For teachers to survive in the NYC School system it is vital to pick your battles. The advice given to novice teachers who are in an uproar of righteous outrage is to simply "close your classroom door and teach". While this method may help teachers maintain their sanity, it concerns me quite a bit the way that this mentality isolates and disempowers us as educators and people. The abiding sentiment in the NYC public school system seems to be “Nothing is going to change, so why waste your breath complaining?”. When our expectations are thus lowered, teachers are easier to manage and “lack of student motivation” can be blamed for a maelstrom of educational ills and failings. If all teachers simply close their doors and teach, then they are not forced to confront the fact that violence reigns in our hallways. I call this attitude “The Culture of Silence”—and teachers who violate it are punished like the Amish—with shunning, banishment, scorn and derision. And that’s just from the students—wait until the administration gets wind of your “We Are the World” one-woman chorus and your life will really turn into a nightmare.
A school or school system's failure to ensure a safe learning environment for all students is a gross injustice to all students, teachers, and administrators forced to work in an environment where violence has no consequences and vulgar behavior is the norm. For our students, this environment is particularly unjust-- let's face it, we all go home to our relatively middle-class lives after the last school bell of the day, but some of our kids get no respite at school from the violence that they experience in their home environments when the school becomes an extension of that environment rather than a safe haven. This situation exists because it is easier to ignore than it is to fix. I am not saying that I know what the solution is to this, but when we all go in our rooms, close our doors, and teach, we are tacitly consenting to maintaining the status quo.
I am reminded of a quote from Berthold Brecht, (which I will paraphrase for the purposes of this discussion), "For art to be non-political is simply for it to ally itself with the ruling class". So by ignoring the fact that our schools protect neither us nor our students, and going along our merry way, we are allying ourselves with the administration and the culture of that school-- like it or not. Furthermore, by making a choice to do nothing, say nothing, see nothing, and hear nothing, we are isolating ourselves and wasting the $90 that we pay the UFT to represent us because we are not speaking out. But what does one do, when silence is consent and dissent is dismissal? How can we as teachers find a way to say, "Ya Basta" and put a stop to this divide-and-conquer, “survival of the quietest” mentality that is so pervasive in the Board of Ed? And when are we going to stop being asked to lower our expectations to keep our jobs?
-Ms. Mouthy
Monday, April 16, 2007
The Darker Side of Lunch Duty in the City School
With a smile on her face, the principal signaled for me to go over to where she was standing. She was about 5’ 5”, light skinned, and loved to wear outrageous outfits. “Ms. Pluck, come quickly, I want you to meet the manager of the lunch room!” She said with eagerness in her voice. Following a brief exchange of hellos, her face tightened up, and her usual grave expression signaled that we were about to talk business. Turning toward me with her eyebrows scrunched together she leaned over and said, “Ms. Pluck, as you know we have had many ‘situations’ here in the lunch room and it is very important that we keep our eyes and ears open so that none of this continues to happen. There have been too many fights in here and some kids have been arrested because of incidents that started in the lunchroom. Jose, the manager, and I were talking about approaches we could take to keep this a safe environment. And other issues I want to address are that students cut the line, and then take too many condiments and salads from the salad bar. And this place is a mess!”
I knew about the ‘situations’ she was referring to, because since I’d been in the lunchroom there were instances when a small scuffle transcended into a brawl before security responded to any attempted call. To make a call, we had to find the nearest classroom and hope that the phone worked, otherwise it was impossible to get security in there quickly enough.
In 2006, the teacher contractual obligation changed. The city and the teacher’s union agreed to the “Circular Six assignment,” a 45-minute a day obligation to perform some school duty outside of regular teaching duties. Every principal has a choice about what those duties will be. Our principal instituted “lunch duty” as one of the assignments. The idea is that if teachers want more money, then they have to work more. Ironically though, we are working more and still not getting paid enough.
Jose, the manager, and Mrs. Johnson walked me around the room, pointing to the places where they thought I should stand. Jose dictated his concerns and Mrs. Johnson listened.
“O.k., so what exactly do you want me to do during lunch duty?”
“Walk over here with me for a minute, will you. Ms. Pluck, the lunch aides are complaining that you just sit in the back and don’t help monitor the room.”
“I sit at the desk by the back door to block kids from sneaking out into the stairwell.”
“Do you grade your papers while on lunch duty?”
“Sometimes, when I’m sitting at the desk, but I always make it a point to walk around the room, and make sure things are under control. I have overcrowded classes, and it’s impossible to get all my work done before I leave and I never leave before five.”
“I understand you have work to do. Everyone does, but this is not the place for you to do your grading. That should be done during your prep period.”
The circular six assignment replaced one of the two prep periods originally set aside for preparing units, grading papers, and meeting with students, to say the least. What the principal of the school was signifying, was that forty-five minutes was enough time to assess my one hundred and eighty six students. I had 76 English honors students with an additional 110 mainstream kids, so every minute of my time was valuable. Each one of those 186 students were required to pass the English regents exam that June to graduate high school, and it was becoming almost impossible for me to productively assess their work. I was already taking piles of work home almost every night.
“Ms. Pluck, all the schools in the city are overcrowded. There is nothing we could do to condense the classes, it is a city wide issue that can’t be dealt with right now.” Her eyes hurled echoes of frustration.
We walked over to the where students were standing in line and she told me I should stand there at the beginning of the period, to make sure that no students cut the line.
“When the line subsides,” She said, “move to the condiment area and salad bar and make sure the students are not taking too much.” She continued, “Fifteen minutes before the period ends, do a sweep of the room with the garbage can, enforcing a clean environment.”
There are sixteen activities from the Circular Six menu of procedures that administration could implement into their school. Among these are common planning time, hallway duty, one-on-one tutoring, bus duty, and cafeteria duty. Activities like curriculum planning, one on one tutoring, inter-disciplinary articulation, and professional development are also on the menu of procedures, but are already part of what we do as teachers on a regular basis. Our principal could have recognized the amount extra work we already do with pay; instead, she used her power to turn me into a part time janitor.
-Ms. Pluck
I knew about the ‘situations’ she was referring to, because since I’d been in the lunchroom there were instances when a small scuffle transcended into a brawl before security responded to any attempted call. To make a call, we had to find the nearest classroom and hope that the phone worked, otherwise it was impossible to get security in there quickly enough.
In 2006, the teacher contractual obligation changed. The city and the teacher’s union agreed to the “Circular Six assignment,” a 45-minute a day obligation to perform some school duty outside of regular teaching duties. Every principal has a choice about what those duties will be. Our principal instituted “lunch duty” as one of the assignments. The idea is that if teachers want more money, then they have to work more. Ironically though, we are working more and still not getting paid enough.
Jose, the manager, and Mrs. Johnson walked me around the room, pointing to the places where they thought I should stand. Jose dictated his concerns and Mrs. Johnson listened.
“O.k., so what exactly do you want me to do during lunch duty?”
“Walk over here with me for a minute, will you. Ms. Pluck, the lunch aides are complaining that you just sit in the back and don’t help monitor the room.”
“I sit at the desk by the back door to block kids from sneaking out into the stairwell.”
“Do you grade your papers while on lunch duty?”
“Sometimes, when I’m sitting at the desk, but I always make it a point to walk around the room, and make sure things are under control. I have overcrowded classes, and it’s impossible to get all my work done before I leave and I never leave before five.”
“I understand you have work to do. Everyone does, but this is not the place for you to do your grading. That should be done during your prep period.”
