"I ain't even white." |
I'M COMING FOR YOU, BAY AREA!
After five months of adjusting on the west coast, I have officially accepted an offer to be an Art Enrichment Coordinator with Rocketship Education Mateo Sheedy in San Jose, CA. My first day of school is Monday, February 6th. I will be working to instill an appreciation for the visual and performance arts in grades K-5 by preparing lessons to help them enjoy the creative process. I know very little about my position and my students so far, although my interview consisted of teaching nine second graders how to create a collage caterpillar in the style of Eric Carl from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. That was awesome. Here's what I do know:
The goal of Rocketship is to close the achievement gap by providing public access to an elementary education that strongly focuses of literacy three hours of every day. Rocketship Mateo Sheedy's mission reads as follows:
Rocketship Mateo Sheedy is one of twelve locations in the Bay Area, and there are other schools across the country in Milwaukee, D.C., and Nashville. The growing success of their model of learning has been recognized by the Obama administration and the Gates Foundation. To learn more about Rocketship, feel free to visit their website: Rocketship Education. I may not know exactly what this position holds, but I know that I will be a part of students' lives again. And that is something to be proud of. Here's to new teaching adventures!
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I tried so hard as a teacher to be the personification of racial reconciliation. I have been in the two most extremely homogeneous environments I can imagine: Boyertown, Pennsylvania and Southwest Philadelphia. From a population of 96.8% white (.5% Black) to a community with one of the highest African immigrant populations in the country in a school with a demographic of 100% students of color, my life was all topsy-turvy. Neither is actually diverse. Overwhelmingly at home, people are white. Overwhelmingly at school, people are black.
Sidebar: I like to consider myself as an Apple product. I'm constantly changing and creating new versions of myself. I think I'm on Miranda 10.2. Trying to seek out truth in all circumstances is so difficult when I feel confronted from all angles with biased agendas full of propaganda. That brings me to Miranda 10.1: teacher me. As I learned and stretched and uncomfortably grew into a deeper knowledge of the world, I realized how much work still needed to be done in the realm of racial reconciliation. (At this point, if you believe that racial tension isn't real and is a product of biased, liberal media, then the rest of my words will not be of importance to you. But I implore you to reconsider from the bottom of my teeny heart.) There was a present distrust of white people in my students and admittedly in some of my coworkers. I was considered by one of my coworkers as their "first real white friend," and I accepted that title with all the humility I could muster. Every day I spent with my students had to be spent pursuing an environment of peace and safety and love because of this weird, unknown, and unprecedented relationship between them and the white lady. I have whole-heartedly confessed to having inaccurate, preconceived notions about Philadelphia and minorities. My lack of experience and exposure to the world limited my view of it, and I learned so much just by living life with my students each day. I loved every second. **(At this point, please keep in mind the verse in 1 Corinthians 13 about how "when I was child, I thought like a child." It'll come up later). It was also hard. Like really, really hard. It was little me versus a failed education system, 130 students with individual stories and problems and heart-wrenching lives, poverty, and 200 years of white privilege. I never, not once thought I was a savior. I actually spent so much of my time assuring myself that I was nobody's savior (a thing I know to be true). But all of those things that existed in society compounded to build this unbelievably heavy, thick, problematic wall between me and an experience I will never know: being black. And I'm not in the business of building more walls, so I spent two years trying to deconstruct this one. I learned a few things. In reality I learned one million things at a rate of 792 per second. But I tried to boil them down into simple, manageable pieces. I learned that being white is a privilege. I learned that having white guilt doesn't help. I learned that education is way more important than race. I learned that your worldview is shaped by your upbringing and that your upbringing can be wrong. I learned that being black can be painful, and I will never understand that pain. I learned that love truly does conquer all. I learned that reconciliation can only happen if people talk to each other. Welcome to Miranda 10.2: post-first teacher Miranda. Here are the definitions I found of reconciliation: 1. The restoration of friendly relations 2. The action of making one view or belief compatible with another There are always 2 forms of reconciliation going on in my mind and heart and life at all times: one is an attempt at racial reconciliation, the other is reconciliation of my worldview and reality. The first is relatively self-explanatory. I desire a friendly, dare I say loving, relationship between all races. The second is something I learned my last semester of college, which is the idea of pursuing truth. This sounds so dumb, but it really blew my mind when I thought about it (shout out to Dr. Schaefer at Grove City College). Everyone thinks they're right until they think they're wrong. When I think about that deeply, every thought that I have is me thinking that I'm right until something comes along that says, "HEY, YOU'RE AN IDIOT, PRINCESS." And then my brain short-circuits, and I'm uncomfortable because all this time, I've been wrong. But there's something that actually scientifically occurs in your brain when you are confronted with an idea counter