Fixing the Dropout Crisis, Part II
About a month ago, Howard University and our local NPR station, WAMU, held a teacher town hall on the dropout crisis in the DC area. This was one of many similar events around the country. My first take on the event can be found here.
After listening to the whole thing again, my first thought was to retract much of what I said initially about the event being fairly uninspiring and underwhelming. After listening to most of it a third time, I’m a little less sure.
Let’s talk…
Four Things struck me as I listened again.
1) The entire system is being held hostage by the bottom, say, 10 percent of students. Many teachers in effect ended up turning on other teachers for sending kids up to the next grade when they should have been held back. Social promotion. A kid who was not ready for fifth grade in the first place is moved on to sixth. The sixth grade teacher then has to deal with the same problem, only now it is larger and less manageable.
Why do this? Why would a teacher send somebody up who clearly has not met even the minimum standards of the grade he is in? One school counselor noted the pressures that teachers feel from parents to graduate seniors. NOBODY said anything at all about pressure from the administration to pass and graduate kids who don’t deserve it. This seemed like a glaring omission. At my school, admin would regularly berate teachers for “giving too many Fs”. The problem is teachers being mean, not students who don’t do work. How can I be failing too many people and at the same time be accused of having low standards? I’ve seen teachers’ heads explode trying to solve this equation.
We know that when students are promoted without warrant they just fall further behind and they learn that they can get away with doing next to nothing and still get moved up. We know also that students have a higher chance of dropping out if they are held back. The default often is to move them up if they tell a sad story and at least create the appearance of working hard for the last two weeks of the year. As long as the graduation rate is a fetish item, we will continue to be held hostage to these students as the diploma itself becomes less a mark of learning and devalues to become an extension of the social welfare system.
The collective judgment we seem to have made is that it is better for students to be connected in some way to school than not, even if they come to school once a week for half a day and raise hell the whole time they are there. The calculation has been made that no expense should be spared to keep them there and try to catch them up, even if they do nothing to contribute to this goal themselves. It simply doesn’t matter what this costs taxpayers, teachers or other students in the class.
2) Only one teacher really honestly described the overwhelming effect a truly obnoxious student can have on a classroom. He was clearly frustrated as he described a student way older than his classmates who would come to school irregularly, often high. He would talk about being high, getting high and spend most of his time trying to touch and talk to the girls in the class, much younger than himself.
As the teacher described this student, the camera panned over the faces of a couple other teachers in the hall. They looked decidedly uncomfortable, yet focused; like they believed they might be able to will him to stop speaking with their minds. It was as if he was the drunken uncle at Christmas dinner who suddenly decided that this was the time to tell the story about how grandma got an illegal abortion in 1965. It’s true, yes. But shut the fuck up! Not here. Not now! Almost like dirty laundry.
3) Teachers are not taken seriously. I see now that part of my initial dissatisfaction with the teachers’ responses was due to the questions. There were no Big Think questions about the purpose of education or about systemic solutions to the problem of endless hordes of children who are unprepared and don’t care. Questions tended to invite touchy-feely responses that described how a single teacher had worked really hard to reach a single student. I wish teachers were invited into the larger conversations about education policy and our collective philosophy of education and resource allocation.
Example: 78% of teachers said their teacher education program did not prepare them for the challenges they face in the classroom. Then the issue was dropped. Why not ask something like this: How do you think teacher education should be changed to better prepare teachers for the classroom?
Instead, we were left with this single, sad PowerPoint slide with the following bullet points at the end of the discussion:
Recommendations…
- Engage families to support our students
- Have tutors or guest speakers for the students to relate to
- Reading is critical to success in school
- Start intervention early
- Break classes into small groups to help at-risk students
- Daily positive affirmations/reward systems for student accountability
- Remediation/life skills classes should be added
First, I’d like to point out that the third bullet point isn’t even phrased as a recommendation. Rather, it’s a wasteful, tepid and pedestrian statement of fact. Isn’t this all on page 4 of your teacher handbook anyway?
