It is Saturday morning.
I am back in a classroom.
It is my normal practice to offer a reflection.
It will as usual be a combination of personal reflection and observation on a larger scale.
I invite you to continue reading.
This was my 2nd complete week, my 3rd overall, in my new school/classroom. By now I know all of my students by name even when they are not in the classroom. I am starting to get a very good sense of their strengths and weaknesses, their personalities. I am even learning about some of their fears, their life situations.
I have also gotten to know more about my fellow faculty and staff. I am finding connections I did not know existed. I have mentioned about those with whom I had prior connections. To this I add an administrator who as a high school student interned with a former Congressman who is a friend, a principal doing his doctoral work in the same program I participated in at Howard, and a special ed teacher who was a student while I was in my first 3 years at Roosevelt (I did not teach or know her, because she was a 10th grader when I arrived, and Government was then a 9th grade course). I am finding a number of people who came to the school deliberately to make a difference - the administrator had taught at two very prestigious elite private schools before coming to us as an English teacher a number of years ago and the math teacher on my team is a graduate of Penn, just to offer two examples.
There were good days and bad days this week. One day this week in one class all of my students were on time, all were still there at the end of the period, and all completed all of their work. That was the first time in any of my classes - usually there are not only absences, there are tardies, and often I have to have a disruptive student removed (far too many of our students lack self control, something that we need to help them with as much as we do their academics). The next morning the principal suggested I compliment them before the entire school when we started the day. I did. Big mistake. That day they were the worst behaved any of my classes has been since I arrived.
Please keep reading.
I am having to adjust. It is not that I am lowering expectations. Far from it. But I have to recognize reality. These are young kids. Our periods are 75 minutes long except on Wednesdays when students are dismissed at 2:30 so teachers can have professional development. They have neither gym nor recess. They have too much energy. I cannot, except during a test, insist that they stay in their seats uninterrupted, or not tap. I have to find ways to get them up and moving around, or they will be unable to learn.
I have to pick and choose battles, and even when a student is being rude, non-responsive, be willing to give multiple chances and to find ways to acknowledge even small successes.
Touch is very important - it may be a hand on the shoulder during a quiet private conversation. It is often after I can get a student to acknowledge and own an inappropriate behavior and apologize that I might ask "Are we good now?" or something to that efffect, and if the student accepts it, we exchange "terrorist fist bumps" - I like that expression because of how the right-wing attacked the Obamas for their fist bump 4 years ago. Has it really been four year?
Yesterday I had one student removed after three warnings. We use a messaging system because we do not have an intercom, and when I put out the message I needed C. removed, every adult in the school knew it. When he came back in, he apologized to me and went back to doing his work. I put out a message on that. Later I had administrators, security and other teachers congratulate me. It was the first time he had ever apologized to anyone!
What I am realizing: I may be where I belong, even as demanding as it is for anyone, much less someone in his md-60s. I have taught high-powered students in a nationally recognized high school. This is world's apart. While my gifted students at Eleanor Roosevelt stretched me intellectually, and I was able to challenge them, this is work that fewer people can do.
Perhaps it is arrogant of me, but I think there is little I have done that is as important as what I am doing, if I can maintain it.
Having had the experience of Eleanor Roosevelt and now teaching here, I am almost uniquely privileged to talk about what education in this nation means, of how we really need to rethink what it is we are doing.
I have some gifts at being able to explain the reality of the classroom and of the lives of students to people removed from these settings.
Because I am now based in a classroom of students very much at risk, I begin to think it gives my words and actions that much more power and credibility when I speak out or write on educational issues.
I have begun a conversation with the Executive Director of the foundation that oversees our school and two others. That conversation includes not only how we can take advantage of the offers of generosity members of this community have already made. It includes using my communications skills and possibly some connections to help advocate for the school, for our approach, at the same time as I also try to influence educational policy on a broader scale.
If you are a regular reader of my posting, you might have noticed how much my output here has dropped since I entered my current position. I have to recognize that do properly do what I have embarked on requires me to make choices because I will have neither the time nor the energy (especially mental) to do all I was doing before and still do justice to my responsibilities.
What have I learned? I think I am beginning to learn that I may finally have found a place where I truly belong.
One of my heroes or if you will models was the late Henri Nouwen, a priest who was a wonderful writer. He was a good friend of someone else who has influenced me, Parker Palmer, also a wonderful writer. I mention Nouwen because he spent most of his working life serving mentally disabled people.
It is not that my students are mentally disabled, although more than a few have serious learning problems - one young lady cannot read quickly enough by herself to get through a test, so I have to have someone read to her so she can understand and then complete her tests. She is trying to improve herself. Do we not have a responsibility to provide her the assistance she requires?
As I write this, about 1/3 of my students are at the school. We offer tutoring every Saturday. We begin that with breakfast. At least we know those students will get one good meal over the weekend.
I have a friend who wants me to come teach AP in the high school he serves as principal. He has been raising the academics of his largely lower middle class and working class population. It is something I could easily do. It would be a longer commute but no longer a school day since I am at my current school usually for at least 9 hours daily. It would pay more. I am ever more inclined to withdraw myself from consideration. Because I may be where I belong.
I don't yet know that. But I begin to expect it. And my wife tentatively agrees.
We'll see. I will not finally decide until sometime after the winter break, now only 2 weeks away.
I will ask as we say among Quakers that as I continue the exploration you hold me "in the light" - I acknowledge my need for spiritual and emotional support.
I think I am on the right path.
I will at least for now continue to travel it.
I know I am serving a useful purpose.
Peace.