what you've always thought. Your neurons take a particular pathway when you think about something over and over again. Like a habit. The more your neurons fire in that particular direction, the more ready your neurons are to take that same pathway to the same conclusion every time the same thing comes up. So when you're confronted with a counter-argument that defies your previous neurons' experiences, your brain is literally short-circuiting. (Not really). But it's uncomfortable as heck, and your neurons are trying to figure out how to attach those thoughts onto something that makes sense to you (look up schema in educational psychology). So basically I spent a lot of my time teaching being just utterly and completely uncomfortable with an electronic disaster happening in my mushy thought center. It was the definition of Do Hard Things by Alex Harris combined with Dangerous Minds with a hint of Freedom Writers. I left that place with my head held high and my heart humbled. My students graduated with the truth that not all white people hate them, and there are some white people that believe in them with such passion that they will make it rain with tears as they get their high school diplomas. Maybe one of them will even sing R. Kelly with them on stage at graduation. Here I am, two years and some change later, wondering what my former students are thinking as they watch a rich, white man spew hatred at their communities as he attempts to be elected to the highest possible position of power in their country. And I can't help but feel that the bricks I have been heaving from this wall are being haphazardly reassembled to form a fortress of ignorance, fear, and refusal to communicate. I have been dreading writing this post. I have feared backlash for so long. I currently am living in California, approximately 3,000 miles from my hometown in white, middle class Pennsylvania. I shouldn't really be anxious about anything (the Bible says so, but also distance and stuff). The only conversation I really experience from the "church community" I grew up with is via social media. The most disappointing realization I have had regarding the "church" as an institution during this election (in my personal experience) has been the creation of an atmosphere of judgement and closed-mindedness that results in a fear of idea-sharing for the sake of pushing a right-winged political agenda. I am in complete support of expressing one's opinions, beliefs, and thoughts (yay 1st amendment), but only if it means everyone can without fear. Everyone. I have had 4 women approach me privately that they agree with my opinions, but they feel they cannot speak for fear of the hateful repercussions. Oh, that makes my heart so sad. That is not loving. That is not fostering democracy or freedom. I am a young, little lady, and I do not claim to know everything, but I have some unique experience here that maybe you don't. Maybe. Maybe you've never grown up your whole childhood around white people, then live your whole adulthood around black people. It's awesome. You should try it sometime. So on behalf of all of the women scared into silence, I write how righteously angry I am that I feel Donald J. Trump is undoing all of my tireless work, sleepless nights, and relentless tears I poured out over my students. Over the death of my mistaken worldview. Over the pain of my nation's history about which I knew little. In all reality, it is not Mr. Trump himself. It is the countless people I have experienced that are willing to "push a platform" at the risk of alienating even further the minorities of this country because it is in the best interest of their privilege. And I know, I know, I know how excruciating this is. The neurons are firing every which direction trying to make sense of all of the politically, socially, racially charged statements flying about. But to me, this is what reconciliation looks like. I have been and continue on this journey of "making one view or belief compatible with another." And I have come to the conclusion that if two beliefs are not compatible, one of them must be wrong. As I pursue truth, "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right," I must then "put the ways of childhood behind me." The most famous passage of Scripture in 1 Corinthians 13 (or One Corinthians in the New American Trump Version), describes love in such beautiful detail. It is often used at weddings and in churches to represent what perfect love is. Immediately following that, in this strange shift, Paul talks about how we don't know anything (technically he says we know in part/like a reflection in a mirror). He fully admits to his limited knowledge of the earth and of eternity and says he wouldn't dare claim to know such things like he used to. Because when he was child, he talked like a child, thought like a child, spoke like a child. But he has put his childish ways behind him. And he ends with the infamous quote that out of all the faith and all the hope, "the greatest of these is love." You could be right about everything in the universe, but if you're a jerk about it, you got nothing. If we speak of this election like we know better, but have not love, we are clanging symbols. We are nothing. The only reason I bring up Paul is to challenge those who believe in both the Bible and the Republican candidate. I'm not asking anyone to change their minds, I'm asking for someone to listen. To listen without being condescending. Without assuming you know what is right. Without claiming a candidate is being used by God. Without thinking that because I won't vote for Donald, it must mean I'm a Democrat, and therefore you know how I think about every issue ever. Without responding with a tone of trying to "save me" from the left. I don't need to saved, I need to be heard. Therefore, my statement is this: What Donald J. Trump has explicitly and implicitly condoned is not compatible with my worldview. This is my painful reconciliation. This is my truth. This is my love. Southwest Philadelphia. My metaphorical home for the last 2 years.