The circular six assignment replaced one of the two prep periods originally set aside for preparing units, grading papers, and meeting with students, to say the least. What the principal of the school was signifying, was that forty-five minutes was enough time to assess my one hundred and eighty six students. I had 76 English honors students with an additional 110 mainstream kids, so every minute of my time was valuable. Each one of those 186 students were required to pass the English regents exam that June to graduate high school, and it was becoming almost impossible for me to productively assess their work. I was already taking piles of work home almost every night.
“Ms. Pluck, all the schools in the city are overcrowded. There is nothing we could do to condense the classes, it is a city wide issue that can’t be dealt with right now.” Her eyes hurled echoes of frustration.
We walked over to the where students were standing in line and she told me I should stand there at the beginning of the period, to make sure that no students cut the line.
“When the line subsides,” She said, “move to the condiment area and salad bar and make sure the students are not taking too much.” She continued, “Fifteen minutes before the period ends, do a sweep of the room with the garbage can, enforcing a clean environment.”
There are sixteen activities from the Circular Six menu of procedures that administration could implement into their school. Among these are common planning time, hallway duty, one-on-one tutoring, bus duty, and cafeteria duty. Activities like curriculum planning, one on one tutoring, inter-disciplinary articulation, and professional development are also on the menu of procedures, but are already part of what we do as teachers on a regular basis. Our principal could have recognized the amount extra work we already do with pay; instead, she used her power to turn me into a part time janitor.
-Ms. Pluck
Authoritative Parenting
As a public school teacher at one of the most economically, racially, and ethnically diverse schools in New York City, I teach students from all walks of life, all social and economic classes, and with varying degrees of support at home. Parents often ask me what they can do to help their child succeed in school; my unpopular answer is be an authority figure in your child’s life. Look, adolescence itself is the age of entitlement: children suddenly make pronouncements like, “I’m FOURTEEN! You can’t tell me what to do/ Give me a curfew!/ Run my life!” etc etc. The problem with permissive parenting is that the child becomes a bully; and like all bullying victims, overly permissive parents believe deep down that they are worth the bullyer’s derision and negotiate with the bully, thereby validating the bullies’ claims as well as the bully’s authority over them.
The results of permissive parenting in the classroom are:
• Lack of personal or academic discipline.
• Inability to comprehend the word “no”.
• A misunderstanding that rules are negotiable (try this with the IRS, kiddo).
• An abiding sense of entitlement to except oneself from every rule, while severely limiting authority over them.
• A failure to value others’ time (tardiness and late work).
• A culture that thrives on failure and lowered expectations.
• The misconception that “It’s all about me” or that anyone in the real world actually cares about your feelings.
• A cunning and persistent desire to get around the rules any way they can: usually by the most annoying pestering involving copious amounts of whining in the same drip drip drip fashion that forms stalactites in caves.
• Parents who fail to support the tough decisions and occasional serious consequences that teach kids the “life lessons” they need to learn to succeed in school and in the world at large.
What permissive parenting does to the public school classroom:
• Wastes time and resources arguing with students who have no authority and deserve no authority.
• Lowered work standards to prevent “stressing the children out”.
• Inability to enforce deadlines in the classroom because endless accommodation is made for students who don’t do their work—and parents who make excuses for their children.
• Rewards the efforts of children and parents to run interference for a miscreant child rather than allow the child to suffer any consequences for his/her actions.
If you are a permissive parent, there is hope. Here are the steps you need to take to become authoritarian:
• Prepare to be disliked.
• Prepare to be respected.
• Now, make rules. Do not consult your child about these rules. You are the parent: this is your job. Set clear, direct, enforceable consequences for these rules (Ex: Each time you curse at your parent, you lose your phone for one day.)
• Inform child of said rules and consequences.
• Enforce the rules, and the consequences. Do not give in; do not alter the consequences for good behavior.
• Accompany the start of rigorous rules with rigorous responsibility: assign your children some chores to do around the house, and consequences if they are not done. This will give you time to go in the bathroom and cry if you feel guilty for being such a meanie.
• Reward kids sensibly for good grades and good behavior; make their comfort dependent upon their behavior and hard work.
As you read this article and try to Google me on the internet to have me fired, I beg you to consider a few final questions: Whose child would you rather have as a tenant? As a doctor? As an employee? As your payroll secretary? Handling your money at the bank? Giving you medicine while you are in a coma? Eat dinner with in public? Deliver your eulogy? Because ultimately, these children of permissive parenting are going to be filling those professions, and let me tell you—they cheated on their Final exams, plagiarized term papers, and never turned in that final project for English class. And then their mothers called me an my colleagues into the Principal’s office as though we were the offenders rather than the whistle-blowers. Give me the products of an authoritarian regime any day of the week—I’ll let the dice roll with people who understand that their needs don’t always come first, that greatness is the result of hard work and sacrifice, and that the entitlement of permissiveness really just gives a few people license to make life miserable for the rest of us who value our integrity and play by the rules.
-Ms. Mouthy
The results of permissive parenting in the classroom are:
• Lack of personal or academic discipline.
• Inability to comprehend the word “no”.
• A misunderstanding that rules are negotiable (try this with the IRS, kiddo).
• An abiding sense of entitlement to except oneself from every rule, while severely limiting authority over them.
• A failure to value others’ time (tardiness and late work).
• A culture that thrives on failure and lowered expectations.
• The misconception that “It’s all about me” or that anyone in the real world actually cares about your feelings.
• A cunning and persistent desire to get around the rules any way they can: usually by the most annoying pestering involving copious amounts of whining in the same drip drip drip fashion that forms stalactites in caves.
• Parents who fail to support the tough decisions and occasional serious consequences that teach kids the “life lessons” they need to learn to succeed in school and in the world at large.
What permissive parenting does to the public school classroom:
• Wastes time and resources arguing with students who have no authority and deserve no authority.
• Lowered work standards to prevent “stressing the children out”.
• Inability to enforce deadlines in the classroom because endless accommodation is made for students who don’t do their work—and parents who make excuses for their children.
• Rewards the efforts of children and parents to run interference for a miscreant child rather than allow the child to suffer any consequences for his/her actions.
If you are a permissive parent, there is hope. Here are the steps you need to take to become authoritarian:
• Prepare to be disliked.
• Prepare to be respected.
• Now, make rules. Do not consult your child about these rules. You are the parent: this is your job. Set clear, direct, enforceable consequences for these rules (Ex: Each time you curse at your parent, you lose your phone for one day.)
• Inform child of said rules and consequences.
• Enforce the rules, and the consequences. Do not give in; do not alter the consequences for good behavior.
• Accompany the start of rigorous rules with rigorous responsibility: assign your children some chores to do around the house, and consequences if they are not done. This will give you time to go in the bathroom and cry if you feel guilty for being such a meanie.
• Reward kids sensibly for good grades and good behavior; make their comfort dependent upon their behavior and hard work.
As you read this article and try to Google me on the internet to have me fired, I beg you to consider a few final questions: Whose child would you rather have as a tenant? As a doctor? As an employee? As your payroll secretary? Handling your money at the bank? Giving you medicine while you are in a coma? Eat dinner with in public? Deliver your eulogy? Because ultimately, these children of permissive parenting are going to be filling those professions, and let me tell you—they cheated on their Final exams, plagiarized term papers, and never turned in that final project for English class. And then their mothers called me an my colleagues into the Principal’s office as though we were the offenders rather than the whistle-blowers. Give me the products of an authoritarian regime any day of the week—I’ll let the dice roll with people who understand that their needs don’t always come first, that greatness is the result of hard work and sacrifice, and that the entitlement of permissiveness really just gives a few people license to make life miserable for the rest of us who value our integrity and play by the rules.