4) Some teachers are truly remarkable people. Three or four teachers stood out as the kind you might see in those Jesus Christ SuperTeacher movies. Real heroes, and, for a change, I am not being sarcastic. One teacher told of doing 52 home visits this year; two for each of his 26 students. Another said that he never views bad behavior as a sign of disrespect. It’s just kids asking for help in a way that we are not familiar with. Others used coded language to make behavior that is clearly borderline psychotic and criminal to sound simply eccentric. I teach many children with exceptionalities.
In all, I have no question that this group is far more patient, dedicated and has a higher tolerance for abuse by young people than I do. In this environment, that may make them better teachers than me. It’s probably more important than being a good writer or having a deep knowledge of your subject. Their patience and selflessness is to be applauded. It would be great if every teacher could be a little more like them.
But is it possible? Is it reasonable? It would be fantastic if every student could have Gandhi or Jesus as their teacher. But these cats only come around every so often. We’re never going to have 4 million of them at once and it is absurd and unfair to demand it. (Personally, I think that many would be a pain in the ass.) Teaching is a job. It shouldn’t have to be a spiritual calling.
Speaking of Jesus Christ SuperTeacher, I’d like you to watch this video by Roxanna Elden. She is a friend, author and teacher. This is a great and funny talk about The Super Teacher Myth. (I have also reviewed her book here.)
Hope you’re enjoying the summer.
Teachbad
I’m recovering from surgery, and so was sufficiently doped up the other day to watch religious programming without going Elvis on the TV. The charlatan on the screen used the best response to “teacher quality” arguments I have seen, and I’m severely pissed that I didn’t come up with it myself. (He was using this argument against people complaining about their religious leaders, I am sure. Almost sure. As sure as one can be within the Vicodin haze.) It was simply this: “Judas and John had the same teacher. Sometimes the student matters.”
“Judas and John had the same teacher. Sometimes the student matters.”
Thank you SO much for this. It is is my new favorite quote!
“Judas and John had the same teacher. Sometimes the student matters.” This quote is amazing. I do think it is a teacher’s responsibility ultimately to reach all students, some accountability has to be placed on students and parents. Fantastic quote.
I cannot even describe what it was like to have an 8 year old walking around the room as I taught, ripping books, throwing objects, screaming, yelling, cursing at kids….I called the office, they said to ignore him. You don’t even want to know about these kids, the ones who behave so horribly they have dropped out by middle school. Holding over is frustrating, when Middle and High school teachers encounter kids who can’t do 4th or 5th grade work…whose fault is it? Teachers in elementary school WANT to holdover and we do, but seeing 4th graders who are fully developed women at age 12, and their crazy behavior….it is sort of cautionary and terrifying. You want to see a teacher’s amazing lesson plan completely ignore, throw a few psycho holdovers in the room. I do believe all disrespectful behavior is a child trying to get their needs met, but there are some needs we just cannot meet in a room of 26 kids, 6 of whom belong in a psychiatric facility and 10 of whom are just garden variety poor behavior kids. I have managed in the South Bronx with a class of 16, my class did extremely well and they were the 1s and 2s. but Bloomberg says class-size is irrelevant. but the bottom line is that we need to get the disruptive kids out. The tax payers should not be paying for the educations of kids who are disruptive and disrespectful. People think those kids on the bus were so bad in Greece NY? They should see how it is in East New York, Mott Haven, Jamaica, Hollis….
@ 718mom, I was born and raised in East New York and went to elementary and jr high in the same neighborhood, taught in the NYC public school system in Brooklyn and now teach in another large city school district. To pigeonhole students from a certain neighborhood is quite short sighted and I feel rather narrow minded. I have had very well to do students from so called wonderful neighborhoods that have just as many problems or more as those students who are from East NY…there are so many things that go into students being successful- parental guidance & involvement, inner motivation, environment, etc. One of my co-workers who was born and raised on the south side of Chicago and taught there as well summed it up for me- she said it is one thing to be from a bad neighborhood, quite another to be from a bad home. Please do not label a student simply because of the neighborhood they come from.
