"We must learn to live together as brothers, or we shall perish together as fools."
- Dr. Martin Luther King
I thought often of this quote last week as I prepared my classroom, attended meetings, and met the new teachers at the inner-city middle school where I teach. We had a fairly high turnover rate from last year to this year, but the new teachers seem to have a lot to offer. As I looked around the room at the first staff meeting, however, I noted how our demographics seem like a reverse version of our students' demographics. I read a study last year that said nationally 83% of the teacher workforce is white, while our student body is increasingly made up of students of color. This is certainly true where I teach.
This fact is rarely addressed directly in the professional development sessions I attend, but I think it's important. If the teaching force in our country is overwhelmingly white, female and from middle class backgrounds, but our students are increasingly people of color (with many from less advantaged backgrounds), how do we make sure we can relate? This has a direct impact on how effectively we lead in the classroom. After decades in education, I do think it is entirely possible for one teacher to reach students from all backgrounds, and I know many teachers who do. In the process, they create a classroom community that is larger and better than what any individual person has to offer. However, like anything else worth doing, it takes effort.
My research on Rosenwald schools (see www.underthekudzu.org) and reading of African American history has helped me to appreciate on a deep level that all of our students bring a lot to the table. My African American students have a very rich educational and cultural heritage. Similarly, that research motivates me to seek a better understanding of my other students. Even the local culture was something strange to me when I moved here 20 years ago. Where I live, in rural North Carolina, parents will sometimes take their kids out of school to go hunting or fishing. At first I could not understand this. Gradually, I came to appreciate that they were doing something important: Passing on a knowledge of the outdoors, and creating important bonding experiences within the family.
Sometimes, I take a few minutes at the start of class to have students talk about their backgrounds. This might include talking about another country or another state, or it might just be a story about riding up to road to visit a grandparent. They show us what they are talking about by using maps and the internet. In this way students practice their communication skills, while helping the rest of us appreciate something new. Of course, students are not just a product of their culture; they bring their unique talents and intelligence and creativity with them to school each day. Culture is the setting, while each student is a unique jewel.
Growing up, I did have the advantage of college educated parents, but I was raised by a single mother in precarious economic circumstances, and attended public school in NYC. Although I had the good fortune to get into The Bronx High School of Science, one of the public "exam schools" in NYC, my middle school was terrible. I know what it's like to be assaulted in school, and I know what it's like to have only second-hand clothing to wear. These things are not insurmountable, but they are distracting and draining.
My purpose here is not to look for sympathy, because I am over these experiences now. However, they do help me look with compassion on the students in my school who are in difficult situations. I think it's important for teachers to make a distinction between pity and compassion. Pity generates an attitude that says "You poor thing! Don't worry too much about this assignment. I know your mom had to leave for work at six this morning, so she wasn't there to help you get out the door and that made you miss breakfast." Compassion, on the other hand, says "Here's a pass, I'm sure Ms. Stack will let you eat this snack in the resource room. When you come back you can help me by checking answers in the review game. I know you're really bright, and I want you to work hard this year, because I expect you to apply for early college high school next year."
Dr. King showed us how limiting segregation was for our whole nation, how it wasted potential and diminished our humanity. However, integration was only a starting point of our journey as a society. Almost any given teacher, on any given day, navigates this journey with his or her students.
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