-Ms. Mouthy
Does Homework Matter?
I know two chefs who took different approaches when learning the art of cooking. Tom got through cooking school setting little time aside for practice, thinking it’s detrimental to his personal life. He went through four jobs in one year and after getting fired from the fourth, he went back to cooking school. On the other hand, John would sit attentively in class, memorizing the recipes and then spend endless hours in his mom’s kitchen, cooking and re-cooking the dishes, adding his own ingredients or taking one or two out. With practice, he perfected each of his specialty dishes, and went out searching for work. He took over a newly opened restaurant and within a year, they were written up in the New York Times. The difference between the two chefs is that one of them spent time practicing the skills; while the other didn’t think repeating the steps was important. Implementing the same ideas as Tom, into the classroom, would weaken a student’s ability to master the skills he or she needs to become a productive learner.
To eliminate homework would be criminal to a student’s knowledge and would lower expectations. Teachers have 45 minutes of classroom time to teach skills, and then homework allows students to practice those skills so that they won’t have gone astray the following day. Limiting homework does injustice to continuity. Most kids do not study on their own and need direction and discipline; homework not only is necessary, but crucial in their development as independent thinkers. So ignoring the importance of continuity lowers student expectations. The lower the expectations, the worse students will do. The higher the expectations, the better they will do. Period. Say we eliminate homework all together. What would happen? After spending endless hours discussing the topic in graduate school, I was conditioned to believe that I could spend one-day teaching skills, and the next day, putting them into practice. The idea was that by limiting homework, students will have more down time to spend with family and friends, strengthening their ties within their communities. I agree that students need down time, just like adults. And they also need to build strong community ties, and in some cases work, but that doesn’t mean through cutting out homework they will build a stronger sense of community, or hinder their time with family. If we subject ourselves, as educators, to the idea that less homework will increase student achievement, then we send out the message that we are lowering expectations and also telling students that practice isn’t important. In Tom’s case, he learned that the lack of practice took him right back to where he started.
The role a parent plays
At one point or another a parent will gripe over the amount of homework teachers give, saying that their kids study too much or that they don’t have time for anything else. At a recent parent teacher conference thirty-five out of the one hundred and seventy parents showed up, some of them ecstatic about the high grades their child received and others oblivious to how awful their children were doing in school. During the conferences I made a point to ask every parent if they worked on homework with their children, how often, and if they thought about reading the books their child is reading in English class. I found that the student whose parent actually worked on homework with him, excelled. On the contrary, the kids who continuously fail, are on their own. The problem with the loner is that he lacks discipline and guidance. The parent who doesn’t make the extra effort to get involved in his child’s schoolwork is sending the message that he doesn’t care about his child’s education. These types of parents feel safe with the idea that their child is going to school, but not whether or not they are in class, and trust that they do their homework, but lack the effort to understand what the content of the assignments are. At a time when children need the most nurturing and monitoring, most parents I’ve encountered in the city schools draw a blank.
If a parent got more involved with their child’s schoolwork, it would create valuable family time. For example, Arturo is a tenth grade student who lives with his aunt. The other day, he said to me, “Miss, my aunt read Native Son and she knows what happens in the end and she won’t tell me!” I asked him if he talks about the book with his aunt and he said, “Oh, she reads all the books I read. We always talk about em! We sit at the dinner table and argue about this book sometimes, because I think Bigger is bad and she thinks he has good intentions. We sometimes start fighting over who’s right, it’s really cool.” Arturo is one of the few students who is learning to think independently and assess actively, because he not only practices the skills applied in class, he has direct guidance and support from home. Limiting or abolishing homework is detrimental to continuity, but it is also detrimental to a parent-student-teacher relationship.
-Ms. Pluck
To eliminate homework would be criminal to a student’s knowledge and would lower expectations. Teachers have 45 minutes of classroom time to teach skills, and then homework allows students to practice those skills so that they won’t have gone astray the following day. Limiting homework does injustice to continuity. Most kids do not study on their own and need direction and discipline; homework not only is necessary, but crucial in their development as independent thinkers. So ignoring the importance of continuity lowers student expectations. The lower the expectations, the worse students will do. The higher the expectations, the better they will do. Period. Say we eliminate homework all together. What would happen? After spending endless hours discussing the topic in graduate school, I was conditioned to believe that I could spend one-day teaching skills, and the next day, putting them into practice. The idea was that by limiting homework, students will have more down time to spend with family and friends, strengthening their ties within their communities. I agree that students need down time, just like adults. And they also need to build strong community ties, and in some cases work, but that doesn’t mean through cutting out homework they will build a stronger sense of community, or hinder their time with family. If we subject ourselves, as educators, to the idea that less homework will increase student achievement, then we send out the message that we are lowering expectations and also telling students that practice isn’t important. In Tom’s case, he learned that the lack of practice took him right back to where he started.
The role a parent plays
At one point or another a parent will gripe over the amount of homework teachers give, saying that their kids study too much or that they don’t have time for anything else. At a recent parent teacher conference thirty-five out of the one hundred and seventy parents showed up, some of them ecstatic about the high grades their child received and others oblivious to how awful their children were doing in school. During the conferences I made a point to ask every parent if they worked on homework with their children, how often, and if they thought about reading the books their child is reading in English class. I found that the student whose parent actually worked on homework with him, excelled. On the contrary, the kids who continuously fail, are on their own. The problem with the loner is that he lacks discipline and guidance. The parent who doesn’t make the extra effort to get involved in his child’s schoolwork is sending the message that he doesn’t care about his child’s education. These types of parents feel safe with the idea that their child is going to school, but not whether or not they are in class, and trust that they do their homework, but lack the effort to understand what the content of the assignments are. At a time when children need the most nurturing and monitoring, most parents I’ve encountered in the city schools draw a blank.
If a parent got more involved with their child’s schoolwork, it would create valuable family time. For example, Arturo is a tenth grade student who lives with his aunt. The other day, he said to me, “Miss, my aunt read Native Son and she knows what happens in the end and she won’t tell me!” I asked him if he talks about the book with his aunt and he said, “Oh, she reads all the books I read. We always talk about em! We sit at the dinner table and argue about this book sometimes, because I think Bigger is bad and she thinks he has good intentions. We sometimes start fighting over who’s right, it’s really cool.” Arturo is one of the few students who is learning to think independently and assess actively, because he not only practices the skills applied in class, he has direct guidance and support from home. Limiting or abolishing homework is detrimental to continuity, but it is also detrimental to a parent-student-teacher relationship.
-Ms. Pluck
Friday, April 13, 2007
The Arms of Esau, The Voice of Jacob
This winter our school spent several weeks gearing up for the facility-wide version of high-stakes testing which No Child Left Behind mandates for public schools, called “School Quality Review”. We have been instructed to be “on top of our game” for the visit; our classrooms were observed, our bulletin boards critiqued, our answers to the Quality Review board virtually rehearsed for us in a series of mind-numbing 1984-esque brainwashing sessions called “faculty meetings” to make sure we do not say anything that might give the reviewers anything other than the rosiest accolades for our oh-so-wonderful urban school. Yippeee. Under the current review process, schools are held to a series of system-wide standards determined by the people who know the most about quality education and best instructional practices: Businessmen.