We all know as teachers that where you grow up does have a factor on your schooling. I have taught on the southside of Chicago for 5 years now and although most of the students come from similar neighborhoods, I feel it is more dependent on the household situation. It is unfortunate that students come in so far behind when entering high school but teachers can’t keep blaming each other. It really isn’t about blame, but how are we going to do our best to fix the problem.
I’m Brooklyn born and raised (now living in Texas). My mom spent years of her life training to be an English teacher. The first day, they sent her to East NY and the smarmy ex-cons threw a desk at her face. She never taught another day in her life. This was back in the early 1980′s. Yeah, I know where you’re coming from.
Enough with the stereoptypes. Most of my classmates are productive members of society and yes we grew up in the 1980′s crack epidemic and crime plagued East NY. Some had great families, some didn’t. There were many other factors involved. The Unabomber grew up in the ‘burbs so please stop. The Bush family is EXTREMELY priveleged but some of the biggest criminals on the planet!(did you forgot about the Savings and Loan scandal). I’ve had some students who were from the suburbs be rude,crazy, nasty and downright crazy, drug addicted, thieves just the same as students from an impoverished neighborhood. Some just have more access to resources. Don’t insult my neighborhood or intelligence.
This is decidedly NOT a place for teachers to get mad at each other. I want Olli and GA to make up and try to think of something offensive that you both agree on.
Not mad teachbad. Just feel like the neighborhood comments are irrelevant and don’t really have a place here. There are a lack of resources in certain areas which of course do contribute to retention (or lack) of students. It’s too easy to blindly label students from a certain geographic area as criminals or societal misfits who aren’t worth spending tax dollars on without really looking at what’s going on beneath the surface. I think we can safely there are dipshit students from ALL types of neighborhoods and backgrounds, certainly not just from mine.
I’m not mad…it’s just an itty bit irritating that someone accuses me of stereotyping for telling a TRUE story and using “ex-con” in the correct manner — because they WERE an alternative school of “ex-cons.” Doesn’t matter, I’m done. And I am a product of the same education system as you, GAteacher, although about 15 years later. I have nothing against the residents of the area, as most of them were my classmates too.
Agree with Cw, there needs to be a state of the art trade school system, especially in a city like NY. As for gateach, what can I say? I’m only giving you an idea of what my experience was like. The worst part of it all was seeing all of the kids who did want to be there, who did want to learn have their whole day ruined by kids who were allowed to misbehave and disrupt. I can go on teaching my amazing lesson, but if one kid is crawling all over the floor, one is banging on his desk, one is trying to cut herself with a paperclip…. the good kids get totally screwed! they are the victims here. the colleagues with the best managed classes were also big on screaming, demeaning and insulting kids. It worked for them. My rant (and it was a rant) does not negate all of the bad things that rich and middle class people do. That wasn’t my point. My point was that the NYCDOE allows kids to misbehave without consequences. Every neighborhood has considerate people, assholes, people who don’t care. I get that.
The thing is, when people pay for something they value it more. If you contribute nothing, pay no taxes and get free education, free health care, free housing, free food why bother doing schoolwork? Why respect a teacher? If I contradict myself I don’t care, I have been working in education since I was 18 years old. I gave 100,000% I believed all people were good, I loved everyone, I got into school at 6:30 and left at 6pm. I thought nothing of it, that’s what it takes to do a good job, fine and do you know what? It didn’t matter. My career was destroyed by one nasty principal. I may complain about it but I LOVED my job! I loved the academic rigor and the Everyday Math and the Writing Workshop! Loved. i’m not being sarcastic. I didn’t even mind the paperwork because it all documented my classes getting better and better and I was proud of them. Treated them like I treat my own kids, with affection, with enthusiasm with conviction. and it didn’t matter. I resigned with no Unsatisfactory marks, no bad marks on my record, but I resigned with tenure and now I will never get a job in NYC again unless a miracle happens and it kills me every single day I am alive. dropping off my son at
kindergarten this year, I felt nothing but jealousy for his teachers. They have the one thing on earth I want, a job in an nyc school. Yes, 79% of the kids in my son’s school are on public assistance, so I’m not an elitist. It’s just a well-run school. The groups in his school all have a working parent (or two) and most of the families have a mom and a dad. The people in this neighborhood value education. ok rant over, love you guys, no hard feelings.
