Summer School ended for me today. The kids still have a week of testing and credits earned or not. It was a very bittersweet experience. I shook each child's hand, and in some cases was granted giant hugs with the promise of changes in behavior, renewed dedication to self-improvement and all the rest of it. I don't think I served these kids well. I tried. But when it came time to grade fairly and accurately, based on skills acquired, it wasn't pretty. The kid who showed up every day but refused to do a lick of work? When I sat with him and he read, I could see that he COULD read, but he could not digest what he read. He needed simpler versions of the information, but what he really needed was one:to:one help with analyzing and synthesizing what he'd just read. I could not do that with so many others needing different kinds of help. The girl who couldn't read was easier, I could break down the text for her, teach her vocabulary using easier language and we could summarize. The girl who hated writing? I encouraged her to take baby steps, that's the best I could do. She took a few. The girl who got arrested for shoplifting? I encouraged her (when I ran into her on the train) to come back. That was the best I could hope for. She came for one day and vanished. The girl who is deciding to give up on school and hang out with her friends instead? She passed. But barely.
I succeeded in the sense that I let them know that I care about them, that I am listening to them, that I respect them, and that I find them interesting and worthwhile. Yes, there I served them. I listened, we laughed, I waxed poetic or perhaps graphic is a better word choice, on their choices. The boy who won't eat breakfast and is dizzy. The girl who eats donuts and Red Bull chased with Sour Patch Kids. The morning Coke drinkers. I tried. I explained to them that simple choices, eggs, beans, yogurt, even smoothies with protein wouldn't cost them more and would make them feel so much better. Yes, I was and am a broken record here.
It amazes me how in such little time, with such little effort, these kids reveal themselves to be good, kind, and how truly they want to succeed but the deck is stacked. It's so stacked. Later, a fellow teacher and I had a therapeutic de-brief on the need for a dean, the need for some limited, agreed upon rules by which to live with in the school community. Yes, they need to feel empowered and that the school is theirs. But, not at the expense of learning. It IS shocking to watch kids assume it is their right to charge their phones, Facetime, text, and play games during class. It was very hard to believe. This fellow teacher and I both felt that as outsiders we should not rock the boat, but we also felt stunned that there was no one around to enforce a basic, and pretty understood city rule. We felt saddened by the sense of entitlement and more importantly the PRICE of this entitlement. The number of minutes spent this summer asking kids, daring kids, shocking kids into understanding that I WOULD NOT let them use their electronic devices in my classroom and I didn't care if Ms. or Mr. So-in-So did, was...hard to quantify.
These kids have to see that believing in themselves, and investing in their education is worthwhile. It's a hard sell when it isn't clear,the results aren't visible and it's coming from a face that doesn't look like theirs. There are plenty of brown and black skinned folks including the head of the school delivering the same message though. So, why, why is it not penetrating here the way it has in other places I've worked? Lack of unity. Mixed messages, unclear direction, I go back to that stacked deck. When you have a stacked deck do you play your best anyway or do you fold?
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