The Teen Brain & The Danger of Stereotypes
On the teacher shortage & what the dumb-ass decisions of Florida & Arizona say about white people's undue influence on the US education system.
In this post: on the teacher shortage & what the dumb-ass decisions of Florida & Arizona say about white people's undue influence on the US education system.
Last week: an analysis on white women who want to make a difference
Next week: Part 1 of What I'm Reading about systemic racism, the repetition of history, and how it applies to Afroturfism.
Hi folks,
Last week, I shared a story about some fellow white teachers with good intentions, and racist results. The student that I wrote about (whom I called Jellany), ended up being a straight A student whose biggest academic upset was a B+ in her advanced math class. But her teachers saw her a slutty Cardi-B wannabe, and that alone.
The damage white teachers can do to a BIPOC (or queer) student is both an ontological and epistemelogical violence.
An inexperienced white teacher, who has not investigated the way in which our culture has inculcated a subconscious sense of white supremacy, can do just as much damage as an outwardly racist teacher who sends all the Black kids to detention far more often than their white counterparts.
As school starts back up and districts find themselves with a critical shortage of teachers, states are making horrible decisions to get adult bodies in classrooms. In Arizona, you no longer need to have a college degree to teach secondary education (read about it here). Say what you will about the damage the white-savior mentality of T.F.A does, at least those idiot 22 year olds have a college degree. I guess.
That was my first thought when I read that news, and then I had to remind myself that I’ve known since the early days of the pandemic that education was going to have to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. I knew this was coming, or at the very least, something along these lines was coming. Besides, with the use of permanent substitute teachers to save districts and school’s money (of which you also don’t need a bachelor’s to be a sub), this news isn’t even anything new. It’s just a continuation of the same.
Ultimately, allowing teachers with no college degree into classrooms is just a symptom of the widespread disease plaguing the U.S. education system. We well-meaning white folks and folks of privilege can tell ourselves that it won’t impact us, that this is just poor and minority kids who will get even less of an education. But of course, we’re critically wrong. And this mentality that we all have is why nothing ever changes.
This week, I want to address the impulse to jump to a conclusion about someone, especially someone who comes from a totally different culture than you. When I was teaching those poor overachievers at a Harvard speech and debate camp earlier this month (Zummer of Doom), I dusted off one of my favorite pedagogical tools: a TedTalk from the early 2000’s by Nigerian author Chimananda Ngozi Adichie called the “Danger of a Single Story.” If you haven’t heard it, I recommend it-- Adichie is a master of her craft.
In this speech, Adichie discusses both sides of being stereotyped and also stereotyping. We are always subject to both, and I think it’s a genius twist that rather than calling a stereotype that, she calls it a “single story” that we inadvertently reduce people to (or are reduced by others to). Everytime I teach this, regardless of background or socio-economic status, teenagers immediately get it. After all, what is it to be a teenager than to be trying on single stories of both yourself and others as you figure out how to navigate both your identity and the f-cked up world around you.
The adaptability of teenagers is something we adults can learn a lot from. It’s harder for us, after all we have more years of experience to validate our single stories of others (and the single stories we give ourselves, for that matter).
Since I shared the POV of some white lady teachers (including that of myself) last week, I thought this week would offer a nice corrective: below is a portion of a student essay that I saved about their experience of being given a “single story.”
I asked them: Discuss one aspect of Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” and how it relates to your lived experience.
What really hit home was Adichie’s “Danger of a Single Story.” My reason being is because I realized that I also have experienced it multiple times and it’s such a heart breaking experience that I wish upon no one. I had a teacher who always thought I was getting in trouble (even though I never said nothing in class) and kept telling me that I was going to end up in prison if I kept dressing the way I did. I thought I looked good because my older brother picked out my outfit but my teacher didn’t like what I wore and was always saying bad things about me just because I wear my pants low. She made me feel bad about myself and no matter how good I did on tests she never gave me any credit. My point of view on life now is much more advanced as in now I want to help everyone that I can that has gone through the experience of a single story and also education wise it motivated me to pursue engineering more than I already have. On going with these topics I encourage people to learn and become a better person by reading these stories.
Making a student feel bad in class is no trivial matter. Research clearly shows that unless a student feels safe in a classroom environment, they will not be willing to take risks-- such as answering a question in class-- for fear of reprisal. If students don’t feel comfortable exploring ideas in class, cognition suffers. Which is to say, learning outcomes are diminished.
That’s not the only tiny catastrophe that happens when a teacher fails to make the classroom a welcoming, safe environment in which to learn. Adolescents stand on the verge of adulthood, but neurologically speaking, they very much are not. Their frontal lobe cortexes have not finished closing, which is part of what makes teens so endlessly adaptable and capable of making great strides in learning new concepts in a short amount of time.
But it also makes them incredibly susceptible to outside influences-- from an increased risk of developing a substance abuse problem to an increased risk of forming a negative sense of their own identity that they carry with them into adulthood in the form of low self-esteem. In teens, low self-esteem is far more pernicious than it is in adults because their brains are still forming, and thus what happens to you in your teen years can mark you for the rest of your life.
Think back to your own high school years-- that mean girl who called you fat, or that boy who laughed at your acne. Or that teacher who (to quote Biggie) said you’d never amount to nothing.
How long did you carry those wounds with you?
One thing that is universal about being a teenager is how much it sucks. All we’re asking is that we flex our empathy skills and direct our energy to those going through it now, and try to make it better.
Hint: that involves training and paying teachers a living wage, not over-packing classrooms, and emphasizing Socio-emotional learning alongside learning objectives. That same shit GWM like Ron DeSantis are so proud of abolishing in Florida.
Fellow white people: Don’t be Arizona, or Florida. And fucking vote accordingly, because the next election is gonna be a doozy. If you really want to do something, start paying attention to your local school board meetings— that’s where all these fucking stupid decisions get made and not enough sane people attend them to object. It takes a village.
Until next time,
A
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