Confessions of a “Failing” Teacher

Like most teachers I’ve gotten some praise from my high school students over my 26 years of teaching—a lesson “wasn’t bad,” or a particular class was “sorta interesting.” I’ve even been told that I was a “pretty good teacher.” High praise coming from teenagers.

But the truth is I wasn’t a “good teacher.” I was a “failure,” at least according to America’s “education reformers”—that “odd coalition of corporate-friendly Democrats, right-wing Republicans, Tea Party governors, Wall Street executives, and major foundations” as Diane Ravitch aptly defines them—because the kids I taught consistently lagged behind their peers in every measure, performing well below grade level, failing state standardized tests.

Given the present state of teacher evaluations, with a significant portion allotted to student performance on mandated tests, I’d be in big trouble if I hadn’t left teaching recently. I certainly wouldn’t get any bonus pay. If it were up to the Obama Administration I might not even have a job since I would be one of those teachers who, as the President noted in his 2012 State of the Union address, “just aren’t helping kids.” And if I still taught in New York I’d be facing the prospect of having my name and ratings published in newspapers and on the internet if the Legislature gets its way in what the New York State Union of Teachers called the “name/shame/blame game.”

But I know that I wasn’t a “failure,” and more importantly, that the hundreds of kids I’ve taught weren’t either. My students were mostly young people of color, living in neighborhoods and families destroyed by poverty and substance abuse, racism and violence, physical and sexual abuse. Overall, life—shaped by their mistakes and by conditions they couldn’t control—left them little time for, or interest in education. Frequently that lack of time and interest led to trouble which led to repeated suspensions, expulsions and in some cases, incarceration.  But sometimes trouble translated into being placed in a small community alternative high school or the jailhouse classroom in the county penitentiary, both places I taught in.

By the time they made it to me, my students were pretty damaged. They hated school. They could barely read or do basic math. And forget about writing. “You expect me to write?” more than one teen squawked in horror at me. But eventually they did. They read, piling up grade levels like some Americans pile up debt. They calculated. They even learned the magic of connecting sentences that made sense.

But by the state’s educational rubric, they didn’t cut it. As noteworthy as their successes were—both academically and behaviorally—they were still “failures” and I along with them: success was only validated by passing the standardized tests.

One of the hardest things I had to do was send kids into those tests who weren’t ready. I tried hard beforehand to get them out of it. I’d explain, downright argue at times, with the school administration that although my students had made solid progress it wasn’t enough to tackle the exam and so they should wait and take it next time. It never worked. “It’s the law,” I was told.

Every time I think about Tyler my palms sweat. Tyler was a jailhouse student, lanky, 16, with an Afro picked out to an angel’s halo. But he was no angel, and he had the missing front teeth and two years at the county pen to prove it. When he first came to class he was reading on a second grade level. For some reason he was determined to improve this time round in school. He came every day, took work to his cell every night and returned it completed every morning. Slowly his reading level increased. He was pleased with himself. You could see it in the almost toothless smile he didn’t bother to hide anymore.

But he wasn’t close to test-ready. When I petitioned to delay Tyler’s exam the administrator refused but offered me her idea of comfort, “Look, it’s okay if he fails. Then he’ll be eligible for remediation.” I couldn’t help shooting back, “Sure, send the kid in so he can get shot down one more time.” I prepared Tyler for that test as best as I could. He worked harder than ever. He was psyched. “I’m gonna ace it, Mr. C.”

You know the end of the story. It’s the same for many damaged kids living in poverty and neglect, factors that the pundits say can be overcome by good, dedicated teachers. Once again Tyler “failed.” He never came back to class for remediation.

If Tyler and kids like him are “failures” then I—and all the other teachers who teach in tough places—are too. But I don’t think we should take the rap alone. As long as our educational policies let students like Tyler down in the name of “reform” and “the law,” continuing the “name/shame/blame game” instead of addressing the social conditions that cripple these kids’ lives and learning, then we as a country are failures as well, in need of some serious remediation.

Originally posted on Beacon Broadside

Teachers in Tough Places: Another View of Juvenile Justice

It was a busman’s holiday. 30 people in a room, all teachers in high school and GED programs in various prisons from across New York State, listening to me talk about teaching locked up kids. The conference was in Saratoga Springs with lots of other things to do. Yet there they were, nodding their heads in recognition of the stories I told, laughing in all the right places with that dark sense of humor we jailhouse teachers develop from years of working with society’s throwaways in some of the toughest schools going.

