Did You Get The Memo?

Posted by avoiceinthewilderness

I was teaching summer school classes in a voluntary program for high school children. My class was playing Jeopardy to review some of the concepts we had been learning. The game was heating up; the score was really close. In retrospect, I should have calmed the kids down a bit, but I was happy to see them so excited about school-related material. It was down to the final question. Team B chose a category. I read the question. They talked it over and then gave me the answer.

It was wrong. They lost the game.

Suddenly, a young female student from the losing team freaked out. She ran up to me and began screaming and waving her finger in my face.

“You mother fu-in, c-@#$. You f-in cheated! You mother fin@#$&…”and on and on.

I waited. “Are you finished?”

She continued, “no you mother fu-in, son of a b%$, you fu-in co-$#, etc, etc.”

“Are you finished?”

She stopped screaming.

“Good,” I started, “Get all of your stuff, go down to the principal and tell her that you are no longer welcome in my class. I don’t want to see you for the rest of the summer.”

Whoa. If you teach in NY City, you know it’s a no-no to send a child down to the principal’s office. It’s a no-no to send a child anywhere, really without seventeen steps that have been recorded, reported, and re-recorded. I’m not sure where I got the brass quijones from, but I was really angry. I never do anything like that.

Maybe it was because I knew that the program was voluntary , but my quijones became even brassier when the phone rang a little while later. It was the principal.

“Jessica is down here and she’s really sorry about what she did. Would you please take her back into your class?”

“Absolutely not,” I explained.

“But she’s really sorry. She wants to apologize,” she prodded.

“Well, I’m not ready to accept her apology.”

I don’t know what had gotten into me. Maybe I ate my Wheaties that day or something, but I was adamant. I was also pretty hurt to tell the truth. I was always really fair and respectful to my students. It hurt to be treated that way.

She was transferred to the teacher next door, who wasn’t happy. He’s a good friend of mine and currently works as an administrator. He asked me what happened and I told him. He wasn’t impressed.

“She’s a child,” he reprimanded. “You’re the adult.”

He made me feel a little bit stupid, but I persisted.

“Oh really,” I began. “And what would you do if you found out that your daughter had cursed out a teacher like that?”

He rolled his eyes. “Come on,” his voice dripped with disgust. “That’s different.”

And there you have it folks, the underlying philosophy that is destroying the New York City Public Schools-somehow, our students are different.

I tried to think about why the children in my school are different. From what I can see, they look like other children-they’ve got eyes, and a nose, and a mouth. They seem to have four limbs with fingers and toes and stuff. They eat when they’re hungry and sleep when they’re tired. So how then could they be different? I wondered.

Then, suddenly I got it. Most of the students in my school are black.

Make no mistake about it, there is a memo that was sent out to the public schools and it says that black children are to be treated differently. I don’t know who wrote the memo and when, but it’s been passed around a lot.

According to the memo, black children, and other minorities for that matter should not be expected to behave. Apparently, they don’t know how to.

I’m being a little tongue in cheek, but I am deadly serious when it comes to this topic. For the life of me, I cannot understand where this thinking comes from-and yet it’s everywhere.

Children push limits-that’s their job. They push, we hold the line. They push harder. We hold the line even tighter. It’s always been that way and it always will. Some kids are definitely tougher and push even harder (I was one of these). It’s our job, then, to be even stronger.

For some reason, this doesn’t happen in some public schools where the majority of children are not white and it has created a dangerous and chaotic school culture. Children quickly realize that they can behave any way that they want and nothing will happen. They internalize this and come to expect it. By the time they get to the high school level, they’re surprised when someone tries to stop them from misbehaving. They look at you as if in shock.

Have you ever heard a parent say, “Well, he doesn’t behave like that at home.” Teachers usually get angry when they hear this, but you know what? They’re probably right- their child probably doesn’t act like that at home. For some reason, he or she has gotten the message that it’s ok to misbehave in school.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that a lot of this attitude comes from a misguided compassion. Let’s face it, we, as a society, are still trying to come to terms with the effects of the apartheid that existed for so long in this country. Many inner-city kids come from families that haven’t had a lot of access to the advantages of the mainstream. Yet, it seems to me that the solution isn’t to treat such students as if they were somehow different, and thereby implying, inferior.

To be honest, I find this compassion to be extremely arrogant and quite frankly, insulting; and it doesn’t just apply to the children’s behavior. We also expect little or nothing from their academic performance as well. How many children receive A’s on papers for which their peers in a different school would receive a failing grade? Isn’t this offensive to the child? Doesn’t it somehow imply that he or she is not capable of more?

Now, I’m speaking from the perspective of a white teacher. I don’t pretend to speak from the perspective of anyone else. But let’s face it, for a very long time the majority of teachers and administrators in the inner city have been white, and many of them did get the memo.

The really bizarre thing is that when I tell some of my white colleagues that we need to be tougher with the students or that we need higher expectations, they imply that I’m racist. Beam me up Scotty.

In retrospect, I have to admit that I did get the memo. I got it before I started teaching in New York City. I was a bit of an idiot myself when I started. I tolerated behavior that I shouldn’t have. I gave my students passing grades on work that was sub par. I looked at my students as poor creatures in need of my salvation. What an arrogant jerk I was.

I quickly realized, however, that the memo was a crock of chowder and threw it away. It made my teaching much harder, and made me much less popular, but oh well. I didn’t enter this profession to be popular.

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