How am I stereotyping by telling the truth, and how am I insulting your intelligence? My mom was ACTUALLY hit in the face with a desk on her first job assignment on the first day. Did I say everyone in east NY was horrible? No…obviously that class of kids WAS. And they WERE ex-cons…it was an alternative program because that’s where the Board of Ed assigned her. Should she have come back for more of that? Would YOU come back for more of that kind of abuse? If it’s a desk in the face on the first day, what’s next? Raping her? Murdering her?
I’m not sure a high dropout rate is a crisis. I know this idea would never fly, but I think we should make it easier for high school students to drop out. At the same time, we should do everything possible to make adult education more accessible. Let dropouts know that if they change their minds, they can still get an education. That way, the kids who don’t want to be there don’t screw things up for everybody else, and nobody is deprived of an opportunity for education.
I agree. I don’t see a drop out problem. The problem is that there are no alternatives. No adult education programs as you said and no trade schools.
I strongly agree with this. We can’t seem to face up to the fact that anything like traditional high school is just not working for a lot of people and there should be other options. Let’s stop worrying about why for a minute and just acknowledge the truth of this. All this messing around with the numbers and finding ways to lower the standards while insisting we are not hurts everybody. Good students get watered down classes, bad students still aren’t responding, and teachers lose their dignity.
Once upon a time there *were* other options. Back in the late 1950s there was this thing called tracking. In high school students were sorted into either the vocational or college tracks. The tracks had different graduation requirements, and life was good.
Some mamby-pamby, lilly-livered eduction school professors convinced their acolytes (i.e. future administrators) and politicians that tracking was somehow evil. How dare anyone sort children by ability?! You damage their precious self-esteem and scar them for Life! LIFE, I say!!! Besides which don’t you know that if you stop grouping students low-achieving students will get exposed to high-achieving ones and the low-achieving kids will be Inspired! INSPIRED, I say!!!
Today the argument against tracking has shifted into, “Humanity has progressed to the Data Age, and the only possible way to succeed in this era is to have a college education.” This is spouted ad nauseum, despite Labor Department statistics showing that the most job growth is in the fields of janitorial, secretarial, and nursing.
The “inspired” thing can work if you have ONE jerk in a class full of good kids and the yahoo has no audience for his yahooetry. If you have more than one, of course…well, we all know what happens. And of course, once you get above critical yahoo mass, forget it, unless they all happen to be suspended at the same time. I have figured CYM at about 20% of the class.
I’m with 718mom. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: This politically-correct world has destroyed many things, including our educational system. It is what it is, but it can’t be said. If it’s not said, it’s ignored and accepted. Bottom line, this world is all about “rights” and “feelings” but to the extreme.
As long as, for example, things like Save Rooms exist, as opposed to making suspended kids stay home, nothing will change. Make a non-working parent have to deal with their own kid for a whole week and you may see a little difference. Make a working parent have to miss work or pay for a baby-sitter and you may see a little difference.
From “rights” to state exams, our educational system is shot to hell. It’s finished. The damage is done. Won’t be fixed. Only a time machine (the type that goes BACK) can make things better.
So, I continue to plan for a 3rd career, because this 2nd one was worse than the 1st.
Oh my, to one day be working elsewhere and never hear things like differentiated instruction, least-restrictive environment, lesson plan, unit plan, rigor, small-group instruction, lexile level, and so on…
[i]Teaching is a job. It shouldn’t have to be a spiritual calling.[/i]
The problem is that the Noble Public expects teachers to have the mindset of clergy: we should want nothing for ourselves, we should only care about the needs of our students; and those needs must be met, for each and every student, at whatever the financial or emotional cost. We’re paid poorly, we’re treated poorly, but we should all just stoically brush these things aside, for the good of the students. And if we step out of line -if we demand better pay, or demand to have unruly students removed from our classrooms- then the Noble Public judges us harshly.
