In this post: Where my frustration with the education started, the importance of listening to BIPOC students, and the concequences of minors targeted by micro and macroagressions from the adults around them.

Last week: I write about toughening the f up, for the sake of my students (and why I was never going to be able to help them).

Next week: I want to talk about how much I love Black cultures and bell hooks’ writing on teaching, love, and life.

oh hey y'all

It’s hard to say when I lost it. What was the final straw that would lead me to scream, irate, at a dean of the school, in front of students and faculty alike? At that moment, I knew I was about to be fired, but having been pushed to my limits, I didn’t care. But, let's go back to the beginning of this sordid tale.

My frustration began practically: these students had lost their teacher to maternity leave in October, one month into school. Since then, they had been managed from afar by an English teacher-turned-administrator who posted assignments remotely (this is still pre-covid, but just by a few months). This ‘teacher’ also graded the assignments, taken directly from the crusty common core website with absolutely no tailoring, and was technically my boss. And the students hated her.

This ‘teacher’ had only bothered to pop into these English classes I was now in charge of to accuse the students of cheating. You see, because she was using such old, pre-fab curriculum, Sparknotes had already beat her to the punch and listed the answers, which my students in a true act of community, would divide themselves into tasks: everyone was responsible for finding, copying, and pasting, and sharing the Spark notes answers to every. Single. Assignment.

But it was the students who were called lazy and a bunch of teachers. They were the ones being punished with an In-School-Suspension (read: sitting in a basement, windowless office of the dean of discipline working on assignments remotely) for "talking back," or worse, wearing a non-charter school-made hoodie, which they had to buy themselves out of pocket.

RECEIPTS: Please see last week's post, "Substitute Teachers, White Saviors, and Neoliberal Charter Schools."

It was clear that no learning had taken place before me-- the 10th graders spent 4 whole months on Macbeth with no guidance, no lessons, just online assignments. I hate reading Shakespeare and find it difficult, and as such, could hardly blame the students for cheating on such a difficult text with no instruction or guidance.

The way I saw it, it was my responsibility to catch them up as much as possible from their lost semester. Little did I know I would have two months to do it before the pandemic. 

And every single time I got a call from the “office” (which I would later learn was the disciplinary office, a literal room in a basement with contact-paper bricks on the walls to make sure it felt like prison) to send a student “down,” that undermined the whole classroom project of mutual respect, trust, and learning.  So, I stopped doing it.

Once I figured out what was up, I went straight to my students. I did a “heads down” in class-- raise your hand if you’ve received an ISS before. In a room of about 30 students, the grand majority of whom were Black or brown, 18 students raised their hands. Also, to be clear, these are not the frightening, wild urban teen that our society is obsessed with villainizing. These are minors, most of the boys have but a mere shadow of a mustache, acne, and insecurity abounds. But so do all the beautiful things about teenagers. To be clear: the problem is NOT the students NOR their behavior, they are minors reacting to the micro and macro aggressions of the adults around them.

Receipt: Akin, Imani & Leondra Radford. The University of Pheonix. “Exploring the Development of Student Self-Esteem and Resilience in Urban Schools. Contemporary Issues in Education Research- First Quarter 2018. Vol 11, No. 1

Absolutely not. That was when I decided, in my own small way, to fight back, to teach as a practice of freedom. Things, I realize now, had already started to get ugly.

Listen to BIPOC students:

As one of my students wrote to me, later in the depths of the pandemic (where we wrote journal entries together about how we were doing, coping, and distracting ourselves with a light school assignment I tried to make as fun as possible):

*Please note these have been shared with the permission of the student and guardian. Consider any typos more indication of just how little education they had received so far, despite their desperate desire to learn:

These past few months have been a mess from October to January I didn’t have an English teacher. For these two months with no teacher I had to sit here and do “busy work”. To only given bad grades on the garbage essays I was handing in because I didn’t know how to write a proper essay. I’ve learned nothing from the work that was given to me. The work was a complete waste of my time and I would think to myself why I am here. What is the point in doing something given by a teacher who can care less if you pass or not? The work that was given to me felt was pointless and I felt like I was getting robbed of my education. I came to school to learn not to sit here and do stupid questions and essays I know nothing about.