In interviews or talks I’m frequently asked why I wrote I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup. I often explain that I want people to see the kind of living conditions to which young offenders are consigned in adult facilities and to show that each incarcerated kid is a real person, one who most likely grew up in a home crippled by poverty, by poor health, by addiction as well as physical and sexual abuse. It’s a picture not conveyed by the crime numbers we read in the newspapers.

But looking out over that audience of incarcerated education teachers, I knew there was another reason why I wrote these stories: to describe what it’s like to be a teacher working under some of the harshest conditions going. In this time of “education reform” and its concomitant teacher bashing, I wanted to praise the people who are committed to teaching every day, no matter what’s going on around them, around their classroom and their students.

And in jail a lot goes around. Most classrooms are right in the correctional facility, and so the closed, foul smells of overcrowded and under-washed bodies, the ubiquitous roaches, the dirt and grime of poorly ventilated buildings and the chaotic noises of slamming gates and shouting voices easily seep under a classroom door.

One of the rooms in which I taught at a county lockup was a cramped, dark space right off a major hallway going to the blocks. Students sat elbow to elbow at a long table. Getting up for a book or some paper was tricky business. Personal space in jail is as valuable a commodity as a dealer’s street corner. I never knew when a fight, or at least a face-off, might erupt. Likewise, it didn’t make it any easier for my students or me to settle down knowing that any minute one of the kids might be pulled out of class for a random search, a lawyer’s visit, or taken down to booking in handcuffs. And nobody could tell when a fight might break out and a code called with the emergency response team in full riot gear running down the hallway screaming threats and commands.

Try teaching the difference between a simple and a complex sentence, or the definition of irony, with that kind of disruption. Sometimes I felt downright silly going on about adjectives in the face of such chaos. Sometimes I’d think, “Why bother?” Nevertheless, I kept at it. I taught every day and my students learned. I want to repeat that, because so many people don’t believe it’s possible: every day I taught and my students learned.  I had high standards and expectations. We had skills to acquire and to hone. We had tests to prepare for. We had tools to fashion so that when they left jail they could repair and change their lives and, I hoped, not come back to prison.

Looking out at that conference room full of intent faces, I could see that every teacher understood what I was talking about. They knew the damaged lives their students brought into prison and in turn, into their classrooms, and they recognized their own oppressive working conditions.

I realized something else that day in Saratoga. My jailhouse colleagues were not much different from the many other educators in this country who work in similarly harsh environments in the inner city in schools that are underfunded and undersupplied, in unsafe and unhealthy buildings, and in dangerous neighborhoods. The media reports that schools fail because teachers don’t teach. All they want to do is protect their cushy, tenure-assured jobs. Don’t believe it. Teachers—especially those in the toughest places—teach because they believe that every kid can succeed and deserves a chance. If we teachers are greedy, it’s for those small triumphs that every day make a difference in our students’ lives.

Reposted from Beacon Broadside

Juvenile Justice: An Issue that the Young Generation Cares About

Since the paperback publication of I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup I’ve been doing a lot of events at schools and colleges, talking to students who feel very strongly about the need for our criminal justice system to be reformed when it comes to young offenders. They are keenly aware of the injustice of locking kids up in prisons with no opportunity to change their lives around.

Indeed, they should be concerned. It is their generation that is being incarcerated, and it will be their generation who will be the responsible both morally and economically for those young people as they keep returning to jail and then become adults in the system.

I find their concern and passion about this issue heartening. Many wish to become professionals in the criminal justice or human services field so that they can make a difference. Others are active in social justice movements. Their intelligence and compassion around these issues is inspiring.

One such student has written extensively about this issue on her blog, Colleen’s Blog. It was brought to my attention by a colleague because this high school senior as a part of a social justice curriculum read my book and wrote extensively about the issues it raises. Aside from the great insights this blogger expresses I think her posts are worth reading because they show that not all our schools and their students are failing, the way the education reformers keep warning us.

With young people like the ones I’ve been meeting and talking with and students like Colleen I hope that the next generation will not be obsessed with being “tough on crime” but rather with being “smart on crime.”