While it is important for schools to be assessed by teams such as "Quality Review", I am naturally suspicious of all the consultants and experts who descend upon us with all their sense from the business world; the fact of the matter is that capitalism as we know it is a failing model that is essentially underwritten by the taxpayers, and corporate welfare is what keeps most businesses afloat-- so why are we basing the model for educational success on a corporate system that is in fact the model of failure and corruption? I may be going off the deep end here, but I am reminded of Maslow's hierarchy of needs--- in that until physical plant needs for safety and nourishment, learning and art cannot flourish.
As far as the impact on teaching goes, I have an abiding sentiment that we are being forced to play the marching band and the condemned, and provide the entertainment for the masses as we march ourselves toward the gallows. If these consultants want to help, why don't they hang out for three days calling lame-duck parents, conducting sweeps in the hallways, corralling truant students from the streets and the cafeteria, and act as "temporary deans"? I do not think that these suits would last fifteen minutes trying to manage our student population, let alone actually structuring curriculum and overseeing instruction itself.
I must also ask this group, who really benefits from this? The consultants are making a pretty penny. The results are posted on the internet (which half my students cannot access because they do not have computers at home and there is no computer lab at school). Look, it seems obvious that everyone knows that a big part of the problem with the board of Ed is the bloated bureaucracy; and here we are, feeding the beast and starving the children. While these $350 hour consultants trot around my classroom grilling me about why Johnny can't read, I'm getting emails from the Operations department at our school that teachers are making too many copies of instructional materials and that we are over budget for the year. They insist that we "avoid making copies" of the worksheets, graphic organizers, short stories, poems and other materials that I need for sound instructional practice in my classroom. The science that needs to be examined here is not the science of teaching-- this is the science of bunglers who hoodwink the public into enriching themselves at the expense of resources out of my students' reach while I grovel for copy paper.
How much longer are our kids going to be asked to "go without" while we spend millions on examining what they need rather than giving us the technology and supplies to do our job? Whose needs are being met? Let’s look at this: one hour of consultant pay would keep me in copy paper for a month; two hours would fund a decent classroom library; three hours would put a computer on a child’s desk; four hours would pay a tutor to help provide after school homework help for a week; five hours is more than my weekly pre-tax salary. These expenses give my students “measurable outcomes” instead of a bunch of folks staring at them during class time and typing frantically into their laptops as though my kids were animals in a zoo.
All this hoopla about business model being the best model for school reminds me very much of a Bible story my grandfather used to tell me. He told me how a long time ago; an old man named Isaac had twin sons, Esau and Jacob. Before the Isaac died, he needed to give the birthright blessing to his eldest son Esau. Jacob wanted the blessing from his father, and wanted it very badly. So Jacob conspired against his brother. Jacob knew Isaac was senile and blind, and so Jacob disguised himself as Esau. Jacob put animal skins on his arm to make himself hairy like Esau, he ate food so he smelled like Esau, and he made his voice sound like his brother’s. (Sara, Isaac’s wife, had a role in this nonsense, but I digress). Jacob approached his father, but Isaac was suspicious. Isaac made Jacob speak, and he heard Esau’s voice come forth. Isaac smelled the boy, and he sure smelled like Esau. Finally, Isaac felt the boy’s hairy arms and was convinced that Jacob was Esau. In good faith, with tears in his eyes, the old man gave the birthright blessing to his cheating, no-good son. This just goes to show you how far some people will go in this world to earn a buck: you will know them by this; they come with arms of Esau, but you will recognize the voice of Jacob.
This time around, Jacob dons a fancy suit and carries an expensive ultra-thin laptop loaded with a bunch of excel spreadsheets. Jacob comes to my school, introduces himself as Esau, smiles and shakes your hand. He promises he’ll show you how this whole education thing all ought to be done, and swears he is fully capable of bringing God’s people to the Promised Land where everybody can read and write and speak good English. “Excuse me”, he says, grinning “I meant to say proper English”. You notice then that his wrists are thin and his socks keep slipping down, and is that a forked tongue? But he just talks and talks about numbers and outcomes and measurable results and alternative assessment and data until you, too, want to go to the Promised Land where everybody can read, write, and do math AND speak good English. However, above all the din (That’s the sound of a stampede as thousands of children are left behind…) you can still hear the voice of Jacob. Is anybody listening?
-Ms. Mouthy
While it is important for schools to be assessed by teams such as "Quality Review", I am naturally suspicious of all the consultants and experts who descend upon us with all their sense from the business world; the fact of the matter is that capitalism as we know it is a failing model that is essentially underwritten by the taxpayers, and corporate welfare is what keeps most businesses afloat-- so why are we basing the model for educational success on a corporate system that is in fact the model of failure and corruption? I may be going off the deep end here, but I am reminded of Maslow's hierarchy of needs--- in that until physical plant needs for safety and nourishment, learning and art cannot flourish.
As far as the impact on teaching goes, I have an abiding sentiment that we are being forced to play the marching band and the condemned, and provide the entertainment for the masses as we march ourselves toward the gallows. If these consultants want to help, why don't they hang out for three days calling lame-duck parents, conducting sweeps in the hallways, corralling truant students from the streets and the cafeteria, and act as "temporary deans"? I do not think that these suits would last fifteen minutes trying to manage our student population, let alone actually structuring curriculum and overseeing instruction itself.
I must also ask this group, who really benefits from this? The consultants are making a pretty penny. The results are posted on the internet (which half my students cannot access because they do not have computers at home and there is no computer lab at school). Look, it seems obvious that everyone knows that a big part of the problem with the board of Ed is the bloated bureaucracy; and here we are, feeding the beast and starving the children. While these $350 hour consultants trot around my classroom grilling me about why Johnny can't read, I'm getting emails from the Operations department at our school that teachers are making too many copies of instructional materials and that we are over budget for the year. They insist that we "avoid making copies" of the worksheets, graphic organizers, short stories, poems and other materials that I need for sound instructional practice in my classroom. The science that needs to be examined here is not the science of teaching-- this is the science of bunglers who hoodwink the public into enriching themselves at the expense of resources out of my students' reach while I grovel for copy paper.
How much longer are our kids going to be asked to "go without" while we spend millions on examining what they need rather than giving us the technology and supplies to do our job? Whose needs are being met? Let’s look at this: one hour of consultant pay would keep me in copy paper for a month; two hours would fund a decent classroom library; three hours would put a computer on a child’s desk; four hours would pay a tutor to help provide after school homework help for a week; five hours is more than my weekly pre-tax salary. These expenses give my students “measurable outcomes” instead of a bunch of folks staring at them during class time and typing frantically into their laptops as though my kids were animals in a zoo.
All this hoopla about business model being the best model for school reminds me very much of a Bible story my grandfather used to tell me. He told me how a long time ago; an old man named Isaac had twin sons, Esau and Jacob. Before the Isaac died, he needed to give the birthright blessing to his eldest son Esau. Jacob wanted the blessing from his father, and wanted it very badly. So Jacob conspired against his brother. Jacob knew Isaac was senile and blind, and so Jacob disguised himself as Esau. Jacob put animal skins on his arm to make himself hairy like Esau, he ate food so he smelled like Esau, and he made his voice sound like his brother’s. (Sara, Isaac’s wife, had a role in this nonsense, but I digress). Jacob approached his father, but Isaac was suspicious. Isaac made Jacob speak, and he heard Esau’s voice come forth. Isaac smelled the boy, and he sure smelled like Esau. Finally, Isaac felt the boy’s hairy arms and was convinced that Jacob was Esau. In good faith, with tears in his eyes, the old man gave the birthright blessing to his cheating, no-good son. This just goes to show you how far some people will go in this world to earn a buck: you will know them by this; they come with arms of Esau, but you will recognize the voice of Jacob.
