DAY OF THE TEACHER : ...

Classrooms can be plush or barren. Students can be highly gifted or dim-witted. Instructors can have state-of-the - art teaching materials or dog-earred textbooks. None of these things matter. If the teacher is good, students will learn.

In the past few months, the education spotlight has turned to teachers. Last fall the California Commission on the Teaching Profession issued a report that called for giving teachers more control over their profession. It also advocated career ladders to make it possible for veteran teachers to earn up to $57,000 a year.

Next Friday, the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy is scheduled to release the results of a yearlong study on teachers and teaching. The authors hope that the report will have as much impact as the landmark 1983 report “A Nation at Risk,” the study many educators credit for launching the most recent wave of education reform measures.

Nancy McHugh is president of the 75-year-old Nation Council of Teachers of English. She is only the second woman and the third full-time classroom teacher to hold this position.

Coping with the pressures of leading a national professional organization while maintaining high teaching standards is difficult, McHugh admits. But watching her teach two college-prep course at Grant High school in Van Nuys, it is easy to see why many consider versatility one of her best attributes.

In her 30 years of teaching, she has learned when to stand back and let her students explore on their own, and when to roll up her sleeves and be the leader.

Introduction to Humanities is a course McHugh helped to create. Its focus is on Western civilization from ancient Greece to the 20th Century. Students study the art, literature, philosophy, science and history of each age. But lectures are rare. This is a class structured for the MTV generation.

“I try to have two or three different activities planned--let them move around a lot, have them write on the board, anything to keep their attention,” McHugh said. “It has become necessary to become very creative.”

As class started, McHugh had her students break into small groups, where they were assigned to come up with as many pre-20th-Century movements, such as Calvinism or Romanticism, as they could. After 15 minutes, a team member went to the board to write each team’s list.

The students then regrouped into their regular “subject matter” groups. Here they began to discuss how to tackle the next study topic, “The Industrial Revolution: Science, Arts, Imperialism, Romanticism and Realism.”

The students also were to discuss how to creatively present their research to the class. Reading a report was definitely passe. The students were more interested in presenting skits in which French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau is interviewed by late-night TV show host David Letterman, or one in which economists Adam Smith and Karl Marx battle each other in a takeoff of the popular “Wheel of Fortune” game show.

McHugh took a more traditional approach to her next class, English literature.

British poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were the topic of the day. McHugh started the class off with a brief lecture and question-and-answer session on the literary Romanticism movement.

McHugh then read two Wordsworth poems and prodded the class to analyze the work. She asked two students to read some of Coleridge’s work. After reading a few stanzas of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the class ended with the students reading silently to themselves.

McHugh said this technique of reading aloud and then have students finish the passage by reading silently was once only used in junior high. Now teachers find that it is very effective for a generation of students who are less well-read in general, and less likely to read on their own.

Students “take school less seriously,” McHugh said. “But maybe that’s because their parents take school less seriously.”