Here are the facts, about which no one can argue with me because they are true:
Reference. In a study done by Georgetown University, 35% of jobs require at least a Bachelor's degree and 30% of jobs require some college or an associate's degree. That means 65% of jobs are off limits to anyone who has not set foot in a college class. If you combine Southwest Philadelphia with the surrounding neighborhoods (West, Germantown and Point Breeze), the population is approximately 610,000 people. This population is 82% black. It is the 4th largest concentration of native-born/ethnic African-American people in a community in the country, who can trace their ancestors to slaves in the South in early America. The only communities with larger ethnically black populations are Brooklyn, Detroit, and South Side Chicago. Crime in Southwest is also particularly high. I would like to focus particularly on gun-related crime. In the last 3 months, there have been 24 aggravated assaults with a firearm, 2 criminal homicides, and 19 robberies with a firearm. All in Southwest Philadelphia. Of the gun-related murders in Philadelphia in 2014, 81% of the victims are black, 88% are male, and 62% are between ages 18-34. Of the shooters, 95% are men, 73% are black, and 48% (half) are ages 18-24. Reference. Now, in a recent speech made by President Barack Obama, he said: "We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer, or even a book." Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. He has been criticized and shamed for this statement. However. Please look at the very first statistics I cited. Think of actually how difficult it is for my students to get their hands on a book. Where did you get your books? School. My students aren't going to school. They're trying to make money. Sometimes criminally. They're getting kicked out. They're homeless and couch-hopping. Where should they get books? How did you learn how to get a job? You didn't really. You learned how to read. And write. And follow the rules. And set goals. And took silly career aptitude tests. And someone from school told you to apply for college. And you may very well be in tens of thousands of dollars of debt like me... but you are living a literate life. The power that a lack of education has on one's life is grossly underestimated by white, affluent America. Please look at the Southwest Philadelphia community, that I have experienced through my students first-hand, as a prime example of the twisted problem of poverty+education+race. All 3 of those things go together in the most unfortunate way. In Southwest Philadelphia, there are 0 bookstores. Literally 0. There is 1 free library. (Someone please tell me the last time you went to a library.) There are countless guns accessible to my students via men in their lives. And there are many people reading this now that say, "Well, these people are criminals, and they shouldn't sell those guns on the street." Except you're already forgetting the amount of poverty in Southwest Philadelphia. It is scientifically proven that poverty makes desperate people do desperate things, including participating in an arms race with whatever block my students are beefing with in order to ensure they can shoot first. And why are all of my black students in poverty? Are there some white people? Yes, some. But I said, this is the 4th largest population of ethnic, native-born African Americans tracing back to slavery in the United States. So someone please, please tell me that the effects of slavery are not at all related to the poverty and lack of education seen in this community. Then many people say, "Well they should work harder, get a job. I worked hard, and I'm okay." Good for you. If you have never lived in poverty, please stop. If you know how to read, and you do if you have gotten this far, also stop. Because please explain to me how 59% of the population with no high school diploma is supposed to "work hard" and "get a job" when 65% of the jobs are actually off-limits to those people. And can we ignore the fact that the 41% who do have a high school diploma from the city of Philadelphia do not actually know how to read? So many of my students graduate from us below a 6th grade reading level. Think about job applications and tax forms and mortgage papers. Would you hand that to your 6th grader and assume they didn't have questions? It pains me to say that all of this began with race... when white, "Christian" America decided it was acceptable to withhold basic human rights to an entire people of dark skin. They could not learn how to read. They were not human. As a follower of Christ, I am ashamed at what was done in the name of Jesus to my African-American brothers and sisters. Appalled. Disgusted. Literally nauseous. From there, they were "freed" to be shoved into ghettos, and until 1964 were still not entirely legally human. 1964 was only 52 years ago. To think that systemic racism over hundreds of years can be entirely eradicated in 52 is logically inconsistent. You do not have to be a member of the KKK to have systemic racism ingrained in your mind. I have been working for the last 5 years to remove bigoted patterns of thinking from my own brain, and I still catch myself judging in a way that does not reflect that "all men are created equal." I do not want to fight with my fellow white people. (I can say that there are white people and black people. There is a difference, and that is okay). I want to talk. I want to listen. I want to brainstorm solutions for equality and peace, which are terms so vague, I'm not sure what they mean anymore. I want to be a bridge. I'm a small one. I may be rickety, but I want to be one. To cross waters of racism and misunderstanding, of apathy and indifference, of violence and conflict. I am a bridge. It is the one time I will let you walk all over me. But, no. I will not let you debate what I know to be true. There are not 2 sides to facts. chance
