Why I March

Teachers took to the streets on May 16 in North Carolina. It's been a long, hard decade for education since the economic meltdown. When the state legislature and governor's mansion changed hands, things became grim indeed. They've never recovered and now public schools feel under attack from all sides.

I started this blog when I left the classroom in 2011. The changes were already apparent. Raises were a distant memory. Classroom budgets diminished and I found myself spending more of my own money and tapping parents for basics. I hear it got a whole lot worse after I left teaching. Retirement gave me some distance but I still talk to friends I left behind.

This has been a week of public protest. On May 14, the Poor People's Campaign kicked off with direct action and civil disobedience in more than thirty cities across the country. Raleigh was one of them. The crowd was small compared to the Moral Mondays from a few years ago, but the issues are the same. Poverty, racism, healthcare, living wage, education. People are coming together.

These two actions back-to-back have had me thinking. They are so intertwined, poverty and education. I think back to my days in the classroom and the poverty that was evidenced every day in our school.

It wasn't one of those terrible schools you see pictured on the documentaries. Actually, the building was sound and recently renovated. The school staff was caring and dedicated. It stands in a neighborhood whose residents often struggle. Many of the 6 to 8-year-olds I taught showed signs of stress.

I remember one little boy who, after being given a toothbrush by the visiting dental educators was thrilled because he had his own now and wouldn't have to share a toothbrush with his siblings.

I regularly had children who were underdressed for the weather or showed up in clothes that hadn't been washed recently. Some came to school too late for breakfast and arrived hungry almost every day. Some whispered that they hadn't eaten any supper the night before. I kept large bags of cereal behind my desk and cheese crackers in the closet for such situations. 

Sometimes they would go through the lunch line only to find that their account was empty. I wasn't the only teacher or teacher-assistant who kept extra money on account to cover those lunches.

Serious behavior problems arose. A few times I had to report suspicion of abuse. More often, a child would "act out" unaccountably, hiding under a table or crying and rocking inconsolably. I made many referrals to our overburdened counselors or assistant principal. 

Our school had a burgeoning population of Spanish-speaking students during the years I was there. Despite the language barriers with both the children and their parents we managed, and all of us grew together. What I did not anticipate were the problems particular to immigrant families. There was the boy who took everything home every night because this was the third school he had attended during the current year. Sure enough, one day he simply never came back. When one of my little girls confided that her daddy had been taken away and had to go back to Mexico, I was stunned. She was devastated. My heart broke for her.

Too many of these kids had to deal with situations that would have been unthinkable to me as a child: the boy who was going out to dinner to celebrate his dad's birthday but they ended up at the ER after the girlfriend stabbed his father, the girl who came to school one morning talking about the man who had been shot dead at the end of her driveway the night before, the number of kids who lived with grandparents or other relatives because their parents were on drugs or locked up, the child who had to get up before dawn to ride with his taxi-driving mother until time to go to school.

Poverty. I thought I knew about it. I had been on welfare and food stamps when my son was an infant. I had scrounged and worked multiple low wage jobs to hold body and soul together. But I realized it was a whole different level of experience the day I tried to teach a sequencing lesson to one of my first-graders.

I spread out six brightly colored picture cards entitled "How to make a Bed." His task was to put them in order. He hesitated then moved the cards around, obviously guessing. I gave him hints, but it didn't help. Finally, he told me he didn't know. He had never had a bed. He slept on the couch or the floor in a sleeping bag.

 Poverty and Education. That's why I march.

Poor People's Campaign, Raleigh NC, 5/14/2018

Three Years and Counting

It takes awhile to get perspective on anything. It has now been three years since I officially retired from my teaching job. This morning, I found my journal from that time and read it, from September 2010 right through the breakdown that put me on medical leave in January 2011, then into retirement. Trouble was brewing throughout, and I was staring down that deep well of depression long before the day I walked out. I put up a valiant fight. I nearly lost myself in the effort.

What is most striking for me is the language I used to describe my situation at school. It was a battle and I was in the trenches. I was responsible for my company of 21 students and felt like I was failing them. There were too many casualities. I also used a prison metaphor. At that time, I intended to work until I turned 62, two more school years. I saw it as a sentence. I would be paroled on my 62nd birthday, and would return to civilian life, the world outside, the real world.

I had developed many coping mechanisms and strategies for getting from one day to the next. Over and over, the saving grace was time with the kids. I journaled my delight in them, described them as precious, worried over them and celebrated their successes. I sought refuge and support in my network of colleagues, foxhole friends who struggled along beside me.

Perhaps the strangest bit I came across was the account of a day when I couldn't stop crying, felt hopeless and defeated at school, and one of the people who held some power told me that "Depression is from Satan, and Satan has you right where he wants you." I was stunned speechless. I did feel like I was living in hell, but would never have characterized it like that. Way outside of my belief structure!