The Noble Public also expects that teachers, in addition to planning for and teaching classes, fully perform the roles of social worker, psychologist, counselor, motivational speaker, corrections officer, and comedian. And if we don’t do these things, the Noble Public assumes that we don’t care about their children and are [i]just in it for the time off in the summer[/i].
I put a lot of time, thought, and effort into teaching, but I’m failing to see the results: financial or emotional. I get paid like crap. I put up with asshole teenagers all day. The students who do well in my class show up with the ability to do well, and the kids who do poorly couldn’t give a shit. Also, while I do what I can to help students who are having problems outside of the classroom, I am not a trained social worker, psychologist, etc. I can only do so much.
Anyway… The teacher who said that he does not view bad behavior as a sign of disrespect is an idiot, in my humble opinion. Take those kids on the bus in Greece, NY as an example. Were they just [i]asking for help[/i] when they were calling the grandmotherly bus monitor a “fucking fatass” again and again while she was crying? No, they were being disrespectful little assholes. (And while that happened on a bus, and not in a classroom, it’s still a valid example, as that type of thing does happen in many classrooms much too frequently.) Sometimes bad behavior is a manifestation of a learning disability or some other underlying issue. But sometimes -most of the time- bad behavior is just bad behavior, and should be dealt with as such.
Maybe my experience with a group of children intent upon bullying me this year has colored my perceptions, but I am amazed that people are so shocked that students would behave as the kids in Greece, NY did. I see that level of ugliness all the damned time. They are desperate at that age to prove themselves the worst of the worst, and will recognize no boundary in that pursuit until it is heavily guarded and violations are punished severely. As I understand it, these kids even posted their cruelty themselves as a way of getting more recognition. I do not see this as a failure of the “politically correct,” however, as there is no political movement in the world that I am aware of that suggests we abuse the elderly.
Amen! Middle schoolers are a separate species and anyone who deals with them should get combat pay.
I am sorry for what happened to your mom and should be abused or mistreated in the classroom. No one should have to go through that especially on their first assignment. But there is a DEEP cultural gap in this country that hasn’t been addressed. In no way am I saying that is why your mom was attacked. On my mother’s first day in the public school system she and another teacher were held hostage by knife point in a classroom. And she was born and raised in Brooklyn, Bed-Stuy!!!! I wasn’t an angry kid like the ones who attacked your mom- but it’s hard when you go to sleep to gunshots, live in squalor and may or may not have had anything to eat, don’t know where your parents are. You wouldn’t wake up a happy camper. This isn’t an excuse- just trying to give you some perspective.My best teachers
(white, black, latino, etc.) didn’t make us feel like victims simply because of our neighborhood or socioeconomic status. Their approach was “Here is the information for you, now get it. I am going to help you to do that but you must also help yourselves.” Some were tough. Some cursed. One of my best teachers EVER was a short blond Russian Jewish lady from the Bronx- Mrs. Joyce Vedral. She was sweet as pie but she DIDN’T PLAY. She let us know that she didn’t care where what neighborhood we came from, she didn’t tolerate bullshit from ANYONE. She taught English and she showed us how to use our experiences to improve our lives through writing. But that is just 1 experience and I don’t know what yours is. Teaching in a public school system is difficult no matter where you go. My only concern was that students like myself and 95% of my classmates would be labeled unfairly and unjustly. Have you ever been to ENY? South Bronx? Hollis? LES? And yes your comments were based in stereotypes. Teachbad’s post was about the dropout crisis but then some people who might be culturally insensitive chose to turn it into “these kids, from those neighborhoods are a waste of tax dollars” which is a very dangerous argument. We know that NCLB,Bloomberg and the like,etc. with their oppressive and restrictive policies play a role in how our students may or may not perform. These are the types of stereotypes my friends and I have had to deal with OUR WHOLE LIVES. Have an open heart and an open mind. Thanks!
