A teacher responds
Regarding my review of Hard Times at Douglass High, a teacher (Mr. McDermott) who was featured in the documentary leaves a comment on Flypaper:
While I agree with much of your global criticism in the NRO article, I find your view of the teachers and staff distressingly shortsighted. All the teacher training and certification in the world cannot fully prepare you for what you’re walking into each day at a school like Douglass. It’s a constant give and take of expectations, discipline, and academic rigor. If you push too hard, the kids drop out. If you don’t push enough, they run wild. Factor in the empty mandates from politicians that every child must succeed, add to it the diminished authority of the classroom teacher, and multiply it all by the impotent curricula created by educrats who are disconnected from the realities of classroom implementation, and you’ve got a formula for failure.
You think I wasn’t pining to make literary allusions during my lesson they profiled in the documentary, to elevate it above the concrete here and now that these kids are mired in? I was following curriculum, sir. Curriculum that I, as a certified teacher, was mandated to work from by the state of Maryland. Curriculum passed down from on high by the same pedantic wonks who feel they have the answers to what ails public education, but don’t have the constitution take their philosophies to the front lines to apply in person.
I’ll be talking more about Hard Times today at 3 p.m. today on WBAL, to which one may listen live by clicking here and then clicking the “listen live” link in the top right left corner of the page.
Related posts:
- Time to think bigger on teacher prep
- Did you know? Cincinnati students in “F” schools 5x less likely to have National Board certified teacher than students in “A” schools
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
June 24th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Fifteen years ago, when I first became a teacher in urban high school, I was forty and I had extensive experience with juvenile felons. Then we still were mostly an inner ring suburban school. We had an elite school within a school, and the top teachers from the segregation days when we had been a low poverty, high performing school, had stayed and adjusted.
I could not believe the teaching talent!
With the proliferation of choice we lost all of our top students and almost all of our top teachers to six magnet schools. Most teachers left due to exhaustion.
It has always been rare for a young teacher to make it in our school. We were building a cadre of 30 somethings with middle school experience. NCLB, and the policies it inspired, drove them all away. Ordinarily, those great young teachers cried and cried as they relucatantly agreed to transfer to magnet schools.
Now, we are a hardcore inner city school, very comparable to Douglass. (our test scores are nearly identical; Douglass seems to have even less disciplinary backing and we seem to have more violence, especially since we are in a gang war) This year, I agreed to take on a troubled freshman class during the spring. After all, last year we were like The Wire and I had handled huge classes of sophomores, and this year I had almost no problems getting my sophomores in shape. A decade ago, I had turned around some real hardcore freshmen classes, also in the midst of gang violence.
But now, the rules have changed. Now we get no disciplinary backing, and the students knew it. Plus NCLB-inspired policies are basically a sucide trip. Students can cut whenever they want because they are guaranteed the right to work off unlimited absences, and they have figured out the reality. The adults are swamped and they mostly just erase hundreds of absences. They have friends who enrolled in “credit recovery” programs where they just memorize answers for online tutorials, and they hear about friends and family who “work off” six or eight or more credits in a few weeks. If a teacher doesn’t want to bend, there are always counselors, asst. principals, and others to join with their mom to break down the teacher. (the scene at the end reminded me of the time where I gave in to the lobbying. The student had been erasing telephone messages and the mom had paid for an expensive graduation party.)
To make a long story short, that freshman class ate my lunch. I had always benefitted from the double standard where principals gave backing to veteran teachers who had proven their classroom management skills. But I faced eight to ten chronically disruptive males in additon to the rest of the challenges, and when you get a critical mass of students creating an impossable mess, administrators are going to hide. Our best asst. principal said she couldn’t help on the toughest students because she had been kicked off their cases. The moms thought she was to tough.
But that’s a long way of introducing this issue. If I faced the challenge that Mr. McDermot faced, I’d had a huge advantage. Firstly, I teach Geography and its Standards encompass the whole of human and physical reality. So, I wouldn’t be tied so closely to English Standards. Secondly, I would have earned the right to adjust my curriculum and I would have faced minimal opposition from the administration. (for instance, when teaching World History, I start with the 20th century which is much more interesting and relevent, and it allows me to create interest and build a learning team early in the year. In return, I agreed to have every student in all of my classes to have a text on the desk in case we got a visit from the central office.) Thirdly, I had had their older brothers, sisters, and cousins. Fourthly, I could teach them a little of the “senior’s lessons” to build motivation, pride, etc.
Also, I yelled. I usually don’t yell, but one time I’ll always remember. I let my frustration show. What really bothered me was the 20+ students, mostly girls who wanted to learn. They needed individual attention. But when I tried, it was just like McDermott’s experience. When I focused on an individual, the chronically disruptive took advantage. Several girls came up to me and tried to cheer me up. They hated seeing me this way. Other teachers had given up and they couldn’t stand to see me discouraged. I had been trying to run out the clock, but at that I couldn’t. I yelled for the last 5 minutes.