noun // the possibility of something happening I was sitting at my desk during my lunch when one of my 17 year-old male students came into my classroom to visit. He doesn't have me for class this semester, but I see almost all of the students in the building on any given day. It's cute when they come in and say, "Dang, Ms. Tellis, I should've failed your class last semester so I could have you again!" I laugh and tell them they should've told me ahead of time... I would've given them zeros. This young man started the year as an absolute disaster. His clear ADHD and his endearing stutter really had him in a place of self-consciousness and self-doubt as far as accomplishment was concerned. Since I called his mother at home a few months ago, he rarely misses school and has sincerely been attempted to earn high grades in each of his classes. I am so very proud of his efforts. He walked in and gave me a hug. He always asks how I'm doing, too. He's not a selfish student. I appreciate that about him. We got into deep conversation relatively quickly. I was asking more about his life pre-Communities in Schools of Philadelphia. How he ended up here. He is just so honest. "I had i-i-issues with authority. Nobody could tell me nothin'. It didn't matter who was tryna talk to me. I wasn't listenin'." I asked him how he felt now that he was here. He said, "Th-th-this is my second chance, for real. This place really is a second chance for me." Without prompting or trying to pull out some sort of sentimental response, that's what this young man said to me. This student has issues with drugs, is a teen father, and up until this year, has not been able to attend a school that he feels is beneficial to his education. It made my heart fill with joy as I heard him explain what this school means to him. And I tried to reflect on what the word "chance" really means. The majority of our students attend public school first... and it just doesn't work. That was chance number one. For many of them, they hop from school to school... so it could be chances one-seven. We're almost always the "last" chance. Meaning the last possibility of something happening. I'd like to clarify... the last possibility of something positive happening. High school diplomas are like keys. I like to picture my students lined up in a hallway just full of a bunch of doors (Monsters, Inc.-esque mental image). All of my students are shoved in this hallway, and all the doors are locked. They are just wandering, shoving past each other, turning doorknob after doorknob, but nothing will open. Some of them decide to sit down. Some of them ask for the cheapest key to the cheapest door. But some of them... some of them realize they have all these chances in front of them. All of these possibilities for something to happen because if they can just get the right key... they can get out of here. I will have students that will quit. They'll sit down and never get a key. I have some that will graduate and "stay out the way". They'll be handed a key that will hand on their wall like a decoration. They'll never try it on an actual door. Let me remind everyone that I do not understand how difficult it is to be a black young adult fending for herself in Philadelphia. However, my students are being given their chances: the possibility of something happening... my students specifically do not have to choose a life of "staying out of the way" for themselves. Some will because they do not have a future-oriented mindset. It's a hard mindset to infiltrate. I try every day to tell those students that if they wanted, they could be great things far away from here. Some will still stay on the same block until they're the "old heads" in the hood. But praise the Lord, I will be a part of a key-giving ceremony in June. A ceremony in which 60+ students will be handed keys to their doors to the future... And I pray every day those doors are full of bright and colorful chances... possibilities of something happening. All I can ask is that each student that comes to give me a hug at my desk will feel the gravity of the chance in front of them. With each hug I squeeze with my little, tiny body, I pray all of my love is transferred into their high school-minded heads so that they can feel the weight of the possibility of something good happening. Hugs & chances. Second... third... fourth... never-ending hugs & chances. Performances are getting "political" people say. Nope. Performances are getting real. And the white community is super afraid of truth. If not afraid, uncomfortable. I am sometimes uncomfortable when confronted with truth, it doesn't mean I choose ignorance. Kendrick Lamar took the Grammy stage for 6 whole minutes of pure, unadulterated honesty. I'm confused as to why people are surprised. His music has been out for quite some time, even won Rap Album of the Year. Why are people all of a sudden calling "controversy"? Because he put visual, real images to words you tried to ignore? Because you saw black men in jail cells as the opening number while he screamed, "I'm the biggest hypocrite of 2015?" If you claim racism has disintegrated while at the same time calling Kendrick's performance inappropriate, you are indeed included in the hypocrites of the year. Now, you can go and watch his performance and make your own judgments. I made my students watch all 6 minutes. Because this is monumental. I asked my students a few preliminary questions. 1. Are you glad you live in America? 2. Are you proud you live in America? 