This time around, Jacob dons a fancy suit and carries an expensive ultra-thin laptop loaded with a bunch of excel spreadsheets. Jacob comes to my school, introduces himself as Esau, smiles and shakes your hand. He promises he’ll show you how this whole education thing all ought to be done, and swears he is fully capable of bringing God’s people to the Promised Land where everybody can read and write and speak good English. “Excuse me”, he says, grinning “I meant to say proper English”. You notice then that his wrists are thin and his socks keep slipping down, and is that a forked tongue? But he just talks and talks about numbers and outcomes and measurable results and alternative assessment and data until you, too, want to go to the Promised Land where everybody can read, write, and do math AND speak good English. However, above all the din (That’s the sound of a stampede as thousands of children are left behind…) you can still hear the voice of Jacob. Is anybody listening?
-Ms. Mouthy
Friday, March 16, 2007
A teacher is not an elf. A teacher is not a saint.
I love my summer vacation, but I dread the onslaught of misguided responses to it. I dread most the most predictable, “Oh! It must be so great to get the summers off!” Teachers in my demographic, between 25-35, single without children, hear it most often at summer parties. People look at us enviously as we swallow our third mojito without hesitation, knowing we can wake up when we want and then twiddle away our day as we please. It’s usually a woman who says it first in a high pitched incredulous voice, “Oh! It must be so great to get the summers off!” She looks like a child who just met one of Santa’s magical elves, a creature who works just a few months in fantasyland to spread joy to children but mostly spends its time frolicking with the other magical beasts. Really, her eyes widen and you see her take a quick, short breath. She, too, wants to be an elf for a moment. She wants you to tell her how. I feel a sadistic compulsion to destroy the fantasy she quickly constructs in her head about her possible elf life, to tell her it does not exist, to break her heart. But then I’ll sound mean and contrary to summer BBQ tone so instead I say with a hint of mystery but no clue to the elf path, “Yeah it’s great.”
Realizing herself that she cannot leave her “real” job, she usually responds with a look and a comment that are indignant, jealous, condescending or any combination of the three. Indignant that her taxes pay for my summer loafing, jealous that they do not pay for hers, condescending to my weak mind which has achieved no better than state employee. She may tell me about her long, long hours, her complicated tasks, and her “high level,” stressful bosses.
Another guest having overheard the conversation will usually interrupt to express exaggerated reverence. She may touch me lightly on the arm and coo, “Oh, but you deserve the summer. I could NEVER do what you do.” She may add the most gut-wrenching phrase, a phrase often used by school administrators as well, “It’s just so noble what you do.” Then, she will often recount to you tales of example noble teachers from her past, or if you’re an inner city teacher as I am, she will tell you the most harrowing tale she has heard about the ghetto youth and shake her head, no. She is saying, “No, it is outrageous how poorly you are paid to deal with those children.”
From my experience then, most of the non-teaching public views teachers as either elves or saints.
The elf
The indignant, jealous, condescending response to summers off is offensive, because it implies, simply, that teachers do not work hard, and even when they do, the work is not intellectually challenging. So, in an attempt to dispel that myth, I will explain the challenges of an urban English teacher in what, for me, is ascending order of difficulty.
#3 Planning:
Now, I teach five classes with at least thirty students each. One class is honors and requires a curriculum different from general English. Unlike some school districts with scripted curriculum, I plan the curriculum and instruction for both with no guidelines other than the state standards.
I love the creative freedom involved in planning lessons, but with more freedom comes more work. By way of guidance for instructional planning my administrator gave me a key to the room where we keep class sets of books available to our English teachers. It is up to the teachers to organize the sharing and distribution of the books. In my school there are no class sets of writing guides, grammar books or vocabulary books, so I have to create the instruction for each of these areas. There are no benchmark exams, common rubrics or written grade level standards. There is only a book room and a state Regents exam. The English Regents is one of the exams New York students must take to graduate from high school. It consists of four essays and two sets of multiple-choice questions in response to a poem and a narrative. The Regents basically tests whether a student can analyze a text of literally value.
As from preparing my students for the Regents, I create everything based on what I believe my diverse population of students need. Students come from Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and every borough in New York. Although 41% of our students receive free and reduced lunch, an indicator of poverty, many of our students are clearly middle class and a few are quite wealthy. Some write better than many college students and some can barely write at all. Some students claim to have never read a book; one student claims to have read half of the books listed in Harold Bloom’s canon. University education professors now insist that teachers “differentiate” (a common catch phrase) their instruction to meet the needs of individual learners. In a school like mine, this call to specialized instruction is like asking a single New York deli to tailor to the specific dietary, cultural and religious needs and tastes of every New Yorker.
Still, I do differentiate assignments and methods of delivering information, but always with the same goal for every student: to teach them how to succeed in the middle class and how to participate in American democracy. Planning curriculum around two goals is more realistic than planning for the specific goals of 135 students. However, with my lack of success, the goals still feel rather pie-in-the-sky.
By lack of success, I mean I have failed to motivate many students to care about Standard English proficiency, so they remain unable to communicate in a way that will open the door to a white-collar job. I know that a sentence like, “At my last job, they was happy with the work I did,” will not only cause the automatic rejection of a candidate for a decent paying white-collar job, but it will also incite condescending jokes once the candidate walks out of the room. My students listen to me when I explain this reality, but many times they still don’t care. (I could engage in a political discussion on language, on whether or not the students ought to care, but that would be another article). Many of my students don’t see themselves as business leaders, doctors, lawyers or teachers. They don’t see themselves as citizens empowered to set and achieve goals. Rather than living offensively and looking to their future, they live defensively, reacting to immediate conflict and seizing immediate opportunities. So, as a teacher of poor, urban kids, I have to make the material immediately valuable for the students to buy into it, otherwise instruction will fail.
It is infinitely easier to motivate students who come from middle class and upper class homes. School culture is middle class culture, and so those students do not have to learn a different language and different code of behavior to be successful. However, I do struggle to give attention to these students amid so many others with what seems to be greater immediate needs. For students who already have the skills that allow them to function in the middle class, I try to push them to develop their talents. But, I know I’ve passed over the talent of many skilled students. I hope someone else had the time to foster it.
#2 Motivating students
As I stated earlier, I plan instruction for the barely literate and the Noam Chomsky reader (literally), and do so in an effort to not only teach them something important but also to keep them coming. Students in my school can choose not to show up with no immediate consequence. When they get off the subway, they can go to any number of public places in New York City, usually unnoticed by truancy officers. If they do not show up, someone from school tries to call their home, but truancy is a huge problem and we don’t always have time to report the hundreds of kids who just keep walking when they pass the school. Even when we do reach a parent, the parents often feel powerless. Many of our parents don’t speak English and they rely on their English fluent children to manage logistical affairs. So, the child often yields more power over the adult than the adult yields over the child.
The school has little power to force the student in school either. We have an attendance teacher whose job is only to keep our kids in school, but she can do little more than act as a motivational speaker or a police threat. The group of kids who hang out all day on the school’s block smoking cigarettes routinely tell her to “fuck off” when she orders them to class. When truancy officers do catch them, they can’t detain them long. They get out of jail and return to the sidewalk to smoke cigarettes all day. Ultimately, teachers must “sell” school as more worth teenagers’ time than anything they could be doing that day on the streets of New York. We need to advertise harder than ads for consumer products and entertainment, which promote hedonism and selfishness. We need to be more persuasive than T.V. shows, movies and songs with the ubiquitous ghetto thug as hero. This is hard.