This month I’ve learned to be a better writer and I also learned that I enjoy it. Before Dr. Harbin, I hated English the thought of it made me angry I was ready to learn when Dr. Harbin came to be the new English teacher. Because I know she cares she knows what they were doing to us was so messed up. Before this change, I did not know how to write a proper essay. I did not think I was capable of doing any of the work she gave us. Even though it's been a crazy four weeks, I still managed to hand in all my assignments to my satisfaction. I’ve been happy with the work I have handed in for the first time in a while. -Z

Next week, I’ll continue my story about the mission impossible I was only ever doomed to fail. I’ll also talk about how everything I saw is the gold standard of how to run privatized urban education. 

White Savior of the Week:

ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer: Success Academy Charter Schools Inc

‘No-excuses schools’ make no excuse for updating their approach,” by Jay Mathews. WaPo August 2, 2019

WHAT I'M READING:

About How Charter Schools Have No Excuse for their Racist Behavior:

“The Harsh Discipline of No-Excuses Charter Schools: Is It Worth the Promise. By Joanne Golann and Mira Debs, June 09, 2019

“I spent a year and a half studying a ‘no excuses’ charter school. This is what I saw” Tough Discipline has had mixed results.  By Joanne W Golann. Published May 24, 2021

“That Brutal Charter School Video Shows The Rich People Love No-Excuses Discipline… for Other People’s Kids,” by Michelle Goldberg Slate, Feb 12, 2016

FAQs: What’s the deal with ‘no excuses’ and discipline?

The no-excuses model is one of the most celebrated and controversial education reform models for raising student achievement among Black and Latino students. Charters, which are public schools of choice that are independently managed, show comparable achievement to traditional public schools. No-excuses charters produce much stronger test-score gains and have been heralded as successes, receiving millions of dollars in foundation support. At the same time, large charter networks like KIPP and Noble in recent years have acknowledged the wrongfulness of their disciplinary approaches and repudiated the no-excuses approach.

“The Harsh Discipline of No-Excuses Charter Schools: Is It Worth the Promise. By Joanne Golann and Mira Debs, June 09, 2019

About the Cold Hard Facts of Just How Unequal & Segregated Our Nation's Educations Systems Are:

Wright, Whitney. “The Disparities between Urban and Suburban American Education Systems: A Comparative Analysis Using Social Closure Theory.” Proceedings of the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) 2012 Weber State University, Ogden, Utal. March 29-31 2012.

Abstract: Only 19% of students from urban school districts seek higher ed compared to 70% of their suburban counterparts (Pew Research Center 2011). Funds are allocated to the top performing schools leaving many low performing schools at a plateau to produce mediocrity. Consequently, even when education laws such as No Child Left Behind and The Elementary and secondary Education Act which are supposed to create equity are implemented in schools, they instead create inequality. This comparative study tests the hypothesis that if school systems were granted equal access to the same funds and materials, then the disparities would diminish.

What I'm reading about Teaching to Transgress in the Urban Highschool Classroom #TeachBlackSSSSSSSS

Moon, Natasha & Anneliese A Singh. “In Their Own Voices: Adolescent African American Males’ Experiences of the Achievement Gap.” Journal of School Counseling. V. 13 n 16. 2015

Martin, Jennifer and Jane A Beese. “Talking Back at School: Using the Literacy Classroom as a Site for Resistance to the School to Prison Pipeline and Recognition of Students Labeled “At Risk.” Urban Education 2017, Vol52(10).

Ulluci, Kerri and Tyrone Howard. “Pathologizing the Poor: Implications for Preparing Teachers to Work in High Poverty Schools.” Urban Education, Vol. 50, n2 170-193 March 2015

NSFS: Not Safe for School, your snark-filled antidote to racism and corruption in education. Follow @postphdtheblog on Twitter and @allisonharbin_postphd on Instagram

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