One week of teaching at Institute has now concluded, as my start to the two-year-plus race has begun with me looking more like TCU’s Bleacher Creatures than TCU’s 100-meter dash champion Charles Silmon. At least the Bleacher Creatures are fun to watch? You can’t afford too much trial-and-error in teaching, so the past few days have felt a sense of urgency and finality. Combine that with the fact that one poor day of teaching has no do-overs in the lives of children in disadvantaged communities, and you have a recipe for high-pressure, high-stakes performance.
Besides my own fumbling through the new content and methods employed in the classroom and the emotional difficulties which come alongside, I’ve noticed more specific trends around me in the Atlanta Public Schools middle school assigned for the summer Institute. Let’s be frank, these disadvantages are met with the will and determination of children, families and professionals, but they lack the institutional support which genuinely wants them to succeed.
As Ed Chang, Principal of Atlanta’s KIPP STRIVE Academy charter school, reminded us at the opening ceremonies of Institute, schools in the American South were built not for opportunity but for keeping minority communities in a place of fewer rights, fewer resources and fewer hopes. Yet Principal Chang also told us: “If you invest in your community, it will invest in you… Embrace the struggle, so you can grow.”
Now I will ask and answer a few questions which have already come up in response to these kinds of claims in the past week:
- What exactly does “lack of institutional support” mean? This is the concept which proves most elusive to people (such as myself) who have grown up believing our choices are the primary determinant of our future and that merit is the criteria for success. Institutions, however, are social systems such as Jim Crow, the prison-industrial complex, the War on Drugs, gentrification and the digital revolution which disproportionately constrain people of color in the United States. No one person decided to make these effects leave entire demographics behind, but one person can very easily fall to the ways of thinking these divisions create. When we fail to account for the externalities of these systems which convince us the oppressed want or deserve their social stianding we are complicit with institutional weakness or even institutional racism.
- Aren’t students in disadvantaged communities unmotivated and misbehaved? This has been one of the biggest puzzles for us this week, the empirical explanations behind the variation in students’ behavior from classroom to classroom. The easy assumption would be to say students are naturally undisciplined and unmotivated when we see them unruly in one classroom. Yet when the same students are in a different classroom with a different teacher they can be compliant and even excited about the material. Additionally, students face psychological blocks — once they are told they are unruly they begin to internalize it and become further reluctant to think school is where they belong. When they perform poorly (every student in my 8th grade English class tested at or below the 25th percentile in literacy) they start to resist learning more for fear of being seen as unintelligent.
- Haven’t we tried hard to improve urban schools? Sure, there are plenty of policies on the books in the past decade which have poured resources into raising student performance. However, many of these have proven destructive. Additionally, social trends in the United States, such as resegregation have swept the rug out from underneath any chance at a baseline equality of opportunity. I encourage you to look into the stark work of Jonathan Kozol (1992) in “Savage Inequalities,” whose insights into urban education still ring true today. My friend and incoming TFA Detroit Corps Member Corey Landers pointed me to an “Education Declaration” recently signed on to by a broad coalition of advocates and researchers. Read the document linked above to see the policies and structures which still don’t serve our urban schools.
- What can teachers really do in the end? One of the most frustrating criticisms of the above answers I have heard this week is that we shouldn’t be too worried about these problems if we just have good teachers. Yes, teachers make a splash in the lives of students, but none of us in Teach For America will single-handedly find the magic bullet for education reform or do all the heavy lifting in the life of a child. The classroom starts and ends with the individual student and what they are able to achieve and that which they are able to take ownership of in terms of knowledge, belief and skills. Teachers factor in by creating the right environment where even for a few hours students see the possibility, purpose and promise of education. Teaching is a tough mixture of great capability of individuals but the inescapability of outside challenges. What can we really do to be agents of change?
If I am to be frank about solutions, I will offer one small one which begins with the individual citizen. This past week I read a great primer on a modern approach to American citizenship by the consultant Peter Block, entitled “Community: The Structure of Belonging.” The new kind of citizen Block wants takes part in the “restorative community,” having the kinds of conversations and service which think about assets, gifts, commitment and accountability of and to the whole in creating change.
We can all be that citizen, and do our children a true service in the process.