This year I decided to try something new with my chronic cutters, students who are absent more than present. I spent the first week of the second semester doing activities designed to make kids want to go to school. At the end of the week, I wrote a hand-written, personalized letter to each chronic cutter who had showed up everyday that week. There were only five; the others came maybe twice. I then assigned the student to a partner, another one of the five chronic cutters. They had to call each other every morning to wake each other up. Over the course of the semester, I called the students on my cell phone when they weren’t in class. I paid more attention to their work than any of the other students, often writing page long notes on their papers meant to encourage and instruct.
This worked. There are other strategies that work, but they all take time more time than I can possibly allot for every chronic cutter. If I had 25 instead of 35 students, I could reach more. The ones we miss stay in the street.
#1. Papers. The hardest, least glamorous task.
I could spend much more time planning and giving students personal attention if I did not have thirty-five students per class who need to learn to write a clear essay. Students need to write and to receive feedback to make progress in their writing. They need to revise and revise again based on a teacher’s feedback. I spend most of my time as an English teacher grading papers. Every other English teacher I know does the same.
My students have the most difficulty writing analytical thesis papers. So, I spend most instruction time on outlining and developing an argument in clear Standard English. I teach, students produce and my pen bleeds criticism on their papers. They produce again, and they improve. My pen bleeds on their improvements, and they improve again. My response to papers provides at least 50% of the instruction I give. I spend about five minutes on each short essay, eight to ten on a long essay. I teach 175 students. Grading takes up many evenings.
Proponents of the popular writing workshop approach to English class suggest I don’t need to spend so much time writing all over my students’ paper. Many would even reprimand my free-wielding red pen for its detrimental effect on student fluency and creativity. Workshoppers focus on creating an environment where students learn to love writing and write to express personal ideas and feelings. Workshop teachers give five minute mini-lessons on writing instruction at the beginning of class, lessons that students can choose to follow if this wish. Feedback in these workshops comes first from other students, and the teacher feedback is suggestive rather than prescriptive. In these environments I have read about but never really seen, students produce creative texts that reflect a personal style. However, as shocking as this may sound, I do not see my job as an English teacher to be primarily a facilitator of the development of my students’ personal creative writing voice, even though I’m sure my students and I would have much more fun in an environment where that was my primary role.
I do want my students to develop a personal voice, but they do already have one. Like anyone, they could deepen and refine it, but to suggest that my inner city students lack a voice or lack fluency in their writing is wrong. Almost all of my students write poetry, rap music, notes to each other and journals. They don’t need me to teach them that writing is fun or they have something to say. They know that.
They do not know how to organize ideas in a paragraph or write complete sentences in clear Standard English syntax about abstract questions. Their Standard English vocabulary is limited, as are their skills in punctuating and spelling. Their speaking skills reflect their writing skills. If they don’t learn clear Standard English expression, they won’t find a white-collar job of any kind, ever. Politicians will not listen to them when they complain. Store managers will not listen when they insist a clerk has overcharged them. Waitresses in restaurants where middle class and rich people eat will be rude to them. Real estate agents will condescend to them. Car salesmen will overcharge them. Banks will hesitate to give them business loans. Doctors will offer less thorough explanations. Judges will be less sympathetic. The list can continue, because people assume that if you communicate in non-Standard English, you’re stupid.
So, while I would like to run a creative writing workshop, I just don’t have much time for that. Sometimes I feel like my eyes are bleeding from grading all these papers, and it never, ever feels like enough, because this sentence is from a real paper from my class, “I think that most of the people don’t know wich to be good or evil it because of what caint of people they hang out with they just scaird that if they dond do nothin bad when they are with the bad group something will happen.” But, as a result of prescriptive feedback, most of my students can write a competent analytical thesis paper by the time they leave. I know that sounds less exciting than writing portfolios with poems and narratives, but it’s necessary and it’s very hard.
The saints
With the planning, motivating, grading and of course teaching, filling out paperwork and going to meetings, I would say I work between sixty and seventy hours a week now. In the first few years I worked much more, between 80 and 90, I’m sure. But that amount of work was damaging to my relationships and my health. The workload may have been less damaging if I felt I was successful but I did not and I do not. I would feel satisfied if every single one of my students could write a competent analytical thesis paper, but only the students who show up learn this. I would feel successful if all of my students could write the paper and learned to enjoy reading a variety of complex literature. I can imagine the elation I would feel if all of my students could write the paper, enjoy the literature and progress in the development of their personal creative writing voice. I might die of joy if all of my students could write the paper, enjoy the literature, progress in the development of their personal creative writing voice and discuss a variety of complex texts in a logical way. But the truth is that as long as a percentage of my students do not learn what I want to teach them, I will feel like a failure often.
I will feel like a failure in spite of the fact that I have only received glowing observations in all my years teaching, I have won awards and I have heard plenty of praise from parents and students. I will feel like a failure, because I know if I slept less and only worked, I could teach them all what I know they need. The movies are true. Stand and deliver is true. I only witnessed a made-for-the-movies teacher once, Elena Mejia, and she truly did nothing but work. Every day she made at least one home visit. Elena Mejia began teaching after all of her children were grown and she divorced. She gave all of her energy to the students. She and the other made for movie teachers are saints. I admire them, but I am not them.
So, when people call me noble, I feel guilty. When I hear, “You’re so noble” I think of my friend, Elena Mejia, and the other movie teachers, and I feel guilty that this person thinks I’m like them, and then I feel guilty that I’m in this social situation talking to this non-teacher rather than working like the other made-for-movies teachers. I think about my students constantly; I view the world through the lens of a teacher. That means I pick up the trash on the sidewalk for use as props while we act out Shakespeare (don’t tell them), or I convince the person I just met at the party to come and speak to my class about journalism. But when I hear “you’re so noble,” my teacher thoughts oppress me. The effort to bring the journalist feels trivial compared to the truly noble efforts of teachers I am not.
Aside from creating guilt, the assumption that nobility is what inspired all inner city teachers to do their jobs demeans the profession and the students. You don’t call doctors or lawyers or other well-paid people who provide a service noble unless they are working for some organization that does not pay them, because we assume doctors and lawyers are fairly compensated. It seems then, that teaching is not a job, but a sort of calling. A teacher must teach despite the low pay for the job. I think this sense in the public that good teachers receive some sort of calling and follow it like saints allows the public to sleep sounder in their shiny big homes after voting “no” on a property tax increase. The noble teacher doesn’t want money! She just wants to serve our children. I even heard one person say at a party, “I wouldn’t want my children taught by someone who became a teacher for the money.” Well, why not? Do we say that about doctors? I would go to a doctor or lawyer who went into it for the money. The better she performs, the more clients want her services. I am, by the way, a pro-union teacher who would like to be paid for performance.
Also, the phrase “you’re so noble” demeans my students, because it implies they are horrible people to deal with. Now, I know some schools do have terrible behavior problems, and I have experienced one school like it, and I left because I did find the students horrible and I am not noble. But I will say that the good teachers who stayed at that school liked the students and did not struggle to maintain a calm tone in the classroom. They liked the kids, and the kids liked them. My school does not have serious violence issues, but they are urban kids and sometimes my classroom does resemble Welcome Back Kotter. Still, the best part of my job is spending time with them. We do teach each other all kinds of life skills. I did start to feel “noble” with one extremely difficult student this year, and so I had him transferred out of my class. I’ve never done that before, but this sense that I was giving to this student without receiving did give me a “poor me” feeling, and I didn’t think my attitude was good for the student. I felt myself acting in a condescending way toward him, being overly polite and distant. So, for both of our sakes I moved him to a teacher who said he like him. This may not have been noble, but I think it was wise.
