Any Given Teacher, Any Given Day

                 "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.

When the Voices of Rosenwald School History Fall Mute

My dear friend and neighbor, Mary, suffered a stroke several weeks ago.  She is the star of the second half of my film "Under the Kudzu", because her voice is the central narration for the history of the Pender County Training School.   She began attending school there is the 1930s, but you would never guess her age upon meeting her, with her smooth complexion and lively eyes.

Fortunately, Mary can still understand what is said, but she lost speech and is just starting to say a few words again.  No one can say for sure whether or when she will recover her former eloquence, although I can see she is full of the same intelligence and grace as before.  I can see her frustration over not being able to express much; she can nod her head yes and shake her head no.  When I visit I try to carry on conversation with her as always, only broken into segments and phrased with her current communication limits in mind.  I tell her about the conference at Tuskegee, and ask her whether she wants some of the pudding that sits on the tray next to her.  She cannot reach over to lift the container to her, so why the nurses leave her tray sitting next to her as if she will eat without help is a mystery to me...but her family is usually there to help her with these things.  She eats three small bites of pudding, then starts coughing.  I pat her back and she sits back to rest.  Tears come into her eyes.  She looks at me mutely as if to say "You see how things are?  I cannot even eat this little bit without trouble."

The Bible next to her is open to Proverbs, so I begin reading aloud, but I look up after a little while to comment "This seems a little dark for you!"  Mary nods her head and smiles, she sees the humor in what I am saying.  Mary is the finest person I know, and does not need reminders to love the Lord.  I flip to the Gospels, intending to read from Paul,  when Mary's husband comes in.  He hugs me and tells me she will be moved to a rehab center soon.  The next week I learn that they are starting to plan to bring her home from the rehab center; I am glad, because it is a dour place.

Sometimes people ask me why, meaning, why have I been so driven to record oral histories related to the Rosenwald schools?  Why have I spent so much time since 2003, and more money than I could reasonably afford, on these projects?  I recall the time when I was unemployed in 2009 and planning the first Rosenwald school conference at UNC Wilmington.  My rule for myself was that I applied for three jobs per day, but I also spent hours each day on conference planning with no compensation in sight.  There have been times when I emptied the gas can for our lawn mower into my vehicle, so that I could drive way  out into the country to talk with yet another elderly person about his or her school experience.

Why?  I don't have a good answer, or more accurately, I don't have an answer that makes sense on a practical plane.  I feel have been driven by something larger than myself.  Now six of the people I interviewed while making the film have passed away, and Mary has fallen mute, at least for now.  Sadly, these voices don't stay with us forever.  It is so important to speak with our older friends, take time to ask them about their stories, which are personal and yet reflect the weaving of the larger fabric of our nation.

The Single Most Important Skill

Some years ago a study came out that showed students who attend religious services on a regular basis tend to do better in school than students who don't.  Before we  conclude that God smiles more kindly on devout students, and without delving into some other probable factors (such as, do families who keep more regular routines tend to nurture higher achievement?), I would like to raise another consideration:  The sermon.  Common to Christianity, Islam and Judaism, a sermon is the part of the service when everyone is asked to reflect on a teaching.  So most students who attend religious services hear, on a regular basis, an invitation to reflect on the deeper meaning of the words before them.   I propose that this habit, more than any particular teaching, is responsible for the boost in achievement.

I have thought about this finding on a regular basis in the many years that I have been in education.  For seventeen years I was a college advisor, first at a private university in Massachusetts, then at a state university in North Carolina.  During that time I coached students through the college transition, teaching them study skills.  Now that I am a resource teacher in a title one middle school, many of the same issues present themselves (only the intensity is often greater).  What, one might ask, might a freshman at a prestigious private university have in common with a learning disabled sixth grader?  The answer is, more than I would have predicted.

From the point of view of development, the college student and the middle schooler are both searching for new identities and ways of defining themselves.   This can cause some fairly spectacular instances of college students crashing and burning, as well as a considerable amount of drama at middle school.  However, what I want to address in this blog is the importance of the skill of making inferences, or, what is more frequently the case, the lack of this skill.  It may not be surprising that a sixth grader, especially one with a learning disability, might lack this skill, but college freshmen are often very literal readers as well.  Subtle differences, unspoken conclusions, irony-- all are frequently lost on a typical 18-year-old.  The 11-year-old facing questions about  reading passages on a state end of grade exam can feel equally lost.  How can we help our students to develop the skill of inference, of reading into things?

