The schools still seem like the best hope for redeeming the life trajectories of our more troubled populations. Schools are well positioned to reach out to families and to affect neighborhoods. Most do not yet choose to do so, though to be fair, most do not feel they have resources to put toward such work. But to improve the schools, our educators, parents and policymakers need to care more about what’s happening beyond school.
Makes sense, doesn't it? Sounds reasonable. And it points at a real problem that NCLB and much of our educational policy ignores - that schools are insufficient to address the needs of many of our children.
Today I want to take you through a disturbing column by Julia Steiny in the Providence Journal entitled With our children’s future, we are reaping what we sow. I haven't yet given you the disturbing material.
Steiny is a former member of the Providence School Board; she now consults and writes for a number of education, government and private enterprises. She begins the column by talking about a recent every disturbing 30 hour period. During this period she will visit a prison where she teaches a literature class, spend time in a middle school, and go on home visitations with a "tracker," a community services worker for the state’s Department of Children, Youth and Families who monitors 25 students who have come to the attention of the department because of red flags. trying to get them to school, going with them to appointments, intervening, visiting them at home.
Let's begin with the prison literature class, in the Cranston Adult Correctional Institutes, maximum security section:
In the course of discussing two short stories, the inmates had gotten to talking about the powerful appeal of having a "bad boy" image.
One inmate said "I knew from an early age — 13 — that this was the life I wanted. And that I’d go to prison. When you’re 13, you know it all. I went to the Training School, but I didn’t admit I was wrong. I wanted to make my mark and be spectacular. I was out in seven years ... and then caught 25."
He paused. I realized he meant a 25-year sentence.
"It was only then that I knew..." He trailed off, but the other men nodded, presumably because they, too, had figured out too late that the bad-boy dreams would not make, but break their lives.
Thirteen. His dark road was mapped out when he was 13.
I have taught middle school for a total of 4 years in two different communities. The three years I spend at a school in Prince George's County exposed me to some kids like this, even though the majority of the kids were from middle class families. One of the kids from that school committed a gang-initiation murder when he was a high school sophomore. Another got 10 to 25 for a series of felonies that were a natural outgrowth of the break-ins he was already doing as a 15 year old. In my one visit to juvenile court because of an assault at the high school to which I moved in 1998 I saw three kids I had known at that middle school being charged - with grand theft auto, burglary, and armed robbery. For many kids the patterns are becoming obvious in middle school. There are children at risk for things other than their test scores in math and reading. And gangs are increasingly recruiting younger and younger children.
So let's see what Steiny has to say about her visit to the middle school. She began by wondering:
Who among them wanted the sex, drugs, and danger of the appealingly "bad" life?
and goes on to write:
It seemed like there might be a few, judging by the ugly sentiments blaring from the front of T-shirts. The school is a typical urban school with large classes, a big, old building and a population mostly eligible for federally subsidized lunch, which is to say their families are poor. The school hasn’t time, staff or inclination to find out why a child would wear a skull and crossbones on his chest, as though he himself were toxic. Or why a seriously overweight girl with a sweet pink top would sport a necklace that boldly said "bitch."
Here I would remark that not all the external indications such as Steiny notes are dispositive. Some may be little more than typical indications of adolescent rebellion, and creating of space for oneself. But it is also true that in many cases these may be indications of explorations that are not necessarily positive.
And the home visit with the "tracker?" She notes that some homes were pristine, others were slovenly messes. The "tracker" notes that some families have real issues, although the reader is not made privy to what these may be. But there is one case on which she focuses:
Toward the end of the evening, there was one boy in particular who was in bad shape, beyond enraged. He found malice in the slightest statement of his peers and teachers. He felt duty-bound to stand up for himself and fight. The tracker and the mom tried to reason with him, but he would have none of it.
All I could think was: Is he 13? He could have been. What on earth got him going in this way? And assuming he’s already fixed on a dark road leading to a bad place, who would be in a position to pull him back? Could this rage have been prevented?