I think the comments here dictate the problem I keep mentioning: Political Correctness.
God forbid someone mentions a neighborhood, etc. We are “stereotyping”. Reality check: Stereotyping is not a crime and it’s usually quite accurate. I’m Italian, so stereotype away. Do I love pizza? Check! Did I sport a playboy bunny gold charm on my neck chain back in the 80s when I was in my teens? Check! Etc, etc.
The TRUTH is demographics do make a difference in how the school (and neighborhood) environment will most likely be in many ways.
I’ve worked with schools that were majority White, Black, Mexican, and Asian. Guess what? There usually are certain patterns. Being politically-correct won’t change that. I’m not Asian but if I could pick a high-Asian populated school, I would in a heartbeat!!!
Denial will fix nothing.
Teachbad’s post was about the dropout crisis and some of the issues behind it. However, some comments seem to have brought out some deep seated feelings toward certain racial and cultural groups and that is rather sad. I love you and your blog Teachbad, however I am going away until some of your more culturally insensitive readers learn how to play nice in the sandbox and maybe come into the 21st Century.
When I started this blog I committed myself to posting all comments in their full, original form. I have thus allowed items that occasionally offended me or in which I have been personally attacked or insulted.
For my entire adult working and teaching life I have lived in gentrifying majority-African American neighborhoods. I have seen a lot from my front porch and in my classrooms that inspired and sickened me. 100 percent of my very top students have been African American, Latino or Asian. 100 percent of the bottom has been the same.
Frankly, I don’t have any first-hand experience with how white kids at any income level behave in school. For people in this situation, it is difficult not to notice patterns, become frustrated, angry and want to cast blame and make assumptions. This is especially true as we have entered the era in which teachers are expected to be everybody’s magic bullet.
If I was granted, say, 5 wishes, one of them would be that we could find a way to talk about this. Because I don’t know how to do it.
Happy Birthday, America. You’ve still got a lot of work to do. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08B3KgelWss&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLEE411EB53C9BAE94
I’m still a part of this conversation. If people here want to blame me for making this about neighborhoods or “these people” fine. I accept that. I admit I said that. It’s just not getting better, we throw so much money at education, so much time, so many resources and it is going nowhere. I, like anyone want to know why. Don’t you? As a person who has spent time working in a failing school I felt I had some insight. My insight was that there are kids who want to learn, who are very excited about what their teachers want to teach and then there are other kids who are so disruptive the teacher can’t teach. The environment is destroyed and administration in some schools does not care.
If you read a newspaper you can read about failing schools with “bad teachers”. Then the masses get worked up in a lather with their pitchforks saying, “fire the bad teachers” “destroy the unions”. I just can’t accept that. I worked in a failing school and it was not failing because the teachers were not working hard and because of unions. It was failing for other reasons that I’m trying to explain but no one likes to hear the reasons. So keep blaming the teachers and the unions. We test, document, test, teach, document, test and it doesn’t work. there are schools all over the country where teachers just teach out of a textbook and the kids graduate high school, go to college and get good jobs. Look at freaking Utah for god’s sake, best schools in the country? Have you met someone who teaches in Northport or Scarsdale or Chappaqua or a private in Manhattan? I have! They don’t work harder, they are not smarter, they even have lives. Oh, and here’s a question. If failing schools are so bad why doesn’t Bloomberg just send all of the teachers from PS 6 to Mott Haven? That should solve everything right? But those teachers don’t want to go there. Now you tell me why. There are socioeconomic factors at play here but we are not solving them. The problems are way too big for one teacher in a class of 26 to solve. I finally get that. but what next, what do we tell our leaders to do to make this better?