3. In what ways do you think the black community is misunderstood? 4. What is one thing you wish the white community understood about you or your community? Many of my students were glad to live in America. Glad is different than proud. We talked about the educational and economic gap between the black and white communities stemming back hundreds of years. We talked about how they ended up in a non-profit, alternative education high school. It was fascinating to watch the connections between their answers to the questions and Kendrick's performance. Before watching the video, one of my students said, "I think some people view us as less than them." And in Kendrick's untitled portion of his piece, he called out "modern day slavery." Now, before every white person reading this is utterly uncomfortable, let me first say that you should be. This in no way should make you feel content or comforted. That is what good art does. Second, please listen to what my students had to say. They deserve to be heard. After watching, I asked my students why some people might feel uncomfortable or might feel the performance is "controversial". One of my classes actually said, "Because they would rather fund prisons than schools for black kids." I felt like I didn't even have to say anything else. I looked around my classroom and said, you're so right. My ceiling tiles are collapsed in my classroom, and every time it rains, my floor floods... It's happening right now as I type this. I looked them right in the eyes and said, "This would never happen at my white high school." Many people may immediately argue that it is due to funding, not due to race, and I believe that is true. My students are not uneducated because they are black, they are less educated because they have not been awarded the same financial and educational opportunities. But someone please explain to me why. If you want to deny the effects of undeniable slavery and oppression over hundreds of years, that's fine. But come up with another explanation because I can't. Approximately 50 years of Civil Rights (sort of) isn't enough time to right this ship. My students talked about the expectations of black people and black families. How in white families there are two parents in a married relationship living with all of their children, and in black families it is expected that you live in a single-parent home with many children who may or may not be related to you. And that general expectation is true for many of them. But I just kept asking them "why". And they thought and reasoned and thought some more. And this is how it went: "Why do you think black families are like that?" "I don't know..." "Seriously, why?" "Because our parents aren't married." "Why?" "Because dads aren't really around." "Why?" "I don't know... sometimes prison... or they have a lot of kids..." "Why?" "Because no one thinks they can be anything..." "And what else?" "And people live up to what other people expect them to be..." "Bingo." It was incredible. I asked them how they ended up here... in this crazy, last chance high school. They all acted out at their previous high schools... were kicked out. So I asked some more: "Why?" "Because I don't like authority." "Why?" "Because they talk bad to me." "Why?" "Because they think less of me." "So what would you do?" "Yell at them. Curse. Sometimes fight." "Why?" "I don't know..." "How did you learn how to deal with anger when you were little?" "I didn't." I talked with them about how if I got angry in kindergarten and hit someone because they took my blocks, my teacher would pull me in the hallway and talk to me about better ways to deal with being angry. What they got in the Philadelphia public schools was someone screaming at them from across the room because there were 30 other little monsters running around in a fund-less classroom. That's if they attended the required 180 days of kindergarten... which most of them did not. Lightbulbs were going off everywhere... including for me. Kendrick Lamar fueled an unbelievable discussion of inequality and desire for progress. Parting words from my students were, "I don't want to leave this class. You're the only teacher that really sits us down and lets us talk about this stuff." And that is why in Spanish class on a rainy Tuesday I dropped everything I planned to talk about a Grammy Award-winning rap artist. As my class flooded with rainwater, it also flooded with uncensored conversation that broke all racial barriers. I love being a white teacher in a black community. My students become my teachers, and I become their advocate. Because although I cannot correct the last 18 years of their experience in America, I can begin to adjust their mindset toward the white community. I want to give them hope because they have literally turned my world-view on its head. I want them to know it all begins with conversation. How can we change anything if we are so fearful of mentioning "black" and "white"? If we can't even say the words, we're definitely never going to do anything about them. That's why a black man on one of the largest stages in the world was so important. Kendrick, you look like my students. You like the same music as my students. You are black like my students. And you are not afraid. You are not afraid to be black. You are not afraid of what is white. You are not afraid to talk about inequality. You are not afraid to believe in it. You have created a space for conversation. "Conversation for the entire nation; this is bigger than us." Thanks, Kendrick. Thank you. This post is dedicated to a coworker that does everything in his power to keep our students out of the hands of the system and in the hands of those who love them. Keep your crown up.