I have encountered many students like this, too many. Not all come from lower income families. Some have broken families, others do not. About all that such children seem to have in common is an anger, a rage, that is just below the surface, and far too often leads to serious consequences. I think of one high school young lady who has to go to anger management because she is close to blowing up if her behavior is corrected, or if her immediate needs are not met. In her case having encountered the father her teachers know that how he treats her is the proximate cause of her ongoing rage, but as of yet there is no basis for an intervention by child welfare, and were there one it might put her at physical risk from the father. We walk a tortured path to keep her behavior sufficiently in check that her clear intellectual gifts get the opportunity to be developed.
Steiny offers us an imagery worth sharing:
I’m a gardener, so especially in the early summer, I think in horticultural terms. And I’ve always felt that our high-tech, speed-obsessed, time-strapped culture has a tendency to forget that kids are organic. They have a nature. You can cultivate them or you can let them grow wild in troubled families, dangerous neighborhoods, low-expectation schools and crime-obsessed media culture.
Continuing with the horticultural imagery, she informs us that she had in the 30 hours
I had not seen a promising child garden.
and goes on to explain that she is going to use her column to explore the lives of children outside of school.
Many people have written far more eloquently than can I about how schools and teachers cannot assume all of the responsibility for children when we have them 6.5 or so hours a day. Our educational policy will not succeed for many children who lack supportive environments, or even a safe an quiet place to read or do homework. There is unfortunately no universal solution to the kinds of problems with which children arrive at the schoolhouse gate, any more than there is only one magical way of teaching, of organizing curriculum.
I find Steiny's use of the agricultural imagery useful in a fashion she does not make explicit. She posits a dichotomy between cultivating and letting grow wild. Think about mixing both - that is, one cultivates a crop or a lawn but does not pay attention to the weeds that intrude. If one is not careful the weeds take over, become invasive and pervasive. It does not take many troubled students to totally disrupt the learning environment for the rest.
Let me be clear. I have had many students who come from troubled environments who overcome. And the economic situation of the family does not have to be dispositive - one of the most troubled students I have taught was from a highly educated family who simply could not find a way of reaching him. We largely lost him by his sophomore year, when while on probation and in a residential situation after being arrested on felony charges he left his addition treatment center illegally and went and got high and drunk again. Above I talked about a young man who committed a murder in a gang initiation. His parents kept his younger brother out of school for a year, and when he returned (to the high school at which I now teach) he was one of the sweetest kids you ever saw.
There is no certainty. Clearly the impact of lives outside of school has a great deal to do with what happens in school. We can make some difference, but are not omnipotent. Nor are we omniscient. Those in closest contact with the students are usually the teachers and coaches, and with the number of students we have we may have a very incomplete picture of what the life of the student is. Nor are we necessarily trained to deal with the more extreme circumstances we may encounter.
The United States has over 2 million people incarcerated. Granted, far too many are there simply for possession of drugs While in custody these people, largely young men, often of lower SES and from minority groups, are neither contributing to the society around us nor are they really learning how to change their behavior and develop the skills necessary to be successful should they be released. Think of the man with whom we started - after doing a seven he gets out and catches a 25. People like this cost society dearly, not only in the loss of their contribution, but in the resources it takes to run the criminal justice system.
I have no magic solutions to offer. I do know that merely measuring a school by Adequate Yearly Progress on tests, scores disaggregated by subgroups, will not address the kinds of problems about which Steiny writes, and which far too many of us encounter in our teaching lives. I am not saying the numbers are overwhelming - even an incarceration of 2 million is less than 2% of our population. And yet the loss of that many lives is catastrophic. We need to understand this is but one of a number of problems which our educational policy does not address. Students without proper nutrition, students who lack basic health care, students who live in situations of brutality or constant danger - why do we think merely making education more 'rigorous/ will address their needs?
I am sorry if this diary is upsetting. As I wrestle with issues of educational policy and of my own future as a classroom teacher, I cannot ignore the children we lose. I experience my own level of frustration at children I cannot reach. And as I look around I wonder if we realize how much human potential we are wasting because we are addressing only the intellectual components of education?
This is something I will be pondering today, and for some time to come.
How about you?