In my favorite movie, Underground, a Serbian warlord tells his son, “All brave men look like me.” He says it and the audience laughs at the absurdity. But I sympathize with the warlord and with all admirers of courage. I like the line. I wish I could say, “All brave people look like me,” but I’ve had few glaring opportunities in my life to test my bravery. There’s been no war in my neighborhood or people hanging from a nearby burning building. The most I can say outside of enduring typical personal trauma is I stand up for all kinds of liberal causes in the typical ways, but writing a letter, marching a protest, giving some money has never felt brave.
Two years ago I read Samantha Powers’s A Problem from Hell, a book about the history of genocide since the creation of the word after World War II. It’s a wholly horrifying book about a world that allows evil dictators to take power easily, a world where few people are brave. The book made me wonder about my capacity for bravery. I think all of us believe we’d be on the right side of the conflict if thrust into it; we’d hide the Jew. This book, though, really spells out how few people stand on the right side when the right side endangers them. But after reading the book I decided to check where I was standing in my own life, and I realized that even while living in relative comfort I stood on the wrong side, when the right side inconvenienced me: things like avoiding expensive organic food or not visiting grandma. After the book, I shouldered the inconveniences in the name of courage fairly easily, but the reflection made me realize I need the courage most at my job as an English teacher.
I need the courage to expect my students to come to class daily and do their work and to fail them if they do not. The expectation will at best endanger my reputation with the administration; I will become a failure as a teacher. At worst that expectation will get me fired. In my school, teachers with high expectations tend to have high failure rates, and the administration admonishes high failure rates but ignores lenient teachers. The administration can barely remember the names of the teachers who show up later to class than their students, who pass students who cut 50% of their class, who don’t grade the essays the assign. If that teacher passes 80% of her class, she has succeeded. If I really hold to my standards, the administration will make my life uncomfortable. I’ve witnessed them intimidate three of the best teachers I’ve ever known into quitting. I am trying, though, to accept the risk in the name of what’s right. So, toward the end of this semester, I looked closely at my gradebook and quickly closed it before I vomited in the dismal record. The next day, gradebook in hand, I knocked on my boss’s door.
“Yeah,” he chirps.
“Hank, sorry to bother you, but if you have a minute I wanted to talk about the different things I’ve been doing with this group of slacker sophomores to motivate and pull them up,” I try to sound chirpy in return.
“Sure, awesome!” he beams. The whole school knows about the problematic sophomores.
I tell him about my new dog and pony shows to get them to want to come. “So, you see, I’ve made the class into a sort of island with two teams… like in Lord of the Flies. And they’re in competition for grades. Each team elects a president without any guidance from me, and the president then acts as an ‘educational advisor’ to me. I have meetings with the presidents each week…” I go on.
“That’s incredible. So, you’ve restructured your class around your content?”
“Yes, basically.”
“Fantastic.”
Then, I explain that I still have a huge problem with chronic cutters, kids who are absent more than present; in response Hank sympathetically throws up his hands and sighs, “I know, I know. But what are you going to do? You’re not a miracle worker.”
“I know,” I say, “But I think kids continue to cut when they feel there’s no way for them to catch up from what they’ve missed, so to help with that I make a calendar of all the homework and classwork two months in advance. I post it on my website and hand it to them, so when they are here they can look ahead and see the sequence of skills and content we’ll cover.”
“That’s great,” he says.
“Also,” I explain, “at the beginning of the year, I gave them a list of everything I wanted them to know by the end of the semester. I put it in a table with skills on one side and evidence on the other. So, they know exactly what they are supposed to learn and exactly what they are supposed to produce at the beginning of the year. I think a lot of kids fail because they don’t know what they have to do to succeed. This way, they know exactly what they have to do.”
“That’s really great. That fits right in to the ‘understanding by design concept’ we’re pushing,” Hank replies.
Hank has a gift for empathy. His phrases might sound rather pat but his delivery always makes me believe he believes in me. I want to keep talking to him, just to keep feeling good, even though I know his job is in part to blow smoke up my ass.
