Last week, we posted a popular article titled Trying to teach in an underclass culture.
A pal of mine who is deeply committed to, and involved with, urban education and to Amistad Academy (a charter school in New Haven, CT) in particular, emailed me this thoughtful comment:
My brief experience with black kids consists of a couple of overnights with some Outward Bound crews from Flatbush and my time spent in Achievement First schools. These experiences bear zero similarity to this teacher’s report, so I believe what you’re seeing is a particular manifestation of a culture in the context of a US urban public school. From an educational standpoint, those schools are a total failure based on the data and reports like these. I once heard Geoffrey Canada say “there must be a less expensive way to transition young American blacks from childhood to prison than our public high schools”.
In my experience, the kids were fun, bright, and displayed the same range of personalities as my own kids and their friends – some loud, some quiet, some funny, some serious. My first experience at Amistad was walking into an 8th grade English class and sitting in on a discussion of Romeo and Juliet. The kids chairs were arranged in an open circle and one tall lanky black boy, he must have been well north of 6’ and south of 130 pounds, was folded into one of these chairs with a little attached desktop made for middle school kids. As a middle age white man, my brain registered that tinge of warinessI get when encountering strapping black kids. He spoke quietly, a bit shy, with a New Haven wrong-side-of-the-tracks accent, but he delivered a short verbal essay on Shakespeare’s use of repetitive language as a way of heightening dramatic impact and conveying first-person perspective in the balcony scene. The kid was fantastic, better than most of the kids I met in college English.
I’ve walked into dozens of classrooms at Amistad Middle and High School and I’ve never run into any disorder. They do have disciplinary issues, but they are managed effectively. The “Whatever It Takes” professional culture also creates some extraordinary expressions. The middle school teachers were concerned about alienation among the black boys, so the male teachers decided to have an overnight in the gym, “men only”. Each boy was invited to bring an adult mentor, a father, older brother, grandfather, whatever, and the boys who didn’t have anyone to bring were matched with a teacher. They spent the night talking, telling stories, and exploring the topic “what does it mean to be a man?”, how do men treat women, how do they express themselves in society, what does it mean to take responsibility? This was very effective in forming deeper bonds in the school community, in particular, those crucial bonds between students and teachers. It wasn’t a cure-all, but it gave the kids positive ways to think about themselves that many of them reflected in their subsequent behavior.
I recently visited the Achievement First elementary school in
Bridgeport, CT. Again, the kids were orderly (in my opinion, a little
too orderly, but I have a progressive education streak in me). I also
noticed how beautifully coiffed the kindergarten and first grade girls
were (they wear uniforms, which were all neat and clean). I asked the
principal, tongue in cheek, if the Moms were engaged in some sort of
competition to see who could do the most beautiful hairstyle. She said
she didn’t know, but the school has worked hard to engage parents in
formal and informal ways, so there’s a lot going on between the
families.
When I say “the school” has done this or that, I really mean the team
of teachers and administrators. These schools are all about teamwork,
and since the teachers and administrators all declined to unionize, the
school has little difficulty weeding out the occasional jerk who makes
it through the recruitment process. Dealing with jerks, by which I mean
people who exude negativism and actively try to undermine efforts to
improve the organization, is a huge problem for any group, and when
they’re permanently embedded they can do incredible damage to the
organization’s culture and performance. Franklin was right when he
warned that “the rotten apple spoils his companion”. The good news is,
the teachers at AF schools seem very happy working in a culture that
gives them an important role as a member of a team charged with
problem-solving and continuous improvement. They work hard, but they
experience a lot of professional support combined with accountability
for individual performance. They receive about twenty applications for
each open position, and their turnover is low, so it seems their
professional culture has struck the right balance. They employ roughly
500 teachers serving over 7,000 students, so this isn’t a fluke – this
is replicable and scalable.
