Читать книгу Who's In My Classroom? - Tim Fredrick - Страница 9

In the fall of 1992, I was a 24-year-old doctoral student in New York City. Like many of my classmates, I struggled to balance the demands of my courses with the need to support myself. Rather than look for work as an adjunct professor or a researcher, I took a job with a nonprofit organization helping to run an after-school program at a junior high school in East Harlem. Since I was pursuing my degree in developmental psychology, I figured, “What better way to learn about development than by working directly with developing youth?”

I had grown up in the northeast section of the Bronx, so it wasn't as though I was raised in a wealthy suburb of the city. But East Harlem seemed like a completely different world to me. We were in the midst of the crack and heroin epidemic of the early 1990s that hit East Harlem extremely hard. Unfortunately, the neighborhood became synonymous to some people with drugs and crime.

When I told friends about my new job, I could see the concern on their faces. “Are you sure you want to work there?” they asked. “You know that's not a safe neighborhood, right? It's like a war zone over there.”

As I prepared for my first day of work, I tried to mentally prepare for the “war zone” that would soon be my new place of work. Since I was working with an after-school program, I arrived right before the students were dismissed. Before I even entered the school building, I noticed several adults with orange buckets. They were walking around the schoolyard picking up things. I was curious, so I moved a bit closer and asked what they were doing. They said that they were removing needles before the students could be dismissed into the yard.

I was stunned. I tried not to react, but I felt defeated even before I met my students. If that's what these children had to deal with every day, I thought, how could I possibly relate to them? As I walked to what would become my classroom, I felt sad for the students. While they were entering the room, I was thinking about their schoolyard and the challenges they faced each day just to get to school.

With a combination of anxiety mixed with ignorance and arrogance, I introduced myself, sat down with my students and asked them what they thought about their school and their neighborhood. I thought I knew how they would answer and expected their answers to lead perfectly into the motivational speech that I already rehearsed in my head. I was going to tell them the one about if they did well in school, they could go to a good college, get a job, “escape” their neighborhood, and have a better life.

But that’s not how the conversation went. One student answered by saying that her neighborhood was loud. Almost without fully listening to the rest of her sentence, I was already hearing her say that being loud was bad and that she didn't like where she lived. As I began to feel sorry for her and what she had to endure, she continued, “But it's not a bad thing. They play music from my country and it reminds me of home. It helps me to sleep at night. I really love it here.”

“I love it here too,” another student shared. “This is my home. It's my favorite place in the city.”

I have no idea what my face revealed at the time, but inside I was stunned. How could a place that people described as a “war zone” bring such comfort to my students? How could they love a place that I thought they would want to escape from?

I often think about that time because it reminds me of how my beliefs and expectations about students can influence how I teach them, what I think they're capable of, and how much I engage them intellectually. Most importantly, it reminds me of the value of getting to know my students.

At the same time I was beginning my work in East Harlem, the staff of Youth Communication was refining an award-winning journalism program in which public high school students learn to write powerful personal essays about the challenges in their lives. The teen writers commit to a rigorous process in which they write more than a dozen drafts under the tutelage of full-time professional editors before their stories get published. The writers come from a wide range of backgrounds, including youth living in foster care or homeless shelters. And the writers attend a wide range of schools, from the most struggling neighborhood schools to elite public and private schools. All of the student examples in this book are from their stories.

The stories show aspects of their lives unseen by all but their most trusted teachers. But like my East Harlem students, when the teens write about tough circumstances they don't dwell on the negative. Rather, as you will see, they focus on how they manage those challenges and even overcome them. Sometimes, of course, what we mistakenly see as a sad challenge, the writers see as an important part of who they are. Like the occasional conversations when students really open up in our classrooms, the stories are a valuable window into their lives. They show the stressors that we may not be aware of; they show what is valuable and important to them; and they show how teens use resourcefulness, creativity, and resilience to overcome challenges and achieve their goals. In short, they offer the kind of information that would help all teachers be more effective, but that too few of us have access to.

One goal of this book is to help equip teachers and school leaders with skills and strategies that will enable them to hear students’ voices and to integrate their experiences into instruction. Fortunately, on that first day in East Harlem, I heard those voices. I asked my students to tell me about how they experience their neighborhood before I started imposing my stereotypes on them. Had I read some of the stories by teens at Youth Communication before that first day, I would have had a more nuanced and accurate understanding of the complexity of my students’ thoughts and feelings.

For example, Roberta Nin Feliz, 16, describes her rough Bronx neighborhood very differently than I would have imagined it before my experience in East Harlem:

At the entrance of my building, there are a few things you might smell: weed, urine, or food. But once you are inside, smelling the various scents of everyone's cooking is as pleasant as discovering an extra dollar in your pocket. Their cooking always smells bien sazonao (well-seasoned.) When you walk past apartment doors, you can usually hear the women of the building bochinchando (gossiping). The women usually gossip about the neighbor's daughter who got pregnant or the neighbor's son who sells drugs on the second floor. They can point things out better than even the most detailed forensic scientist.