“And I also created a writing partners program this year, wherein the kids always work with the same person for their revisions. I did some lessons to help them build report and take responsibility for each other.”
He shakes his head “yes.” “That’s great. And the more they take responsibility for each other, the less responsibility you have to shoulder.”
“And the final new thing I’ve done this year is to do much more writing in class to ensure that the kids who refuse to do homework are still getting time to develop their writing skills.”
“That’s so important,” he says. “Because this homework kills some of our kids.”
“Well,” I say. I look sad. “I’m still a failure as a teacher.”
“What!” he expression is not unlike Pee-Wee Herman’s when a child has given Pee-Wee mildly bad news.
“Well,” I want him to be serious, “despite my efforts, at least ten kids per class failed.”
“Oh!” His brow furrows. I need my bravery. “That’s too many.”
“I know. That’s what I’m trying to say. I failed.”
“Well,” he shakes his head hard, “don’t say that. But there is SOME disconnect between what you expect and what they’re delivering. So what are you doing to bridge your expectations with their work?”
“Well,” I try not to look annoyed but I want to choke him, “that’s what I was just trying to explain to you.”
“Yeah,” he gesticulates something that seems to mean he’s thinking of the “big picture.” I nod.
“Yeah,” he still gesticulates, “but listen, something’s just not working if you’re failing that many kids.”
“Clearly,” I say. “Do you think my class is too hard?” I ask.
He pauses.
“Well, uh, no, no. You should have high expectations.”
Now I will be brave. “But I have a question. I know something is not working if I fail that many kids. But do you assume that a teacher who fails fewer kids has a class that’s working better than mine?”
“Well, no, not necessarily.” I continue before he can elaborate. “Do you automatically assume that teacher X who passed 80% of her class while I passed 50% of mine has students who have learned 30% more than my kids?”
“Well, no, not necessarily. But look, you shouldn’t be comparing yourself to other people.”
“I have to,” I point up toward the principal’s office, “because the administration has said that teachers who fail kids are failed teachers. Teachers with high failure rates are called in and intimidated. So everyone’s inflating grades, of course. I just want to stop it. I want to be honest.”
He shakes his head, “no, no,” the nod says. He opens his eyes wide, against with the Pee-Wee expression: “Teachers here do not inflate grades.”
His delusion, or feigned ignorance does not surprise me. After five years in the urban public school system, I believe self-delusion is a prerequisite to an administration appointment.
“Oh, come on,” I say. “You can’t honestly believe that.”
“I don’t know why you believe they do,” he responds.
“Because everyone says they do!” I’m annoyed. I am friendly. I talk to everyone at the school, and I know everyone inflates their grades. They have showed me their gradebooks. Many teachers have told me that if they gave exactly what the kids earned all but a couple of kids would fail. So, when you look at their final grades, the majority of the kids in their classes earn a 65%, which is just passing. Our administration, though, will not draw a connection between a long list of 65s and grade inflation.
Hank changes the subject and begins again to talk about the disconnect between my expectations and my students’ work. “Look,” he says, “If I were you, I wouldn’t care what the principal thought or how I was doing compared to someone else. I would just be having a heart attack because my students weren’t getting it. Somehow you’ve got to get them to meet your expectations.”
“Ok, yes, that’s what we’ve been talking about, and I’m agreeing with you. But I want to have this conversation now, because as you said, I shouldn’t have to compare myself to other teachers and I shouldn’t have to worry about what the principal thinks, but I’m human, and so it hurts my feelings, frankly, when my bosses tell me I’m a failure as a teacher. And, as a non-tenured teacher I worry that if don’t inflate my grades like most everyone here does, the principal will try to find a way to not grant me tenure at the end of the year. Yes, my kids aren’t all getting it. A lot of them aren’t. But nobody’s kids are getting it. We just pretend they’re getting it when they are not, across the board.”