All the possible strategies would not fit into one blog post, but here are some suggestions:  Using cartoons with double or hidden meanings (Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons often fit into this category).  Having students speak or write what they think are the "secret thoughts" of a literary character.  Having students act out a scene from a novel or play, using the premise of the story but  their own words.  Making an "equivalency list" of hard to understand expressions and their meanings.  Most of all, we can and should teach a deeper level of reading comprehension through thoughtful, unhurried questioning and discussion.  There's no app for that.

Why Do Rosenwald Schools Still Matter?

Why do Rosenwald schools matter to teachers and students today?  To answer this question, one need only ask, does it matter how we speak to our students?  The answer is an emphatic yes, it matters a great deal how we speak to our students.  In our words and tone they sense how we see them, and because they are children they tend to take the words to heart.  I can't tell you how many times a student has recalled some teacher comment from years earlier, whether for better or worse:  "Ms. Smith in third grade told me I was good in math" or "Ms. Jones in fourth grade said I'll never be a good writer."  (Both of these are real teacher comments that were repeated to me.)

These comments might have been made in passing as a math quiz was handed back, or in a moment of frutration as a teacher saw many mistakes in a writing assignment.  They were probably quickly forgotten by the teachers, but they made a deep impression on the students.  Even the student who seems closed down, who claims not to care, latches onto words that provide a glimpse into how teachers see them.  So how we view our students matters a great deal, it shapes our words and our expectations and even determines how we feel about coming to work.  I feel I am a fortunate teacher who gets to spend my days with incredibly creative and intelligent students, helping them discover their talents, students whose families have a long history of supporting education. 

All of my students are part of rich educational and cultural traditions.  My knowledge of African American history, including Rosenwald schools, lets me know that my lower income African American students (who comprise about 70% of the school where I teach) may not have every material advantage, but they have a rich heritage.  Just a few examples:  Northern African philosopher Aesop influenced Plato, and his teachings still embody the best examples of parables outside of the teachings of Jesus.  African building, agricultural and musical influences were transferred to the Americas when enslaved Africans were brought to work here; our culture and economy would be much poorer without them.  My students' families were striving for education even before it was legal for them to do so.  Dr. James D. Anderson and others have documented that in the decades following the Civil War poor African American families sought education in greater numbers, and sacrificed more for school building, than white Americans. 

So I am able to teach from a solid perspective, I know my students are intelligent and creative and talented and, yes, both contributors and heirs to our culture.  Education is something that African Americans have always shaped and owned.

Beyond Nostalgia

 

Wading through so much area history: Oral histories, documents, vintage images, has given me a strange kind of double vision. Now as I drive around Southeastern NC I see what is in front of me, but with an overlay from the past. I can't drive down Market Street in Wilmington without thinking about the fact that this beautiful street, with its graceful canopy of trees, led to a center of human misery, the slave market. I can't see the elegant historical homes without thinking about the many African Americans, both enslaved and free, who crafted them. When I drive past fields of tobacco in western Pender County I think of my elderly friends who worked from the time they were toddlers, first picking bugs off tobacco and corn by hand, then toiling with a hoe in the summer sun in an endless battle against weeds. 

As one woman who grew up in a sharecropping family said to me, "It was hot, so hot, but you could not stop. You had to work and work and work." Her father died when she was young, leaving her mother to look after ten children and continue the family's sharecropping agreements. This woman has her own double vision, because even today she sees the descendants of the landowners living a comfortable life, but often the landowner would come to her mother after the crops were sold and say "You didn't make nothing, I didn't make nothing...." And, as she told me, the family "had worked all the year and had nothing to show for it. We knew the man lied..."

When I drive past one of the many surviving Rosenwald school buildings in Pender County, I think about the sacrifice the communities made to build and maintain schools. How laborers and sharecroppers who might have made 50 cents per day, on average, gathered hundreds of dollars for school building and also gave freely of their time. How families took turns putting the teachers up in their homes, and how the whole community would turn out for spelling bees, concerts, and plays. Against a backdrop of unjust laws, thousands of black students took their first steps toward a better life in our local Rosenwald schools. I think about the legacy of the commitment to service that is alive and well today-- you can see it in the volunteers at the hospitals, in the schools, at the polls and in the churches.

The regional impact of the African American school building movement, which began during Reconstruction and included many types of schools in addition to Rosenwald schools, was enormous and still echoes today. Preserving Rosenwald school buildings is an important way to acknowledge local African American communities' commitment to education, as well as their huge contributions to our region.