My experience with Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound was even more
interesting. They took about sixteen 9th graders, boys and girls, from
Flatbush for a 6-week program focused on literacy and outdoor
adventure. Every day started with a run, which grew to 3 miles by the
end of the course, with a 5-mile “graduation run”. The kids selected
and read their own books and wrote every day. The course included
specific writing exercises – a scientific paper based on recorded
observation, poetry and fiction, an essay, and a final paper which was a
cross between autobiography and a statement of aspirations. The
structured writing process included outlines and drafts, and at every
stage bouncing ideas and drafts off a friend or the assembled group.
The finished product had gone through about 5 steps. The kids also had
outdoor adventures almost every day, which included hikes, canoe trips,
rock climbing, overnights in the woods (at base camp they lived in
platform tents including a kitchen and dining room), and the classic
Outward Bound solo. All of this was done with the usual outstanding
Outward Bound ability to turn a group into a team, a crew, a corp, with
all of the strong interpersonal attachments and sense of responsibility
that comes with it. It also gave the kids plenty to write about.
Of course, taking 16 kids, many of whom came from troubled homes and
whose lives were mostly confined to a few blocks in Brooklyn, into the
woods for six weeks produced its share of drama. Outward Bound crews go
through a normal process that starts with a certain formality and
descends into homesickness, alienation, irritation, and conflict, before
people adapt and bond and shoulder their responsibilities and really
get into it, and this course was no exception. After a few days, one
girl decided “this is bullshit” and set out to walk home – about 200
miles. An instructor walked with her, mile after mile, until she got
tired and agreed to go back. She went on to complete the course, and
cried at the graduation because she had to leave her new “family”.
When I visited the crews, they were already well into their program,
around the 4th or 5th week. The crews had bonded, and things seemed to
run smoothly. I didn’t see any of the instructors giving orders – the
kids prepared dinner and cleaned up, each kid doing his or her
assignment. Jobs rotate so every student got to do every job at some
point – helping to prepare the meal, cleaning up the kitchen, cleaning
the camp, or when you’re out on an expedition, pitching tents or
lean-to’s, navigating, planning and leading. Most jobs involve two or
three people, and you can tell that the crew has really bonded when jobs
are performed efficiently and almost wordlessly. There was no
electricity in the camp, so the kids entertained themselves in the
evening with group games and impromptu shows, with the more extroverted
kids inventing and performing raps, singing songs, and leading dances.
For whatever reason, I didn’t see the kind of sexual crudeness or
interpersonal harshness that the article cites as routine in the
author’s school. The mood was fun and lighthearted and some of the kids
were funny and delightfully creative.
The Graduation Ceremony for the course was held in Prospect Park,
Brooklyn. The students sat in a circle with their instructors and
teachers. The classic statement of appreciation from one student for
another and Outward Bound pinning ceremony were performed, and each of
the students read from their Autobiography and Aspirations paper. Some
of the stories included the kind of domestic chaos that children should
not have to experience. I don’t think I’ll do that again. I’m a grown
adult and have seen a few things in life, but frankly, it was too
heart-wrenching.
So I have two criticisms of the piece by the anonymous teacher.
First of all, he failed to acknowledge the kids who weren’t screaming,
the quiet kids who were doing their best to get by in that terrible
environment. I have no doubt that those kids are there, even if they’re
hiding out, and as a teacher, I hope he is attempting the difficult
task of creating a positive bubble around them. My second complaint is
more significant: he focused on the bad behaviors without examining the
school culture that brought them out.
Human beings can express the most wonderful and the most horrible
behaviors – maybe that’s part of the secret to our success as a species,
we have an enormous range. Expressed behaviors are sometimes the
result of circumstance, but always the result of culture. Inside every
school, it’s the adults who collectively have the power to define the
culture. The fact that they passively allow a juvenile Lord of the
Flies culture to emerge and dominate is a direct result of how foolishly
we have organized the system around a job-for-life civil service model,
from our often clueless school boards stuffed with local politicos to
our self-protective administrations and unions.
Unfortunately, the anonymous teacher let the adults off the hook and the kids hanging out to dry.
It’s terrible how badly the politicians, who have the power and
responsibility to shape the system, have screwed up public schooling in
America, especially when it comes to serving kids growing up in
poverty. There is nothing that the kids could do that compares in
crudeness, negligence or cruelty to what those in charge of the system
have done to them.