He shakes his head again as if he has no clue what I’m talking about. His refusal to admit that he knows exactly what I mean tortures me. I feel like I’m speaking under water and the suffocation, I’m embarrassed to say, makes me cry. I don’t cry to manipulate, but I am lucky in this case to be dealing with a man who can’t take tears. He gets up, quickly shuts his door and in what sounds to me be a more earnest tone concedes, “Ok, ok. I get it. People inflate grades. I get it. Look I know you’re good. You’re a great teacher. You really care about the kids. I see what you do.”
“Thank you,” I try salvage my dignity. “But hearing you affirm your confidence in me despite my high failure rate is not why I wanted to have this conversation. I want to spell out why I think it’s important for me to be honest about who’s failing.”
“Ok.”
“School is a safe place to fail. If you get an “F” in English, the only real consequence is you have to repeat the class, and you may have a little kick to your self-esteem. But if you don’t have a work ethic or skills, chances are you already have a low-esteem. You might argue that we should pass kids who make some effort whether or not they truly pass in an effort boast up that self-esteem.”
“Yeah, that’s how I see it,” he says. “I teach like I coach. I want the kids to believe in themselves. So, I’m not the type of teacher who goes strictly by the grade book. I don’t necessarily say, ‘bam’ you got a 50 in my grade book so you fail.” He hits an imaginary grade book and delivers the last line in a scary schoolteacher voice. “Look, I feel sorry for these kids. They come from shitty systems and a lot of times shitty homes. What am I supposed to do? Punish them for where they came from?”
“I agree,” I said. I begin to enjoy the conversation. Hank seems to have dropped the bullshit. “I don’t want to punish them for where they came from either. So, I want to hold them to a high standard. I really want it to be as high as if they hadn’t come from some shitty inner city middle school and didn’t live in the projects with a single mom.
And I think when we pass kids when they show no work ethic and exhibit no skills we communicate one of two things. The smart ones know the grade is crap. They know that the teacher just passed them to cover herself or because she feels sorry for the kid. Kids tell me this themselves. I’m serious, they do. One student told me she passed all of her classes her first semester freshman year even though she had cut at least half the days in the semester. She said those passing grades made her feel like her teachers did not care about her education. Her exact words. The less astute actually think they’ve learned something. These are the kids who tell people they plan to become a doctor or a lawyer but they can’t write a clear sentence and they don’t know their times tables. You know we’ve got a lot of those kids in this school. And when we pass these kids we keep feeding them the lie that they can achieve their dreams without working, and that they’ve actually acquired the skills necessary for them to hold down any kind of white-collar job. So, we keep lying to them, and the not so bright ones feel great about themselves until they leave high school and become someone else’s problem. If they’re lucky, they’ll end up at one of those corporate colleges that’ll take anyone who’ll take out a huge student loan to learn how to get a ‘fast growing career’ that will keep them solidly in the lower middle class forever. If they’re lucky. So, when we pass them with no skills, I think we set them for failure later. We’re writing their future for them. For me, it’s classist; it’s racist.
My parents grew up poor. My dad was dirt poor, white trash. He’s complained many times that people around him ‘just didn’t care what the hell’ he did. It wasn’t until he was in the military that he realized he could do something other than work in factory. The military was the first place that expected any self-discipline from him, and in response he gained enough self-respect to put himself through college. I see the same pattern in my students. So, I expect my kids to be disciplined enough to do their work, and I fail them if they don’t. Then, some of them change. By telling them they’re failing now, I think I’m increasing their chance of succeeding later. I don’t want my kids to have to go looking to the military to find opportunity once they graduate.”
Hank looks tired. I have to say Hank is actually pretty great. I think he’s a kind person who sincerely cares about kids. Hank and I just have different philosophies on education that I think reflect our background. He comes from a much richer family than me and grew up among much richer people. Poor people represent an “other” to Hank more than they do to me. “I see what you’re saying,” he says, “but look, when a kid comes to our school and can hardly write a sentence I just don’t think it’s possible for him to learn to write a decent literary analysis. I just don’t think that’s possible.”
“Well,” I was relieved. We were having a real conversation. “Thanks for your honesty and all the time you took to talk to me. That’s where we’re different, though. I think it’s possible. Please, do me the favor of explaining ”
-Ms. Mettle