What made me think of this today was talking to a friend who escaped from the public school insanity into a more balanced teaching position. Spring break has just passed, and I remember spring breaks and Sundays back when I was working. They were not times of rest and relaxation. Every Sunday was a marathon of work: writing lesson plans, making materials, researching ideas, checking work, bookkeeping, and devising strategies and lessons for individual students who needed particular attention. It was also the day of dread, knowing that 5:15 would come on Monday morning and it would be on again, 10-12 hour workdays, faculty and committee meetings, conferences, phone calls, emails, assessments, and oh yes, maybe even some teaching.

I thought about this today while lying on the guest bed upstairs, petting the dog and doing nothing except enjoying the experience of a peaceful Sunday afternoon. I know what my friends are likely doing today, I know what tomorrow morning will be like, and the pace of the work week, and the feeling that whatever you do it is never enough, and there's no way to catch up. I'm immensely grateful to be out of it.

I wish teaching was truly about education. I wish it was more about discovery and delight, and less about measurement and regulation. I wish children were not being conditioned to think of learning in the negative context of testing, competition, inadequacy and, far too often, failure. It's not like that for everyone, but too often that is the reality of school for students, teachers and administrators alike. 

I still miss my kids. I still think of them. I no longer feel like I failed them, for the most part. I know I did what I could to bring human kindness and love into those groups of 6 and 7 and 8 year olds. They were still curious, excited, and motivated to explore their world. I like to think I helped guide them in those important ways, at least a little bit ---- and let them know that I believed in them. Those are qualities they can carry forward much better than scores on a test or grades on a report card. And that's why I wanted to be a teacher in the first place.

Who is expendable?

I had an interesting conversation with my brother last night.  He's the one who self-identifies as an "Aspy" --- mind you, that's self diagnosis, not something formal.  But I do concur, that had he been born in the last decade instead of nearly 60 years ago, he might have been identified as having Aspbergers.  What he told me last night about his experiences in the school system enlightened me, and made me mourn for the person he might have been.  No matter how vehemently one believes that getting ahead in life is a function of the will and ambition and boot-strap effort, (as we hear so frequently in what passes for social/political debate) it's hard not to feel for the child who was a square peg trying valiantly to fit into a round hole.

School in the 1950s and 60s had not changed too much over several generations. There was a great emphasis on authority, predictability and conformity.  It did not feel oppressive, but it also didn't encourage or reward original thinking.  My objection was that the class moved too slowly, especially in reading.  I would read the entire year's reading book in the first week and be bored the rest of the year.  I was also given to correcting my teacher's spelling and grammar, the direct result of being my father's daughter. It wasn't well received.  But I was sociable and always had a circle of friends, so life was pretty good.

My brother, the only boy in the family, carried the burden of being very intelligent and creative, but always confused about human interaction.  He spent hours and days playing in his room, setting up elaborate worlds with toy soldiers, cardboard boxes and blankets.  He was comfortable enough in the family, but the outside world of school, Sunday school or community activities was very challenging.  He never knew how to fit in. Throughout those teen years, he was a loner, riding his bike, writing a novel, going to movies by himself.

I do remember how indignant I was when I was in fourth grade and he was in first, and his teacher would not allow him to write with his left hand, going so far as to immobilize it so that he wouldn't do that.  To this day, you can hardly read his writing.  Other teachers through the years, he told me last night, let him know in no uncertain terms, that not following the pacing guide, not staying with the class, stating his own ideas and questioning the material, would only result in punishment and bad grades.  At one point, he independently  finished the 8th grade math book so quickly that he simply stopped going to class and spent his time in the band room and theater instead.  He scored the 3rd highest grade on the final exam, but still flunked the course.  The next year he was put in remedial math.

OK, you say.  Now, we know better.  That was in the olden days.  It couldn't happen today because we have so much emphasis on individualization and differentiation.  And that's good, especially for the kids who fall behind or struggle to keep up.  But what is happening to our children whose minds don't follow the beaten path?  What about the young Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg?  Are we losing out on thousands and thousands of young people who are discouraged before they even get out of middle school, because they don't pass the bubble tests, they become convinced that there is something wrong with them, they don't have friends, they don't fit the mold?  How many people are we losing like my brother, who has continued to have a difficult time getting traction in life?

There is precious little attention paid to social and emotional intelligence, and when you combine that lack with the undervaluing of creativity and wide-ranging thought, the people we lose are legion.  We, as a society, can't afford that. We need them.  We need everyone.  If we are to survive and thrive, we can't afford to throw anyone away.