I wish my parents didn't read my blog. I think I'd swear a lot more, but it'd be a little more honest. This year, I have encountered the system I don't know how many times. To my current knowledge, 4 of my students began the year in school and are now incarcerated. I have a countless number currently on probation or with a history of placement... Black males between the ages of 16 and 24. I can't describe how I feel. If anyone knows anything about me, even if it's just for one second, they know I feel a lot. I am passionate. The first thing anyone ever says to me after I answer their, "So what is your occupation?" question is, "I can tell you are passionate about what you do." That's apt. Fitting. I am passionate to a fault. I feel everything in extremes. I get mad at my students. Don't think I find them "blameless" or "faultless" when it comes to a lot of the things they say and do. I hold them accountable. I'm not a parent, but I can imagine that I treat my students similarly to how a parent would treat a child... I want to beat your behind for making stupid decisions, but dang if I won't fight til the death for you to not go to prison. Without disclosing particular information about an ongoing investigation, let me just tell you vaguely how I spent half of my 3rd period talking with one student, and the second half sobbing in my desk chair. To know that my student could potentially go to prison for upwards of 25 years breaks me. And we want him to come to school sober? On time? Tell him not to self-medicate? You best believe I told him... "Stop taking those pills... It's better if you stay busy... I heard you say you're depressed..." My student is at risk of losing his life in every sense of the word. What on earth am I supposed to do? I hate the system. I understand why it's there. I get why it was made in the first place. There are instances in which it works, where justice is served. But is it really just when it does not have my student's best interest in mind? I feel silly complaining about a system for which I have no suggestions or solutions. I just see what doesn't work. I can see it actively breaking down, ruining lives. I think a really smart person said something about how "When you fail, you just figured out a way that doesn't work." Einstein?** Whatever. All I know is that I know it's not working, and I don't want any more of my students in jail before they get a chance to live. Today I felt heavy. I was so saddened by the gravity of incarceration because it only means loss. To me, it is the loss of a student. To families, it is the loss of a son, brother, uncle, nephew. To the student himself, it is the loss of his future. And it is happening everywhere and always, and other than loving and loving and loving some more, I don't know what my part is. The question that obviously accompanies the discussion about "the system" is, "Well, but aren't they guilty?" I mean. The answer is "sometimes." Sometimes they sold drugs. Or had a gun. Or hit somebody. Or made poor choices. But I have to think that choices are made for reasons... and I'm not sure I blame them considering the reasoning skills they have been taught. The reason is normally that they're angry. The end. End of reasoning. What more excuse do they need when they have zero other coping mechanisms? But sometimes, they didn't do it. The answer is, no they are not guilty. They just aren't snitching. They aren't going to rat. Because if they do, they really aren't free... whether they go to jail or not. They'll never be free. They'll always have to watch their back, keep it moving, lay low. What kind of life is that? Just waiting for retaliation? Not a life my students choose... they choose jail over living in fear any day. Eff the system. Just eff all of it. For taking my students from me and for putting my students where they are in the first place. For segregation. For inequality. For all of it. I want to keep them safe, keep fighting for them. But the system is so much stronger than me... and so much louder. No matter how much I'm screaming for them to stop. **I fact-checked this later and the quote is by Thomas Edison. "I have not failed. I have found 10,000 ways that won't work." He is much more profound and eloquent than my version. Feeling is stupid. It's a part of being a good teacher. A great teacher. You have to thrust your heart into the universe of unprecedented torture and triumph in hopes that it won't be returned in a crumpled, more fragmented version of itself.