Despite the challenges of teaching, the teachers who come back after the summer, come back because working with kids is fun. We often quit, because we realize we could have a good time someplace else with more respect and better pay.
If the public would change its perception of teachers, local politicians may not need to spend millions of dollars on dog and pony shows designed to lure new teachers into the profession. Seventy-five percent of teachers quit within their first five years of teaching. The reasons for this are varied, but one and surely not the least important is perception of the profession. Teaching is a difficult but ultimately enjoyable profession that merits better pay and stronger support. It is not a mission for saints or elves. The world does not have enough saints to fill the classrooms. The job is too hard for the elves.
Ms. Mettle
Realizing herself that she cannot leave her “real” job, she usually responds with a look and a comment that are indignant, jealous, condescending or any combination of the three. Indignant that her taxes pay for my summer loafing, jealous that they do not pay for hers, condescending to my weak mind which has achieved no better than state employee. She may tell me about her long, long hours, her complicated tasks, and her “high level,” stressful bosses.
Another guest having overheard the conversation will usually interrupt to express exaggerated reverence. She may touch me lightly on the arm and coo, “Oh, but you deserve the summer. I could NEVER do what you do.” She may add the most gut-wrenching phrase, a phrase often used by school administrators as well, “It’s just so noble what you do.” Then, she will often recount to you tales of example noble teachers from her past, or if you’re an inner city teacher as I am, she will tell you the most harrowing tale she has heard about the ghetto youth and shake her head, no. She is saying, “No, it is outrageous how poorly you are paid to deal with those children.”
From my experience then, most of the non-teaching public views teachers as either elves or saints.
The elf
The indignant, jealous, condescending response to summers off is offensive, because it implies, simply, that teachers do not work hard, and even when they do, the work is not intellectually challenging. So, in an attempt to dispel that myth, I will explain the challenges of an urban English teacher in what, for me, is ascending order of difficulty.
#3 Planning:
Now, I teach five classes with at least thirty students each. One class is honors and requires a curriculum different from general English. Unlike some school districts with scripted curriculum, I plan the curriculum and instruction for both with no guidelines other than the state standards.
I love the creative freedom involved in planning lessons, but with more freedom comes more work. By way of guidance for instructional planning my administrator gave me a key to the room where we keep class sets of books available to our English teachers. It is up to the teachers to organize the sharing and distribution of the books. In my school there are no class sets of writing guides, grammar books or vocabulary books, so I have to create the instruction for each of these areas. There are no benchmark exams, common rubrics or written grade level standards. There is only a book room and a state Regents exam. The English Regents is one of the exams New York students must take to graduate from high school. It consists of four essays and two sets of multiple-choice questions in response to a poem and a narrative. The Regents basically tests whether a student can analyze a text of literally value.
As from preparing my students for the Regents, I create everything based on what I believe my diverse population of students need. Students come from Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and every borough in New York. Although 41% of our students receive free and reduced lunch, an indicator of poverty, many of our students are clearly middle class and a few are quite wealthy. Some write better than many college students and some can barely write at all. Some students claim to have never read a book; one student claims to have read half of the books listed in Harold Bloom’s canon. University education professors now insist that teachers “differentiate” (a common catch phrase) their instruction to meet the needs of individual learners. In a school like mine, this call to specialized instruction is like asking a single New York deli to tailor to the specific dietary, cultural and religious needs and tastes of every New Yorker.
Still, I do differentiate assignments and methods of delivering information, but always with the same goal for every student: to teach them how to succeed in the middle class and how to participate in American democracy. Planning curriculum around two goals is more realistic than planning for the specific goals of 135 students. However, with my lack of success, the goals still feel rather pie-in-the-sky.
By lack of success, I mean I have failed to motivate many students to care about Standard English proficiency, so they remain unable to communicate in a way that will open the door to a white-collar job. I know that a sentence like, “At my last job, they was happy with the work I did,” will not only cause the automatic rejection of a candidate for a decent paying white-collar job, but it will also incite condescending jokes once the candidate walks out of the room. My students listen to me when I explain this reality, but many times they still don’t care. (I could engage in a political discussion on language, on whether or not the students ought to care, but that would be another article). Many of my students don’t see themselves as business leaders, doctors, lawyers or teachers. They don’t see themselves as citizens empowered to set and achieve goals. Rather than living offensively and looking to their future, they live defensively, reacting to immediate conflict and seizing immediate opportunities. So, as a teacher of poor, urban kids, I have to make the material immediately valuable for the students to buy into it, otherwise instruction will fail.
It is infinitely easier to motivate students who come from middle class and upper class homes. School culture is middle class culture, and so those students do not have to learn a different language and different code of behavior to be successful. However, I do struggle to give attention to these students amid so many others with what seems to be greater immediate needs. For students who already have the skills that allow them to function in the middle class, I try to push them to develop their talents. But, I know I’ve passed over the talent of many skilled students. I hope someone else had the time to foster it.
#2 Motivating students
As I stated earlier, I plan instruction for the barely literate and the Noam Chomsky reader (literally), and do so in an effort to not only teach them something important but also to keep them coming. Students in my school can choose not to show up with no immediate consequence. When they get off the subway, they can go to any number of public places in New York City, usually unnoticed by truancy officers. If they do not show up, someone from school tries to call their home, but truancy is a huge problem and we don’t always have time to report the hundreds of kids who just keep walking when they pass the school. Even when we do reach a parent, the parents often feel powerless. Many of our parents don’t speak English and they rely on their English fluent children to manage logistical affairs. So, the child often yields more power over the adult than the adult yields over the child.
The school has little power to force the student in school either. We have an attendance teacher whose job is only to keep our kids in school, but she can do little more than act as a motivational speaker or a police threat. The group of kids who hang out all day on the school’s block smoking cigarettes routinely tell her to “fuck off” when she orders them to class. When truancy officers do catch them, they can’t detain them long. They get out of jail and return to the sidewalk to smoke cigarettes all day. Ultimately, teachers must “sell” school as more worth teenagers’ time than anything they could be doing that day on the streets of New York. We need to advertise harder than ads for consumer products and entertainment, which promote hedonism and selfishness. We need to be more persuasive than T.V. shows, movies and songs with the ubiquitous ghetto thug as hero. This is hard.
This year I decided to try something new with my chronic cutters, students who are absent more than present. I spent the first week of the second semester doing activities designed to make kids want to go to school. At the end of the week, I wrote a hand-written, personalized letter to each chronic cutter who had showed up everyday that week. There were only five; the others came maybe twice. I then assigned the student to a partner, another one of the five chronic cutters. They had to call each other every morning to wake each other up. Over the course of the semester, I called the students on my cell phone when they weren’t in class. I paid more attention to their work than any of the other students, often writing page long notes on their papers meant to encourage and instruct.
This worked. There are other strategies that work, but they all take time more time than I can possibly allot for every chronic cutter. If I had 25 instead of 35 students, I could reach more. The ones we miss stay in the street.
#1. Papers. The hardest, least glamorous task.
