Entry # 30:
Students don't need our pity;
they need our commitment
A young girl was hit by a stray bullet while she was outside for recess
this week. Parents wanted recess to be cancelled and made statements about
"the endangerment of children, just so teachers could have their breaks."
Our state has voted to increase the number of students allowed in some Special
Education classes from 8 to 20. We are assured that the quality of instruction
will not be affected and that the maximum of 20 won't be reached.
Two middle school boys of color told me they were in "lock down"
when I asked them about their rosters on Friday. I winced at their use of
prison terminology, knowing full well that the practice had been given this
label by their teachers.
These sound bites or headlines represent a snapshot of school this week
in Philadelphia, but while they are troubling, they only tell a piece of
the story. If these snippets were my only connection to our children, if
I wasn't also aware of colleagues who are making a difference, I couldn't
continue. I'd burn out.
When teachers give up . . .
Too many of our teachers are burning out and I'm worried about it. If we
don't turn this trend around, we simply won't be able to staff our classes
let alone implement new programs. In fact some classes don't have permanent
teachers right now.
My focus this year has been on professional development. It's my job to
organize the supports that teachers need to help students succeed. It's
a big job and there's no cookie cutter recipe I can follow, but I like the
challenge when I have the key ingredients.
However, I can't seem to make much of a difference without a few basic staples.
I can't collaborate with a teacher who has given up on his/her students
any more than I can make cookies without flour. I am alarmed by the number
of teachers who assume that they "know" their kids can't make
it.
They don't actually say the words, but they go on about the "environment"
and the "families" without any real knowledge of either the place
or the people they are dismissing. Just last week I overheard an administrator,
whom I don't know personally, ranting about teen mothers and grandmothers
in their thirties. She was frustrated and feeling unsupported.
My mother was sixteen when she had me. She was 37 when I had my son. Having
a teenage mother and a young grandmother doesn't have to mean a life of
underachievement, any more than an address has to determine your horizons.
Assumptions and expectations
This week I met with a group of new, young teachers to present classroom
management strategies. During our introductions and sharing, the labeling
of kids and their backgrounds started to come out. When I shared that I
grew up in the community being discussed, one of the teachers shared that
she still lives there. The other teachers were shocked.
I hope this dose of reality will give them pause. We talked about assumptions
and expectations and I think we made some progress. The teacher who lives
in the same community as the "problem" kids is having a pretty
positive experience. She was long on strategies and shorter on frustrations
than her suburban counterparts.
I'm not being naive here, I'm stating a simple fact of my life, and the
lives of many of our kids. Our students don't need excuses, they need straight
talk and solutions. When students run into an obstacle, we need to help
them find a way around, over, under or through it. We cannot afford to "sympathetically"
understand their inability to succeed, and we have to stop assuming that
we know who our kids' families are before we even meet them.
In the day-to-day reality of our classrooms, this kind of misplaced sympathy
sours fairly quickly and turns into resentment, often of our students' families
and finally of our students. When parents call for an end to recess and
refer to the teachers' "need for a break," it sounds like they've
overheard comments and attitudes about "these" kids on the part
of teachers.
Results, not resentment
If teachers and parents would unite in an effort to demand safety in the
community, not so teachers can get away from the kids, but so kids could
get the fresh air and exercise they deserve each day, I think we'd see results
and not resentment.
Along the same lines, I wouldn't stand for anyone putting my child under
house arrest, or in lock down, or any other situation that smacks of imprisonment,
and I don't believe other teachers would accept it either. Why is this terminology
acceptable for our students? Do our students deserve less respect than our
own children?
How did "our" kids become "these" kids and how can we
turn the situation around? I just read an article in the Sunday New York
Times "Education Life" section called, "A
View From the Trenches," and it epitomizes the kind of teacher
attitude that I think is my/our biggest foe.
The author starts out her harangue complaining about clocks that do not
work and goes on at some length to detail "petty" administrative
complaints about bulletin boards, endless scheduling changes, negligent
families, disciplinary problems -- the list goes on and on. She mentions
that the majority of the kids want to learn and are making progress, but
this fact is never explored.
All this from an author who claims that she returned to teaching out of
a sense of altruism. I just looked up altruism to make sure there
wasn't another meaning that I had forgotten somewhere along the line, but
it's as I thought. I just didn't see much evidence of an unselfish approach
in her diatribe, but more importantly, I didn't sense any feeling for the
kids that resembled anything akin to caring or respect.
As a parent, I hated talk of the trenches because it always made me wonder
who the enemy was. Were the kids the enemy? Was I the enemy because of my
less affluent or educated background? ( I was a waitress until my kids were
in middle school.) Were families of color the enemy because of their racial
or language differences?
The enemy is ignorance
I think we are locked in a very real struggle, a fight for the hearts and
minds of our children, but I think the prison and war imagery is dangerous.
There is an enemy, but the enemy is ignorance and no advanced degree or
dollar amount can protect us from its effects. Only a genuine commitment
to the children and families we claim to serve can empower us, as we face
the day to day trials in our schools and communities.
We need more money, we need equitable resources, but we need to respect
our kids before we can hope to educate them. We need to celebrate their
resiliency rather than mourn their difficulties. The inequities in our society
make me angry and my anger motivates me to act. Mourning makes me cry and
leaves me feeling drained and hopeless. I cannot afford the luxury of tears.
There are too many children and there's too little time.
[Editor's note: Deb is co-moderator of the
MiddleWeb listserve.]
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