There are days my heart swells and grows in increments of learning, but there have been more days as of late where pieces of it are chipped away by the words of my students' pleas for normalcy. I'm not sure if it is because it's my second year teaching or if because my students are actually that much more in over their heads, but this year has been more emotionally exhausting than the last. From students who are searching for a place to lay their heads at night to others who simply cannot figure out how to love themselves enough to get themselves to school, let alone break up with their abusive partners, each school day brings new challenges. How can I manage to instill Spanish vocabulary skills in the minds of our youth when all they can think about is how broken their lives are? I think the hardest thing is figuring out how to direct their emotions at something productive. They want to be angry. They are angry. Most of the time, they take their anger out on who's there... teachers, peers, whomever is on their nerves at the current moment. The people they are mad at are not available for lashing out upon, so here I am... ready and waiting to hear every "f*** this sh**" comment they can muster. And that's fine with me. I will take every blatantly disrespectful loud or under the breath remark until the second they graduate, but after they leave this comfort zone of coddling, then what? What are they supposed to do in society? Because they will forever have all these emotions built up inside their overwhelmed brains with no way to truly cope. What I want to do is give them an outlet. A way to be angry, frustrated, sad, excited, disappointed in a healthy and productive way. I think it comes out in creativity. That's what creativity is... expressing emotion in music or painting or writing or sometimes just speaking. Just letting them speak is often one of the most creative things I have experienced from them. They think on their feet. They're quick and witty and super funny. You should listen to one of them tell a story, just once. They are hilarious and animated and dynamic. I want each of my students to be able to feel without feeling weak. I wish they didn't feel so much because of so much. But you can bet if they have to feel, we're going to make some damn art with it. Today we had to have another one of those staff meetings... One of those meetings where we all sit around and are told the "need-to-know-basis" information. The information that the principal thinks her staff must understand in order to best service her students. She's completely right. I wish she wasn't. I wish I never had to have another one of these effing "just so you know" meetings ever again.
I am angry. I am tired. I am tired of listening to the facts pile up against my students. We talked about one of our homeless students today. How this student needs a place to sleep this weekend... particularly because it's going to be in the 30's overnight. No. I don't want to hear it again. I don't want to hear about how he was kicked out of his "aunt's" house, doesn't speak with his biological parents, and has no money for food, let alone shelter. Ok, sure. A homeless student comes with the territory of working in a hood in Southwest Philadelphia. That's what you could say. Well, yeah... one homeless student makes sense. The Department of Health and Human Services uses this as the definition of homeless: "A homeless person is an individual without permanent housing who may live on the streets; stay in a shelter, mission, single room occupancy facilities, abandoned building or vehicle; or in any other unstable or non-permanent situation." Want to know how many of our students fit that description to our knowledge? 67. Out of approximately 130. Half. 50%. Couch-hopping. Shelter-living. Streets-sleeping. Family-rotating. I'm done. I'm so mad. Why? Why are my 16-22 year old babies living like this? Why couldn't we have gotten to them sooner? Why couldn't I have been there to take them to first grade? Why couldn't I have taught them about condoms? Or drugs? Or love? Or self-confidence? Or the importance of a high school diploma? Or that they have a purpose? For each student, my anger is directed at a different source, depending on the background. Sometimes I'm mad at a parent or guardian. Sometimes I'm mad at their elementary school teachers. Sometimes I'm mad at the system. Sometimes I'm mad at the student themselves. Most of the time... I'm just mad. I don't have enough money. Enough jobs. Enough time. Hands. Heart. Energy. Brain. I never have enough. There is so much need. And you know what? I know people who could help. When I say "know people", I mean I come from a community of business owners and successful, upper-middle class families. I could count on one hand the people who would ever give my students a chance at a job. They're culture is unfamiliar. They may be rough around the edges. But they're smart. We're too removed. By we, I mean the white and wealthy. I was one of them. I am one of them. I'm still learning... I'm learning that the people who have money will always win because they have a better education. I can't educate my students if I can't buy text books. Or paper. Or buy them damn laundry detergent because they haven't gotten to wash their uniforms in a week and a half. Would you want to go to Spanish class if you hadn't eaten in 2 days? I wouldn't. (And don't get me started on the quality of free school lunches...) I'm not saying that my students haven't made poor decisions. My goodness, have they. But I am saying... maybe they wouldn't have if they had access to better education in kindergarten, 3rd grade, 6th grade... How do you make informed decisions? With information. Where do you get your information? For me, it was on a comfy carpet square. For my students, it's on a cold concrete one. And I don't know how fair that is. School to this point has been, for the lack of a better term, a joke.
