Teaching in the Bronx

Last night I was lucky enough to hang out with my friend and former colleague after work. She'd had a rough day. She works with a special education class of 9-year olds in the Bronx. She told me that she thinks that there is a conspiracy to keep people poor and stuck on a 9-to-5, keep-your-head-down track. One of her students casually told her not so long ago about how his friend's cousin was killed. It wasn't clear if his throat was cut or if he was beheaded. And we're not in Iraq. In another story, she described locking one of the kids out of class because he was going to beat another boy. My friend got a 6-inch bruise on her arm from trying to close the door.

She's working for an organization that is national in scope now and that puts teachers into public schools as a way of bolstering the educational system. My friend is frustrated because everything that that program is about stays within the school. When the boy told her about the killing, instead of being able to take time in class to talk about what happened, or even to pull him aside, she had to keep on target with the curriculum. But life happens in the Bronx. Just as it does everywhere else. It's just that those life events don't fit with the testing regimen set up to hold everyone accountable.

I work with fantastic teachers in an adult English as a Second Language program. They don't mind (too much) when I interrupt their classes to talk about things like the minimum wage because they see it as a teachable moment. What a difference from the rigidity of No Child Left Behind. I don't envy her, but as the product of a public school system, it also infuriates me that kids come out of school without knowing how to read. My friend has a point, though, when she says that the issues facing her kids and their families hit her like waves relentlessly pounding a shore.

I want to have hope because there's no point to anything if you let go of that, but it's true that the level of change that is needed is truly massive.