This town looks so much better under snow I almost believe I can come home again.
But even as the insidious salt spray and sand begins to discolor the white, the truth of what I have learned this past year destroys any naive beliefs still circling: you can never return.
I am a heartsick educator of over thirty-five years, screwed by a system that dropped the ball and didn't record my professional accomplishments (neglecting to inform me, for almost a year--and then, when I questioned their timeframe, didn't so much as apologize for costing me at least two full-time positions--all at a time when the public hears: "There aren't enough qualified teachers!")
Bullocks!
I am a heartsick teacher who substitutes, still, (though fully licensed and with three decades of experience in both inner cities and rural areas on both coasts...)and listens to kids whose teachers belittle them, pull them aside and tell them they will "never get into college", or worse, ignore them because they are of a certain sociological group.
Not all teachers are good teachers. Not all teachers should teach. Not all teachers even like students. This is not a hidden fact. But, there ARE teachers who have jumped through the jungle of hoops, who have committed their adult lives to these kids, and who want to teach. I am lamenting those of us who are being held back by a system that is about making money; printing certificates they can charge for; and not evaluating what is really going on for the majority of kids in American schools.
I am a heartbroken educator who watches kids who are homeless, in a town with room to spare; in a city that used to pride itself on families going back generations; in a suburb just forty minutes out of the middle of Boston, where it snows like Siberia for three or four months of the year. I tutor these kids when they get in trouble and are not allowed back in the High School for a certain bit of time. I tutor them where we can come in from the cold and wet and have heat, electric lights and no rodents facing off with us as we try to power through U.S. history or Steinbeck's Okie sagas.
"My teachers don't want me in class, Ms. Minns...why should I even try to get this homework finished?"
"You know that the other kids hate me...they say I smell...how can I go back there?"
"Got any food, Ms. Minns? I haven't had breakfast...since Wednesday..."
"I'm not going to get my diploma...I'm failing every class...I just go in cause it's warm at school...and sometimes I get a free lunch..."
I'm teaching Environmental Science and World poetry to this. We are sitting in the set of "Les Miserables" and discussing Jean Valjean while the smell of woodsmoke and cigarettes surrounds this fourteen year old. It is different from the hot concrete edges of downtown L.A. or the cockroaches coming up from the sewers in East L.A. at night or the scents of beans and eucalyptus on the air...but some of the laments are the same. Different accents, similar pain.
I am a broken-hearted emptied chakraed teacher who knows not only how to teach but how to reach these kids--who respects and cares in a very specific way--who can help some of them (some of them some of them some of them) out of the cold and back to school--if only the school will listen. If only the school will hire a teacher based on her experience, her success rate, her record, her coursework, her degrees and her desire to reach out to these kids. But the schools and the state system are all about money. Grants. Votes. About order and numbers and documents in print, on file. They are not about teachers who are still passionate about teaching. They are not about teachers who make it their business to see beyond the butts in the chairs--the attendance forms--the numbers of kids who show up for suspension duty. It is a far, far cry from education. It is simply and shockingly about forms and middle management and political careers beyond the walls of the schools.
We talk school systems and we are talking about votes and candidates and committees. We aren't talking about kids. We aren't talking about teachers, either--at least not about teachers who are still willing to take on that sherpa duty and become guides up the mountain. About teachers who are willing to change lessons plans and styles and update and refine and re-invent so that every learner who comes to them has a chance to become more fully human...we are talking budgets and tax spending and which community looks good on paper. Any community can look good on paper--until it explodes.
I have to tell you, regardless of the photos of the smiling ten percent of the senior class who do service related volunteer work to look good to the colleges they are applying to, there is a far richer, deeper and murkier society filling our schools. It is a place of germination and chaos and random acts of heroism. It is where real evolution can occur. It is between the lines and between the students and the few remaining adults who honestly believe in them. Not as cattle to be managed or product to be shot out, packaged and ready to consume, but as leaders, thinkers, creators of a new society. It is in this intellectual soup that I hope to find a wave to ride.
As people scratch their heads, debating teachers carrying guns or armed guards roving the halls of high schools, or mental illness and poor parenting, I think of what I know about the students that I get assigned to--where their real lives take place. I have some answers and some insights to share,after thirty-five years as an educator. However, it seems, the state of Massachusetts doesn't want me to speak up. Or out. It isn't an opinion that shakes a finger at some specific person--it is an opinion which involves communities willing to look at the diversity, the richness and the problems hidden between the lines--it is communities willing to stop talking at each other and simply watch for a while--listen to the people on the front lines, with the kids who "don't fit".
After proving myself for over a year and three quarters, including tracking down where the clog in the licensure pipe was backed up, getting the flow moving, losing yet another position where it came down to one week waiting for a license promised but slow-moving and arriving too late for the job, I find myself still bobbing in that dark current. Amid the kids who are waiting...to be saved...to be seen...I know why people shoot. I think I have some ideas how to stop the violence.
My heart is broken, in this home town I've tried to return to, because it seems, nobody really wants to hear.