We saw students approximately 9 days out of the entire month of September due to holidays, the papal visit, etc. I feel behind. I feel behind in every sense of the word: educationally, relationally, mentally. I am not in a groove and neither are the students. I have been doing the best I can to learn about my new students even though our schedules have not allowed us to see each other regularly. An interesting conversation was sparked recently in my classroom about families in my first period class. I don't quite remember how the conversation began, but it centered around siblings in families. I only had about 5 students in the room, so I asked each of them how many siblings they had. I only very specifically remember 3 of their answers: One student said: "I live with 8 siblings, but my mom has 13 kids." Thirteen. My student's mother gave birth to 13 children. Uncommon. Not unheard of. Student two said: "I know my dad has 21 kids. But I only live with the kids my mom has." Twenty-one. That's a number of children her father has in real life. Just a fact. Student three said: "I couldn't even tell you. I don't know." No number. There's no number in this conversation... just there are some in the world, and by some he meant a lot. My heart was already breaking thinking about not knowing their siblings. But there are some really encouraging facets of large families. A lot of my students find comfort and refuge in their siblings. They are a source of love and support, and I am so appreciative of the large family structure, especially on big nights like prom and graduation. These families show the heck up. Big families are the best cheerleaders. It's not all bad. But here's something they addressed immediately following the sibling conversation: I asked, "Do all of your families live in Southwest?" Students answered that most of them do. Most of their entirely families live right around the same block. Then a student exclaimed, "That's why I always gotta ask who people are related to!" When I asked for clarification, the female students in the room all elaborated on the fact that if they are interested in a boy from their neighborhood, they need to ask the following questions of them: "What's your last name? Who's your mom? Who's your dad? Who's your grandmom? What about cousins?" Etc. One of the girls said, "No seriously, that happened to me. I started talking to this boy, and I found out he was my cousin. It freaked me out. I can't date anyone from here." The final comment on the conversation from another student was, "This is kinda sad..." What was I supposed to say? It's not a good problem to have... I saw two issues in their family structures: 1. They have few (if any) members of their family that have left Philadelphia to achieve a particular goal or dream. So many of my students would benefit from leaving the drama of their hometown. But no one's ever done it so... 2. They have little confidence in the permanence of love and relationships. That leads to a whole mess of consequences... But none of the issues have to do with my students. They are reaping the repercussions of their parents... of society as a whole. And they follow suit. I just feel like there are so many things with which I simply cannot relate. What do I say to my students when they realize that something in their life is "kinda sad"? Try to remind them that they are the ones to break the cycle? To change the course of their family tree? I'm not sure if that's the right approach... but I'm going to keep telling them I believe they can do it until I think of a better one. I decided to start the school year out with one of my most eye-opening activities from last year. "I wish my teacher knew..." was an assignment I adapted to my high school students that truly taught me so much. You can check out part one here. I have so many wonderful new students this year that I cannot wait to get to know, to watch grow and learn and mature. There has been so much happening at school that I cannot disclose due to confidentiality, but please know it has been a rough and rocky start to this school year. Chaos is an apt word. But even though today felt like stormy waters, I still learned so much about my students. My students anonymously filled in the blanks for "I wish my teacher knew..." And dang, I forgot how deep it can get. I will keep this brief. Take a moment to read and reflect on the gravity of sharing some of these statements... because this is just a snapshot of the gravity of students' lives all across the country. I wish my teacher knew... - I didn't like school. - I really don't like to talk. - I actually like Spanish - that something so serious is going on in my life right now, and I don't know what to do. - I'm not trying to get booked. - that her smile and energy brighten up everyone's day. - I almost committed suicide. These conversations, these lives are real. Please continue to send love and prayers to our students as they navigate both school and life. Sending all our love back to you. |
AuthorA young woman trying to figure out why she matters and where she belongs in a struggling, urban culture. CategoriesArchives
November 2016
All stories, opinions, and suggestions are written strictly by the author of this blog, and do not reflect the opinions or stance of Communities in Schools of Philadelphia.
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