Last week, I assigned my Sophomore English classes a journal entry "What I Am Most Thankful For..." It was the day before Thanksgiving break, seemed appropriate, and most importantly, allowed them a certain amount of introspection.  I like these kids because not only are they capable of introspection, they take the time and various opportunities to practice it.  Not every kid, mind you, but most.

    Seven of my last eight years in education have been spent in academic situations which went out of their way to embrace the feelings of individuals over the good of the general populace, the path of least resistance over the rule of law, and common ground over common sense.     

    This year that all changed.  I find myself in a district that actively encourages individuality but not at the expense of accountability.  It believes in rules and consequences even if some rogue students or parents grouse.  And it recognizes the basic fact that just because “everyone else does it” doesn’t make it acceptable. 

   So, when one of my kids decided that turnabout was fair play, and asked me for what I was most thankful, I didn’t hesitate.

   “You guys”, I replied.  There was a round of chuckling and some understandable skepticism, but I was never more certain of an answer in my life.  As proof – for me, not for them – after class, I found a rough transcript I had written just about ten months before.

     It was a particularly rough class in one of those afore-mentioned districts wherein I was forced to handle my own discipline as the principals chose to treat each student referral as a failure of the teacher and an opportunity to offer multiple “second” chances to even the most thuggish.  I took to documenting these instances for my own protection, as a way to vent increasing frustration with the field of education, and for my friends’ amusement.

January 23, 2007

Kicked a kid out yesterday.  He mouthed off all the way out the door.  I
don't bother to write him up because around education, that is basically
status quo -- well at least education for a certain demographic.
 
Today I stop him before he comes in.
 
ME:  So, are there going to be any more problems today?
 
KID:  Nah man.
 
ME:  I just ask because yesterday when you left it sounded like you had some
things to say and I wanted to know if you had anything left to say to me
today here in the hallway.
 
Kid silent.
 
ME:  Nothing, huh? (Why did I assume he would apologize????) Alright, then I
need you to go in there be quiet and handle things better
 
KID:  I did handle it.  I didn't like how you came to me.  You ain't gonna
come to me no way and spect me to take it.
 
ME:  Sure I am.  This is MY room.  You follow MY rules.  And do what I SAY. 
It's actually pretty simple.
 
KID:  Nah man. I told you you aint gawn come to me no way.
 
ME:  You know what the problem is here?  You think we're equal.
 
KID:  We is equal.
 
ME:  No.  No we really aren't.  You see I'm the teacher, and you're the
student. I make the rules and you follow them. I also follow rules. 
Including basic grammar....
 
KID:  All I’m sayin' is you ain't gawn come to me no way you want.  I'm a
person and you a person and you gots to talk to me so I want to talk to you.
 
ME:  I don't care if you ever talk to me.  Actually, if this is how you do
it, I'd prefer you didn't.
 
KID:  Man, look I done your work just let me go in there and don't bother
me.
 
ME:  See there you go again being wrong.  You actually haven't done ANY work
and you don't make the rules or set the agenda.  That's my job.
 
KID:  Then do your job, but don't come at me any way you think you gawn want
to.
 
ME:  Do you really want detention?
 
KID:  Go ahead, but I aint gawn go.
 
ME:  And why is that?
 
KID:  You aint no principal.  You just a teacher.
 
ME:  Wrong.  My room. My rules. The district backs that up.
 
KID: Yeah well...
 
ME:  Yeah well, here's how this is going to go.  You're going to go in
there, sit down, be quiet, and do your work and I don't want to hear another
word out of your mouth until May.
 
KID:  (Starting to speak)...
 
ME:  UNTIL MAY.  Keep your head down, stay off my radar, and make me forget
you exist like I do when I go home at night.  You do that and maybe, just
maybe you have a chance to get out of this class. And if you don't like
something, you go to a principal, a parent, whatever, but don't ever think
you can speak to me like that again.  You want to do that graduate, get a
job, and earn a position of responsibility.  Don't just assume one.
 
KID:  I'm my own man. I don't got to get anybody to annul my problems for
me.
 
ME:  I think you do, and I'd start with my vocabulary. If no,t I guarantee you
will still be here when you are actually a grown man....well, grown at
least.
 
He is now sitting in class with his head down and four zeroes out of four
assignments on the grade book.   Teaching rocks.
 
 Does anyone have a McDonald’s application they can fax over.....preferably
one in Chesterfield...off the bus line......???

    Now, no doubt, someone will read that and think 1) it is racist – it’s not, it was written by memory as phonetically as I could make sense of it or 2) it is exaggerated  --  it IS exaggerated….I fudged some of the grammar to make it understandable.

    Inner city kids are getting a horrendous education, and it has NOTHING to do with the three R’s.  It has EVERYTHING to do with the three E’s:  accountabilit-E, respectabilit-E, and sensibilit-E.

    They are used as political pin balls bounced to and fro over the educational landscape blocked by low performance, trapped in the coddling of enabling administrators, and ultimately careen past the flippers of actual education.  And all the quarters in the world won’t change a thing.  The real world eventually, and unfortunately, greets them with an open-hand slap of expectation – a blow they are ill-equipped to counter. 

      Because they have been taught for so long that they are grown men and women (they aren't), that they set the agenda (they don't), and that they have no one to answer to but themselves (true but also several million other citizens).  Jails, park benches, and drive-thru’s are full of former students who were forced fed a 13 year diet of Victimocracy which repeatedly told them that they couldn’t help it, they weren’t to blame, and they never stood a chance against a cold, cruel world.    This philosophy did not benefit them and never could.  It is, by nature, a losing proposition, but it did keep some under-achieving school districts in business and allow some race barons like Jesse Jackson to send his own kids to private schools.

      That was my reality for seven straight years.  Some days I miss it.  Most days I don’t. And as I sat looking around my room and thinking of the kids that now occupied the desks before me every day, I am very glad no one faxed me that McDonald’s application.  Because I might have actually taken it.  Because I might have missed the opportunity to actually enjoy teaching again.  And because today I might have had to listen to the fry guy telling me “You aint gawn to come to me no way…”