I could spend much more time planning and giving students personal attention if I did not have thirty-five students per class who need to learn to write a clear essay. Students need to write and to receive feedback to make progress in their writing. They need to revise and revise again based on a teacher’s feedback. I spend most of my time as an English teacher grading papers. Every other English teacher I know does the same.
My students have the most difficulty writing analytical thesis papers. So, I spend most instruction time on outlining and developing an argument in clear Standard English. I teach, students produce and my pen bleeds criticism on their papers. They produce again, and they improve. My pen bleeds on their improvements, and they improve again. My response to papers provides at least 50% of the instruction I give. I spend about five minutes on each short essay, eight to ten on a long essay. I teach 175 students. Grading takes up many evenings.
Proponents of the popular writing workshop approach to English class suggest I don’t need to spend so much time writing all over my students’ paper. Many would even reprimand my free-wielding red pen for its detrimental effect on student fluency and creativity. Workshoppers focus on creating an environment where students learn to love writing and write to express personal ideas and feelings. Workshop teachers give five minute mini-lessons on writing instruction at the beginning of class, lessons that students can choose to follow if this wish. Feedback in these workshops comes first from other students, and the teacher feedback is suggestive rather than prescriptive. In these environments I have read about but never really seen, students produce creative texts that reflect a personal style. However, as shocking as this may sound, I do not see my job as an English teacher to be primarily a facilitator of the development of my students’ personal creative writing voice, even though I’m sure my students and I would have much more fun in an environment where that was my primary role.
I do want my students to develop a personal voice, but they do already have one. Like anyone, they could deepen and refine it, but to suggest that my inner city students lack a voice or lack fluency in their writing is wrong. Almost all of my students write poetry, rap music, notes to each other and journals. They don’t need me to teach them that writing is fun or they have something to say. They know that.
They do not know how to organize ideas in a paragraph or write complete sentences in clear Standard English syntax about abstract questions. Their Standard English vocabulary is limited, as are their skills in punctuating and spelling. Their speaking skills reflect their writing skills. If they don’t learn clear Standard English expression, they won’t find a white-collar job of any kind, ever. Politicians will not listen to them when they complain. Store managers will not listen when they insist a clerk has overcharged them. Waitresses in restaurants where middle class and rich people eat will be rude to them. Real estate agents will condescend to them. Car salesmen will overcharge them. Banks will hesitate to give them business loans. Doctors will offer less thorough explanations. Judges will be less sympathetic. The list can continue, because people assume that if you communicate in non-Standard English, you’re stupid.
So, while I would like to run a creative writing workshop, I just don’t have much time for that. Sometimes I feel like my eyes are bleeding from grading all these papers, and it never, ever feels like enough, because this sentence is from a real paper from my class, “I think that most of the people don’t know wich to be good or evil it because of what caint of people they hang out with they just scaird that if they dond do nothin bad when they are with the bad group something will happen.” But, as a result of prescriptive feedback, most of my students can write a competent analytical thesis paper by the time they leave. I know that sounds less exciting than writing portfolios with poems and narratives, but it’s necessary and it’s very hard.
The saints
With the planning, motivating, grading and of course teaching, filling out paperwork and going to meetings, I would say I work between sixty and seventy hours a week now. In the first few years I worked much more, between 80 and 90, I’m sure. But that amount of work was damaging to my relationships and my health. The workload may have been less damaging if I felt I was successful but I did not and I do not. I would feel satisfied if every single one of my students could write a competent analytical thesis paper, but only the students who show up learn this. I would feel successful if all of my students could write the paper and learned to enjoy reading a variety of complex literature. I can imagine the elation I would feel if all of my students could write the paper, enjoy the literature and progress in the development of their personal creative writing voice. I might die of joy if all of my students could write the paper, enjoy the literature, progress in the development of their personal creative writing voice and discuss a variety of complex texts in a logical way. But the truth is that as long as a percentage of my students do not learn what I want to teach them, I will feel like a failure often.
I will feel like a failure in spite of the fact that I have only received glowing observations in all my years teaching, I have won awards and I have heard plenty of praise from parents and students. I will feel like a failure, because I know if I slept less and only worked, I could teach them all what I know they need. The movies are true. Stand and deliver is true. I only witnessed a made-for-the-movies teacher once, Elena Mejia, and she truly did nothing but work. Every day she made at least one home visit. Elena Mejia began teaching after all of her children were grown and she divorced. She gave all of her energy to the students. She and the other made for movie teachers are saints. I admire them, but I am not them.
So, when people call me noble, I feel guilty. When I hear, “You’re so noble” I think of my friend, Elena Mejia, and the other movie teachers, and I feel guilty that this person thinks I’m like them, and then I feel guilty that I’m in this social situation talking to this non-teacher rather than working like the other made-for-movies teachers. I think about my students constantly; I view the world through the lens of a teacher. That means I pick up the trash on the sidewalk for use as props while we act out Shakespeare (don’t tell them), or I convince the person I just met at the party to come and speak to my class about journalism. But when I hear “you’re so noble,” my teacher thoughts oppress me. The effort to bring the journalist feels trivial compared to the truly noble efforts of teachers I am not.
Aside from creating guilt, the assumption that nobility is what inspired all inner city teachers to do their jobs demeans the profession and the students. You don’t call doctors or lawyers or other well-paid people who provide a service noble unless they are working for some organization that does not pay them, because we assume doctors and lawyers are fairly compensated. It seems then, that teaching is not a job, but a sort of calling. A teacher must teach despite the low pay for the job. I think this sense in the public that good teachers receive some sort of calling and follow it like saints allows the public to sleep sounder in their shiny big homes after voting “no” on a property tax increase. The noble teacher doesn’t want money! She just wants to serve our children. I even heard one person say at a party, “I wouldn’t want my children taught by someone who became a teacher for the money.” Well, why not? Do we say that about doctors? I would go to a doctor or lawyer who went into it for the money. The better she performs, the more clients want her services. I am, by the way, a pro-union teacher who would like to be paid for performance.
Also, the phrase “you’re so noble” demeans my students, because it implies they are horrible people to deal with. Now, I know some schools do have terrible behavior problems, and I have experienced one school like it, and I left because I did find the students horrible and I am not noble. But I will say that the good teachers who stayed at that school liked the students and did not struggle to maintain a calm tone in the classroom. They liked the kids, and the kids liked them. My school does not have serious violence issues, but they are urban kids and sometimes my classroom does resemble Welcome Back Kotter. Still, the best part of my job is spending time with them. We do teach each other all kinds of life skills. I did start to feel “noble” with one extremely difficult student this year, and so I had him transferred out of my class. I’ve never done that before, but this sense that I was giving to this student without receiving did give me a “poor me” feeling, and I didn’t think my attitude was good for the student. I felt myself acting in a condescending way toward him, being overly polite and distant. So, for both of our sakes I moved him to a teacher who said he like him. This may not have been noble, but I think it was wise.
Despite the challenges of teaching, the teachers who come back after the summer, come back because working with kids is fun. We often quit, because we realize we could have a good time someplace else with more respect and better pay.
If the public would change its perception of teachers, local politicians may not need to spend millions of dollars on dog and pony shows designed to lure new teachers into the profession. Seventy-five percent of teachers quit within their first five years of teaching. The reasons for this are varied, but one and surely not the least important is perception of the profession. Teaching is a difficult but ultimately enjoyable profession that merits better pay and stronger support. It is not a mission for saints or elves. The world does not have enough saints to fill the classrooms. The job is too hard for the elves.
Ms. Mettle
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