Teachbad and comrades, are you guys hating me? I may have said some things you don’t agree with but I’m trying to be honest and real. I grew up on welfare and was looked down upon by my whole family as the kids of the crazy trashy lady. Spent time in women’s shelters, daily violence from mom’s boyfriends. I don’t think i’m so out of touch. I have always lived my life with one foot in one world and one foot in another.
Can’t we still talk about drop out rates. I mean why do kids drop out? I used to read this blog of this guy but it’s gone. He was a teacher in the same place where I used to teach but a different school, I think it was a high school. It sounded like the kids really liked him as a teacher but they seemed like they didn’t truly respect him or do the work. Trade schools were mentioned here. Maybe there needs to be more options for middle and upper grade kids to learn trades they are truly interested in. In our economy we need more maths and science people. Maybe there is a way to get kids in the “failing” schools on track for this from an early age? I don’t throw out whole neighborhoods and areas because of a few bad apples. I wish there could be triple tax funding for any kid in those schools who actually wants to be there and try. And I do want the disruptive kids out, not put into some “behavioral” room but out to learn skills, get needs met and be put back in. It seems like some people, like me are searching for answers and new ideas and some people just live to be offended and close their eyes and hate anyone who disagrees with them or dares say the unsayable. I’m sure people here have assumptions about me, lay it on me, I will answer to these assumptions as honestly as I can.
What does “culturally insensitive” mean? Isn’t that kind of subjective? I guess we will never know because the person who used that term decided to “leave the sandbox”. I dont understand that approach and in my opinion, walking away from the discussion after you call someone insensitive kinda sucks.
It means that you lack awareness and may be insensitive of other people from other cultures or ethnic, social groups.
If you sign up to be a teacher, you don’t sign up just to teach only white students, only black students, only Asian students, etc. You agree to teach ALL children and not just ones from a particular background or neighborhood. Are you just going to cherrypick students? You don’t know what kind of students you will get or what their story will be. One of my smartest students ever was a gang member. Yes I do feel the comments were not nice and insensitive. If we are talking about the dropout crisis and the issues behind it, why are we continuing to blame the students collectively? School culture is highly important. I don’t care what neighborhood or background the students come from. If the culture of the school is off, the school will fail.
gateach
The comments by some you disagree with are not, by your own definition “unaware”. They feel that they are aware. You just dont happen to agree with them. The objectionable behavior they describe is not culturally derived at all and the fact that some see this in a racial context doesnt make them insensitive. Their feeliings are based on their own personal observations. Does this make me unfomfortable? Sure it does. I found myself felling the same way and I didnt like it. At faculty meetings I used to watch the black teachers as we earnestly sought out ways to bridge the “acheivment gap” and couldnt help but feel uncomfortable. I wondered if they felt embarrassed. Was that evidence of my cultural insensitivity?
We can go back and forth about race and being offensive, insensitive, whatever. The bottom line is this. I worked in a place where two little girls were shot (two different times, two different places but within a block or so of one another) Little girls. I saw myself and my colleagues as a rescue crew. There were Black, Spanish, Asian and some white colleagues, all of us somehow made it to college and got to be teachers. Some lived in that area, most moved out when they were able to. I wanted my students to have that choice. I wanted to throw them a rope. Not me oohing and ahhhing at myself at my bravery and strength and cultural sensitivity. I wanted them to get a 4 on the test and go to a good middle school, I was determined, I felt urgency. I wanted them to have recess, I wanted to them to have the opportunity to do something arts related if it interested them and I wanted them to have every opportunity that was out there that might excite them and motivate them to have better lives. I wrote multiple grant proposals and received thousands of dollars worth of things for my classes. I had them write letters to organizations to help receive binders and all of the extras to create organization systems for each kid. I made myself the enemy of the administration for all I asked for, pushed for, so that our students would get a good chance. But you know what they say, show me a hero and i’ll write you a tragedy. I could have just got in at 8 and left at 3:47 every day. I could have decided, “there’s no use.” I didn’t. I had not one single doubt in my mind that my students could succeed, and as much as I gripe here about my disruptive kids, I fought tooth and nail for them too. I let the parents know right away we were a team and I let the kids know right away I would not let them fail. Marva Collins 101. Has anyone here read her book? Is this going to be a story about racism, classism, or human triumph? that’s what I want to know. Getting lost in the details is doing nothing for the graduating class of 2013. Or 2021 for that matter.
