After five weeks of turmoil, terror, and terrible conditions
both social and cultural at Hawthorne High School, I resolved to bring in the
dean for help. She insisted on telling me that I needed to create routines for the
students to follow. But the students had decided long ago that they were never
going to respect, investing themselves in slowing down any real attempts at
instruction. The whole venture was a failure from the first day, as students
went from asking me “Are you are new teacher” to “Did you get fired yet?” The
sheer folly of thinking that I would get hired in such a n insipid campus was
worsened by the appalling and unappealing lack of leadership, including the
dean, who offered to come to my assistance, even though she had confided to me
that she ended up running out of the classroom herself because of such a
hateful slew of disrespectful reprobate students who had no incentive or
insight to cooperate or demonstrate any respect.
The dean had permitted students to yell at her in front of
other students! She also tacitly admitted that her own son was acting up in
school and getting suspended. This woman had no business being a dean, and she
did not want the job. She wanted to be a counselor, yet she could not get a job
as counselor. She had also been a history teacher --- and apparently a poor
one, at that. What a shame, that I was at so low an ebb that I was resorting to
this woman’s assistance to tame an unruly class, so outrage and overwhelming in their inherent
failure.
At the outset, she resolved to pass out a flyer with the
following questions:
1.Why do you have to take history?
2. What does it take to be a good student in class??
2. Name one thing that you can change?
3. Name one thing that the teacher can change?
Weakened with the shock and difficulty of my own
circumstances and inner conflicts, I went along with this classic pillorying
which has now defined classrooms today – the teacher is at fault.
After the empty and useless denunciations, one young lady
spoke up, and she spoke up for me:
“This is the worst class. I feel that I am not learning
anything – and it’s not the teacher’s fault! It’s the fault of students in this
class who will not let him teach. This whole discussion is a waste of time.”
She spoke the truth, she spoke from the heart. But there was
one slight error. If there was any fault with me, it was that I made the
students’ rampant and unmitigated disrespect my fault, attempting to tame the
nonsense because I did not want to
appear weak or lose the job altogether to another substitute. Aside from that,
in every way Shannen was spot on. I now know and believe this in retrospect,
standing on the rock of stoked and stocked outrage. I never deserved to be
treated with such disdain and unending wretched folly – but at the time, I had
no idea who I was, what I had, and what I wanted to do.
The fiasco of public education in urban areas is studded
with such dud experiences for many teachers, facing the onslaught of poor
leaderships and character assassination that slaughters otherwise adequate and
capable educators.
Shannen, I write this
post in the vain hope that some day you will know that your words did not fall
on empty ears. It took me a while to catch up with the truth of who I am, and what
I had to offer, and what the school could never have provided. I believe that your diligence will take you
many places. If the world needs one things, it is the boldness to speak up for
those who are trying, who fear that they have no voice of their own. Thank you,
Shannen!
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