Of course, Roberta is not oblivious to the problems in her neighborhood. But for her they exist in a larger context. In another part of her story, she writes:

If you travel two blocks east from my block, you will come across a parking lot where men come to pee. As soon as it gets a little dark, the alcoholics and crackheads scatter to the gate and relieve themselves. It is bad enough that I have to avoid dog poop, I also have to avoid disgusting men's urine.

But the most distinctive trait about my neighborhood is the smiles. Everywhere you look there is always someone smiling. On the same block where a 19-year-old kid died, you can find children playing hopscotch. The single mothers smile, the crackheads smile, the unemployed men smile, the dealers smile, the addicts smile, everyone smiles. Every corner you turn, you are guaranteed to always come across a smile.

The complexities and contradictions of her neighborhood have also helped Roberta to become a sophisticated observer who has learned to avoid the kinds of stereotypes that are often applied to her:

I'd like to help one of my close friends. We've known each other since 6th grade. He has dyslexia so it's hard for him to do schoolwork. I remember him asking me to help him read. I tried, but he got frustrated and said, “I don't get this sh-t.” Today, he's in a gang.

Still, he's one of the most caring people I know. I can count on him to listen and give me sound advice. When I've gone through bad breakups he's there to remind me of my worth and help me stay positive. I tell him that he should stop fighting and be focused in school. He has six younger siblings that he has to be a role model for. There are periods of time when he stays out of trouble, but eventually it seems to find him.

This friend is just one example of how being raised in the hood has made me more understanding and compassionate. Before I judge, I get to know a person because I know how it feels when people make assumptions about you based on where you live or your appearance. When I'm on the train I often feel that people are caught by surprise when they see me pull out a book by Shakespeare.

But other than showing respect, or just not making fools of ourselves, why is knowing students so important? Research within the fields of education and psychology shows that when we have knowledge of our students’ cultural backgrounds and knowledge of how they develop cognitively, physically, socially, emotionally, and linguistically, it makes us more effective teachers.¹ The problem is that we often don't ask students the types of questions that help us to understand how they develop and what they need to feel supported.

Over the last five years, I've had the pleasure of conducting focus groups with children and adolescents from urban, suburban, and rural schools to better understand how they experience school. One of the most consistent findings of this work is that students often feel as though adults in their schools make decisions for them but without sufficient knowledge of them and without hearing from them. Many of the stories by teens in the Youth Communication writing program confirm these findings.

If you put yourself in their shoes, it's easy to understand how frustrating that could be. Imagine walking into your doctor's office. The doctor takes a quick look at you and then, before asking a single question about your symptoms or concerns, tells you what is wrong with you, prescribes medication and a lifestyle change, and says that if you didn't comply, you'll be in trouble. Even if they were right, I suspect that it would be the last time you visited that doctor.

Desmin Braxton, 17, looks back on that feeling of being judged and not listened to in his story “Labeled Troublesome”:

Walking through the front door of my middle school, it feels like someone's turned the temperature up. I start sweating as if I had a fever. It seems like everything just stops and all the attention is focused on me. Today feels like a trouble day.

My music teacher stands at the corner of the hallway, looking at me like I've got something on my face. As I walk through the hall I see kids playing, fighting, ripping posters off the wall, and just chillin’ in the hallway. The noise level is high.

I spot my math teacher. He does not look happy to see me. He stares at me rudely with his arms folded and his jaw clenched, like I've already done something wrong.

“Hello, Mr. Davis, how you today?”

He continues to stare, so I continue walking through the hall to the auditorium. Before I get there, my social studies teacher from last year stops me.

“Desmin.”

“What?”

“Where are you going?”

“To the auditorium, with my class.”

“Go there right now.”

I start getting mad. It's crazy how he stops me even though he knows where I'm headed, but he walks past the other kids and doesn't say anything. It's like I have on a bright red shirt that says, “Stop me.”

I admit I do things that get me in trouble at school. I like to talk in class, argue with the teacher and make people laugh. But I feel like the teachers and principals are always waiting for me to do something stupid so they can jump on my case. It's like we're in a war. The only question is who's going to strike first.

A lot of times it's me who makes the first strike. I do these little tests to see if a teacher is going to be respectful. If the teacher is cool, I'm not going to cross the line. But if he gets me mad, it's going to be a battle.

When I get a negative response from my teachers, I react with a rude comment, to let them know I do not like what they say. It makes me mad that they feel they can speak to me any way they want and try to make me afraid of them.

But the arguments with my teachers are cutting into my time for doing my work. It's making me fall behind in class so my grades are dropping. I end up focusing on the teacher and not learning the lesson. Then I'm stuck looking silly, without a clue on how to do the work.

Desmin wants to succeed. But he needs support that he's not getting. When I started working in schools, I was surprised by how many times I took part in meetings in which plans were made to “meet students’ needs” and to “support their learning” without ever involving students. We were essentially telling them what was wrong with them and prescribing a plan to “help” them without fully understanding their needs, what wasn't working for them, or how they felt we could best support them.