But even as the insidious salt spray and sand begins to discolor the white, the truth of what I have learned this past year destroys any naive beliefs still circling: you can never return.
I am a heartsick educator of over thirty-five years, screwed by a system that dropped the ball and didn't record my professional accomplishments (neglecting to inform me, for almost a year--and then, when I questioned their timeframe, didn't so much as apologize for costing me at least two full-time positions--all at a time when the public hears: "There aren't enough qualified teachers!")
Bullocks!
I am a heartsick teacher who substitutes, still, (though fully licensed and with three decades of experience in both inner cities and rural areas on both coasts...)and listens to kids whose teachers belittle them, pull them aside and tell them they will "never get into college", or worse, ignore them because they are of a certain sociological group.
Not all teachers are good teachers. Not all teachers should teach. Not all teachers even like students. This is not a hidden fact. But, there ARE teachers who have jumped through the jungle of hoops, who have committed their adult lives to these kids, and who want to teach. I am lamenting those of us who are being held back by a system that is about making money; printing certificates they can charge for; and not evaluating what is really going on for the majority of kids in American schools.
I am a heartbroken educator who watches kids who are homeless, in a town with room to spare; in a city that used to pride itself on families going back generations; in a suburb just forty minutes out of the middle of Boston, where it snows like Siberia for three or four months of the year. I tutor these kids when they get in trouble and are not allowed back in the High School for a certain bit of time. I tutor them where we can come in from the cold and wet and have heat, electric lights and no rodents facing off with us as we try to power through U.S. history or Steinbeck's Okie sagas.
"My teachers don't want me in class, Ms. Minns...why should I even try to get this homework finished?"
"You know that the other kids hate me...they say I smell...how can I go back there?"
"Got any food, Ms. Minns? I haven't had breakfast...since Wednesday..."
"I'm not going to get my diploma...I'm failing every class...I just go in cause it's warm at school...and sometimes I get a free lunch..."
I'm teaching Environmental Science and World poetry to this. We are sitting in the set of "Les Miserables" and discussing Jean Valjean while the smell of woodsmoke and cigarettes surrounds this fourteen year old. It is different from the hot concrete edges of downtown L.A. or the cockroaches coming up from the sewers in East L.A. at night or the scents of beans and eucalyptus on the air...but some of the laments are the same. Different accents, similar pain.
I am a broken-hearted emptied chakraed teacher who knows not only how to teach but how to reach these kids--who respects and cares in a very specific way--who can help some of them (some of them some of them some of them) out of the cold and back to school--if only the school will listen. If only the school will hire a teacher based on her experience, her success rate, her record, her coursework, her degrees and her desire to reach out to these kids. But the schools and the state system are all about money. Grants. Votes. About order and numbers and documents in print, on file. They are not about teachers who are still passionate about teaching. They are not about teachers who make it their business to see beyond the butts in the chairs--the attendance forms--the numbers of kids who show up for suspension duty. It is a far, far cry from education. It is simply and shockingly about forms and middle management and political careers beyond the walls of the schools.
We talk school systems and we are talking about votes and candidates and committees. We aren't talking about kids. We aren't talking about teachers, either--at least not about teachers who are still willing to take on that sherpa duty and become guides up the mountain. About teachers who are willing to change lessons plans and styles and update and refine and re-invent so that every learner who comes to them has a chance to become more fully human...we are talking budgets and tax spending and which community looks good on paper. Any community can look good on paper--until it explodes.
I have to tell you, regardless of the photos of the smiling ten percent of the senior class who do service related volunteer work to look good to the colleges they are applying to, there is a far richer, deeper and murkier society filling our schools. It is a place of germination and chaos and random acts of heroism. It is where real evolution can occur. It is between the lines and between the students and the few remaining adults who honestly believe in them. Not as cattle to be managed or product to be shot out, packaged and ready to consume, but as leaders, thinkers, creators of a new society. It is in this intellectual soup that I hope to find a wave to ride.
As people scratch their heads, debating teachers carrying guns or armed guards roving the halls of high schools, or mental illness and poor parenting, I think of what I know about the students that I get assigned to--where their real lives take place. I have some answers and some insights to share,after thirty-five years as an educator. However, it seems, the state of Massachusetts doesn't want me to speak up. Or out. It isn't an opinion that shakes a finger at some specific person--it is an opinion which involves communities willing to look at the diversity, the richness and the problems hidden between the lines--it is communities willing to stop talking at each other and simply watch for a while--listen to the people on the front lines, with the kids who "don't fit".
After proving myself for over a year and three quarters, including tracking down where the clog in the licensure pipe was backed up, getting the flow moving, losing yet another position where it came down to one week waiting for a license promised but slow-moving and arriving too late for the job, I find myself still bobbing in that dark current. Amid the kids who are waiting...to be saved...to be seen...I know why people shoot. I think I have some ideas how to stop the violence.
My heart is broken, in this home town I've tried to return to, because it seems, nobody really wants to hear.
