Father Knows Best: Bud, The Boxer

Eddie Jarvis, a bully, has it for Bud. When Bud gets into a fight, he calls Dad on the cell phone. Dad arrives and takes over the fight for Bud. At school. Bud's Dad becomes belligerent with police. Bud's Dad is in big trouble.

It sounds like an episode guide for some mid-1950s greaser TV morality play. It isn't. It isn't exactly what we mean when we discuss the importance of parental involvement either. Nevertheless, the school is abuzz with the event, from the students to the staff room to the janitor. It's too bad that 2000 people peaceably "getting along" and learning today didn't have any news impact, yet Daddy's boxing adventure did. It's human nature. What doesn't fit, what is out of the ordinary, is what calls our attention. It's what makes the nightly news, partly because it is an aberration. Yet, it has a significant impact on the teaching and learning going on in the building. Administrators will be snarled with the repercussions of this for weeks to come. It's expensive in time and personnel. It has racial, ethnic, and social impact as well that will linger on for some time to come. Perhaps only until the next drama.

Yet those dramas build into a story about what this school is and who the students are. A colleague related how a few days before, out in public, he was asked where he taught. "Oh, that's a rough school isn't it?" His reply: "Yes, we do have a lot of Caucasian students." Clever. Think about that one.

Perhaps this is a morality play after all. Schools are expected to be some kind of enclave exempt from the rest of society. But social problems, attitudes, habits, enter our doors each day, and no metal detectors can screen for problematic attitudes. There are violent schools because we have a violent society. There are guns and weapons in schools because our society is soaked in guns and weapons. We have an educational "achievement gap" between race and ethnic groups, because we have an achievement gap, and an equality gap, in the society we have built. How can we expect the schools to fix inequality and educational inadequacies without talking about the same issues in the broader society? Don’t schools fail where our civic life fails? Has society made its AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress under the so-called “No Child Left Behind” Act) toward closing the inequality and opportunity gap?

Pepto-Abysmal

We were discussing rights in one course today, human rights. The conversation at one point was along the lines of:
Teacher: What rights does the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights give?
Student: Who cares?
T: Certainly a lot of the rights we have, here and internationally, depend on what this says.
S: But it’s boring.
T: Is excitement a requirement for learning something, or making it important for that matter?
S: I could care less.
OK, so international treaties are admittedly not the most electrifying documents. You would think, however, that teenagers would have a vested interest in the right to life, or freedom of movement, or freedom to religious beliefs. These, after all, are grounded in daily issues in their own lives. Abu Ghraib. Abortion. The freedom to move and live where you choose within your own country. But it all just gets a big yawn.
S: Discussing is boring. Can’t we just have worksheets or something?
T: Sigh.
It’s one of those days that just doesn’t seem to click. Often passion for a subject and students knowing that you care about them can inspire interest and passion among learners. Some days, even that doesn’t help. Were the day and all courses a complete waste? No, of course not. Learning still happened. Fish gotta swim. Some students were focused and brilliant, but most today were apathetic, bored, and far too stubborn or tired to let themselves be, or become, inspired.

It’s a frustration that most educators take personally. And it’s a frustration that is often made personal by edu-experts and politicians alike who seem to think that a mere shift in teaching strategy, or technique, or philosophy will make all students engaged, excited, and eager learners. Somehow if the teacher were just more engaging, creative, or knowledgeable about “research-based” methods, all would be well. But students are human beings and share responsibility. No teacher should take the burden of a life and culture filled with boredom and make it their own. That doesn’t mean giving up. It just means staying healthy. It means taking a Pepto-Bismol, getting a good night’s rest, and starting again tomorrow even more determined. It means an awareness that seeds of ideas and attitudes are planted daily that won’t appear for years, often decades. Today’s success or failure can’t really be measured today. There are a number of stories of those seeds and what they became.

Perhaps at some point, I’ll share some.

(D)e Pluribus Unum (From many, one)

When DeJohn enters the room two minutes after the bell, he becomes a “class.” It is the way we talk and think about the basic unit of education, the class and classroom. “I work in a school. I am a classroom teacher.” The class has a life of its own, and when we talk of a class, when debating education, it is a monolithic animal whose entire purpose is to learn. It’s easy to sermonize about transforming education or improving instruction when we talk about classes. But classes are a construct that doesn’t exist. DeJohn isn’t a learning machine. His companion entering the classroom is his mother’s illness. He knows about it, but hasn’t been told that it is terminal. His family is being transformed. It’s a secret that I have to respect.

And Jennifer’s father has just entered prison for a minimum of ten years. Scott is grieving over a brother lost in a car accident; Scott was in the car. Jesse just left home to live with an older friend; he is sixteen. Tim was released from the hospital with Stevens Johnson syndrome. Amy is pregnant. Kyle was absent for three days with serious eye damage from a baseball. Kaylana’s father just died. Tyrell’s eighteen year old brother died this summer. Jose’s brother was shot, but went back to gangbanging anyway. Sandra lives in a foster home and has moved twice this year. We are barely six weeks into the school year.

Every class is a puzzle pieced together almost daily, because the picture changes continuously. This isn’t excusing anything. It’s just real. It’s the challenge of being in a room full of people and keeping in mind their humanity. It’s the challenge of understanding that Jesse’s priority today may not be understanding the causes of the Seven Years’ War, but rather the war at home where, yesterday, he found his possessions in a pile in the front yard and had to find a place to land.

Mission Possible

Our national dialog on education, and especially public education has taken a decidedly political turn over the last two decades. It also, for the most part, lacks the depth, complexity, and frankly, reality, required for productive discussion. That reality of life and living inside the classroom, in concert with the larger issues, brings real meaning to the table. And there are immense stakes in the outcome of that discussion. What kind of culture are we? What are our political values? How is knowledge accountable to society? What is a citizen? What kind of people are we going to be? Is education a commodity? Do we believe in equal access, or what people can buy? Do we value teachers? We still struggle with segregation. We still deny the hard questions and grasp for simplistic answers.

I would like to thank the Colorado Education Association, which has kindly provided a forum for this kind of communication and dialog. To boldly blog and, well, see what happens. It is risky, innovative, and exciting. (It is worth repeating that the content here is solely my responsibility and does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of CEA.) This is the story and reflection of that surreal classroom where reality blends and jumbles with outside pressures, fads, ideology and power struggles. It is where I live almost every day. It's why I teach. The cast of characters includes students, teachers, staff, parents, guardians, professional associations, unions, politicians, school boards, corporations, huckters, and many, many surprises. I invite you to join me in that surreal class and, maybe, come to some answers for the hard questions. Nobody gets voted off the island, and there is no final exam; the final exam is what kind of public education--what kinds of schools--we choose to have.