Teacher X
"Teacher X" is a composite voice of a number of teachers in the Memphis City School system.
Identifications are witheld.
Teacher X Full Article
A Dispatch from the Front
From a Memphis Inner City School, January, 2010
As told to Benqq
When I first started teaching at a Memphis inner city school,
what surprised me was most teachers just wanted to get through the day.
I mean, just get through the day with no classroom disturbances like a fight, drug bust
or, more likely, sudden outbreak of cacophonous rapping. And nothing at that moment is
more
symbolic of the challenges facing probably every inner city school.
It's a battle between...what? Generations? Values? Standards? Cultures? I'm not
a sociologist. All I know is what I see happening in the classroom and anybody
with a lick of professional responsibility would call it a full blown educational
crisis that has to be fixed--now.
And the second crisis is: nobody's fixing it.
If this were the movies, perhaps a creative, brilliant and intrepid educator would take
these instances of room havoc and turn it into "teachable moments." She would overcome a
lackadaisical administration, personally threatening malcontents, home poverty, teen
pregnancy, (there's actually an infant daycare at our school) drug addiction of parents,
if not of actual students, and single parent families. (I've heard the stats for sudents
with single in some schools reach up to 80%). In that movie she would ultimately
victoriously prevail against all odds and send a class of students to their choice of
good colleges on full scholarships.
In this school at least, that's a liberal, middle class fantasy. We are good teachers
placed in impossible odds. And the odds wear on you. The teachers with whom I speak are
mostly just try to get through the day given our environment and level of administrative
support. To us, just having control of the classroom is often a fantasy.
My Little Fantasy...
My own fantasy? A platoon of U.S. Marines with a drill instructor as a teacher. Now
that sounds like a movie.
But to return from my little daydream I've escaped into more than once during the day...
The biggest problem the teachers face here is
classroom control, that is, control to teach. The administration offers
precious little support in
those frequent disruptive instances where the class is thrown into instant tumult--
from a street bully breaking out into loud street talking, a girl lifting her shirt to
flash the class, somebody sending a book across the room, sometimes at a teacher, a guy
jumping up and pounding on another student. Send them to the principal's office--remember that punishment for us?--
and they're back in twenty minutes to a couple of days if their offense is really bad.
Unintentionally, by admin's own policies, they are kept in school to stop us effectively from reaching
the kids who have possibilities--and so many do. For those who want to learn, schools should
be that guaranteed safe haven as it is in the middle class neighborhoods across the city. (Not
to say they don't have their problems, but they're not these problems.)
"It's all such a joke!" I've heard more than once from a demoralized teacher.
The Struggle, The Crisis
Playing out in front of me as I stand in front of a classroom is the battle between reading vs rap, learning vs ignorance, language vs. slang. And the former is losing, probably already has, to the latter. To say there was ever a struggle--at least in the rap era--
(getting the feeling I'm fingering the music genre?) between the two ways probably is delusional.
Who to blame? Media? Yep, for sure. Instead of duel parenting and role models, both of which mostly
are nonexistent to these kids, and books, which mostly are invisible, these kids are influenced most by rap music and, at that, the kind that makes crime, drugs, gangs, and bling the social norm. Yeah, I've heard it all before. "When I was a kid, I couldn't get enough of Elvis and James Dean and..." Etc. But they didn't extol gang
violence and mayhem and separation from a larger society. Yeah, we had fights, but it was usually between two boys settling a
score of hormonally driven pride, not between two gangs.
And the joke goes on: All the required ballyhooed college credentials that were supposed
to make us "professional" mean nothing here, nada. And without support, especially in
the area of discipline, you'll get more and more teachers quitting, retiring early,
changing careers or just walking away.
Everyone Passes
No wonder MCS is always trying to get new teachers. They require "credentials"
that are pointless and irrelevant in the real world where I work nine hours a day.
And no PR driven "college bound" campaign designed to give the district a better
face is going to make a difference here.
At least in my situation, I don't have to spend time grading homework. Why? There is no
homework. Where you see white kids in safe, middle class neighborhoods carrying books home,
here they carry no books home because there is no homework, hence no backpacks.
For the teachers, there is another benefit: nobody could hide a Saturday night special
in a packpack even if they could get it past the metal detectors and the Memphis cops
stationed on every floor.
So no homework? No passing grades, right? Nope. Everybody passes. Perhaps that's what makes this
upside down system not only irrational from top to bottom, but virtually criminal. We are
sending kids out into the world that in many cases can't even read or speak correctly.
And they are expected to get a job that is a life? In the NBA? As a music rapper?
On the radio as a talk show host? (Well, the latter maybe.)
Where's the Outcry?
Where are the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons over this issue? Where are their demands
that the system actually start serving these kids from impoverished neighborhoods?
Now, that would be some demands as a female teacher I could get behind!
Sometimes, watching the chaos from the front of the room, your mind spins--especially
if you
went to public middle and high schools where you were expected to get to class on time,
sit down and have your homework done. At minimum, try to keep your mouth shut your mouth
till the next bell clanged with an auditory pavlovian signal
to get to the next class.
But what do the kids hear here? Try Michael Jackson "Man in the Mirror" pounding over the intercom like
a revolutionary anthem. The kids spill out into the hall over this mind-numbing din amid shoulder to shoulder chaos of punching, dancing, singing, running and sometimes fighting. A woman teacher was recently knocked to the floor trying to break up a fight between two boys.
Once this five minute paroxysm is over, most kids have made it to the next class while still some always drag in.
And teachers start the exercise all over again up to six times a day for some.
-XXX-
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Cont'd from front page
>>related>>Stamp this story ongoing...
On the same day as our dispatch above Jane Roberts reported in the Jan. 21
Commercial Appeal eight "failing Memphis schools," made it to the short list to
get put on the first two rounds. Apparently, reading from the article, if they
make to the final list in either, they will "win" 108 of the $502 million the
Tennessee State Board of Education is seeking from Obama has slotted to fund
educational "innovations."
The story doesn't go into the
reasons why the schools "won" getting on the the lists in the first place. Since its
apparently standard operating procedure to fire the principal when a school is
taken over by the state and turned into a charter school, we assume such a coup is
not a coveted triumph by any school's administration.
But are the failing schools taking it unfairly on the chin, by, for example talk show
hosts such as Ben Ferguson at WREC am, when the problem is much more
complex? Certain if you went to the Memphis City School
Web site and looked at
individual administrators, you'd think they were dedicated and professional
(despite what Teacher X reports above.)
So we want to start a conversation with parents, teachers, administrators
and students in pursuit of the following questions:
Why is your school on the list? What's going on at your school? What happens when a
charter school takes over? Where is the teacher's union in the changeover? These are the
kinds of questions we'll be asking
to start a conversation. We're here to listen and report.
We won't use
your name unless you permit and no names of students will be used without written parent
consent.
Contact us here
or call the editor direct at this number: 901.493-6932. Look forward to hearing from you.
--Ed.
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