting in class always felt like serving time.

“Key Takeaway #2

High school students are sitting passively and listening during approximately 90 percent of their classes.”

High school was incredibly boring to me. High school was teachers droning on at length about things that meant nothing to me. My mind would cut out and I’d go a million miles away in my head. I just couldn’t force myself to stay with the teacher. I couldn’t do it

Later on as an adult, there was a fad in which people would listen to cassette tapes of classes on their car tape decks. This was before the advent of the CD and then mp3 and mp4 players. I found I had the same aversion to listening to those tapes that I’d felt listening to a teacher’s voice going on at length in the classroom. I’d zone out and think about more interesting stuff: I’d have a conversation in my head.

I mentioned this to my mother once and she said it was the same for her: teachers speaking, lecturers, rabbis’ sermons, it all made her nuts the same way it made and still makes me nuts in my head. I prefer to learn through text. In fact, I didn’t even bother going on to college. I was and am however, a voracious reader and I consider myself an autodidact. I just couldn’t “do” school. It was too dependent on listening. I needed to and still need to read.

Do I have a form of auditory processing disorder? Did I inherit this from my mother, who has the same apparent issue? Who knows?

Wiggins talks about changing this dynamic in which students have so little autonomy in the classroom, by limiting the teachers’ speaking time and finding ways to engage the students. Changing the dynamic of the classroom in this way would have really helped me. It would have helped me on more than one level. For one thing, I would not have been left feeling there is something wrong with me because I can’t do what everyone else does in class which is namely, to pay attention. For another thing, I would have had a way to connect to the material. This was sorely lacking in my high school experience.

“Key takeaway #3

You feel a little bit like a nuisance all day long.”

OMG, yes. It’s like we were on sufferance, us students. We were there to make the teachers’ lives miserable, except that our parents forced us to go to school every day, like it or not. We were threatened with visits to the principal’s office. We were yelled at to be quiet, to pay attention. Sometimes the teacher would clap her hands and frown at us. She would say sarcastic things like, “Do you mind if I teach while you’re interrupting?”

It was nasty, to tell you the truth. Nasty to always be ridiculed and chastised. Did I always give my best performance? Not no-how. But why would I in such an environment? What incentive did I have to do my best? To get to come back the next day and do it all over again? Sheesh.

Here, Alexis Wiggins speaks about the humiliation and digs down deep to remember the teachers, the very few, who were compassionate and kind. These were the teachers who were patient and allowed you to ask questions, even if you yourself were afraid they were stupid questions. Wiggins talks about mentoring, though not in so many words. She talks about extending warmth and love to the students and brings up the idea of a “no-sarcasm” rule for teachers.

I like it. Such a policy might have made all the difference for me, back in the day. But no one cared enough to find out what the problem was. All they knew was that I was bright and I wasn’t doing well in class. They thought I wasn’t motivated.

Well, I wasn’t. Because they weren’t doing anything to motivate me. Which left me counting the years, months, days, hours, and seconds of my jail sentence.

Wiggins’ piece resonated and went viral. Let’s hope that teachers learn something from her experience and make changes—the kind of changes that would have turned me into an A student. Because I don’t want my kids to have to do time in a “school as penitentiary,” either.

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