Well actually it does have racial undertones as all of the neighborhoods mentioned are all Black and Latino and the commenter said that tax $$$ shouldn’t be spent on the so called criminals. My only point was that when we begin to wholly label students from a certain background or neighborhood as “criminals and worthless” is dangerous. You do not know the path any student will take. If that person chooses not to teach certain students then perhaps they should indeed cherry pick the neighborhood and background of students they want. They will be sadly mistaken though as the school culture plays a HEAVY role in what goes on in that school.
Why were you watching those teachers and what made you feel uncomfortable? You probably are culturally insensitive and this doesn’t have to be a negative thing of you are at least willing to confront some of the biases and prejudices you may have and talk to people in a real way about how you feel. Being angry (like some of the other commenters seem to be) and blaming students blindly isn’t going to solve that problem At least this is a start to discuss what some of the issues are and I think that’s a great thing.
Labeling someone Culturally Insensitive is an easy excuse. Patterns exist, period. In the year 2012, it’s not “culturally insensitive” people keeping anyone down, it’s themselves. Funny, third-worlders come here with nothing, and sometimes not speaking the language, yet bust their butts and open-businesses, etc. Btw, I wouldn’t lump Latinos with Blacks. Most Latinos, particularly Mexicans as of the last few decades, come here with nothing and not speaking the language, yet look at what they accomplish for themselves on average. I really respect that. Reminds me of my ancestors from long ago. Bottom line, the race card is played out. If you want to be upset with something or someone, google Flashmob attacks. Now that’s something you should be upset, and embarrassed, about. Of course these events will never make the mainstream news. Not interesting enough. Only if it were the other way around ;O)
That was your cultural sensitivity, you were attempting to empathize with what they were feeling, it is the epitome of empathy and kindness.
I found Teachbad’s use of the word “psychotic” interesting. I was raised (so to speak) by a mother who was severely mentally ill. In the process, I learned a lot of coping and survival strategies of how to cope with crazy-behaving people. It made me pretty tough! It’s scary to me how often I had to draw on these skills during this past year, which was my first as a full-fledged teacher. The stress was terrible. Every day I felt like I was going into battle. But I am tough, I had some coping skills in place, and admin at my school is supportive. So I had a better first year than some others I know of. I frequently found myself wondering, what kind of shock is it for people who’ve been raised by sane parents, and mostly been around sane people, to have to try to teach children with untreated mental disorders? I only had 3 or 4 of these kids, but I assure you, even one psychotic-behaving child can destroy the best lesson plan and reduce a teacher to just keeping the kids quiet with desk work — not the optimal way to teach. Trade school is not the answer for these kids. What is? I don’t know. I do know that trying to placate and control an insane person, day in and day out, takes a terrible toll on a teacher’s dignity, self-respect and peace of mind.
Well said Karioki. I think there should be a protocol in place, a checklist that is a students is displaying these behaviors they are out quickly as possible. Not thrown into the home that made them, but something more individualized and structured with a lot more mental health support. I would so happily pay higher taxes for this, not just for the mentally ill students, but also for the benefit of all of the kids in class who would love to engage in the sort of lesson you just can’t do when you are trying to placate 3-4 kids with serious and disruptive behaviors. An uber structured, quiet, teacher directed classroom is soothing for some disruptive kids but it really limits the other kids and the teacher. You can get through so much more material when you are not giving all of your energy to these stressful kids.
Never mind the kids, the adults are psychotic. I have also noticed that putting us in groups has not solved the problems,. Sanity does not seem to be rubbing off on the insane – sanity is continuously culled out until everyone agrees with the insane leaders. In my school the crazy kids are the only ones who make sense. I don’t know why there aren’t more of them…