Chapter 1: You Can Only Teach What You Are Learning: there is no way to depersonalize education

2009

“Gad, can’t you pay a little more attention to detail”  is written across a vocabulary paper I did during my fifth grade year at Fairmont elementary school in El Cerrito, California.  There are only two very small errors in spelling and grammar.  I keep looking through the folder of work I’ve found from this year and there are more similarly harsh comments on papers. “What awful spelling” is on one, and there are lots of red circled F’s on spelling test after spelling test.  I don’t find one positive comment on any of the papers and then on one composition I find a telling remark written by my own ten year old self, “there it’s 50 words.” In those four words are all the frustration I must have felt that year. I’ve not thought of that class, or that teacher in over twenty years. But from the vantage point of having been a teacher for twenty eight  years I can see that she was horrid. I can see that this must have been the year I decided I wasn’t smart enough, that I couldn’t spell and that avoidance might be a better way to go when it came to academics.  

I do know that for the next five years I would do poorly in school, even receiving an F in home economics when I refused to complete assignments and instead would sit and read the book I had brought from home to keep me from losing my mind.  I remember vividly that in the seventh and eighth grades Mr. Kowlowski at Adams Junior High in Richmond used sarcasm to beat me down about my poor spelling. That I had to endure the same English teacher two years in a row seems a bit much, but it is perhaps these early experiences that I have to thank for my own success as an English teacher. Like many people who vow to parent better than they were parented, I made a promise to myself early on that I would not be harsh with my students, I would focus on the positive and be gentle with my corrections. I would avoid the red pen that was such a source of shame for me. 

Looking back at this fifth grade folder, I see so clearly why I hated her and that class. Memories come back to me. I recall sitting in the back of the room, next to a boy named Joe who would try to balance on one leg of his chair and sing “you can ring my bell,” the 1979 disco hit heard daily on the radio,  in anticipation of the end of our torture. I remember that I would slip out of class whenever I could and hide in the bathroom finding a place to read in peace and beginning my own truancy.  That year most of my school work consisted of copying off the chalkboard, endless lines of sentences that needed only a period or a capital letter at the beginning. I never understood how this was teaching me anything important but her ancient methods were never questioned by anyone.  She was the only fifth grade teacher at the school and either you did the work or you were doomed to repeat the class next year. I did enough to be passed, but a little part of my spirit died in the process. 

The fact that I had only been at the school for a year and had struggled with finding friends didn’t help matters.  My parents had separated during my third grade year and I changed schools to the one closer to my mother’s new apartment.  She worked long hours to support us and my younger sister and I spent the afternoons at a baby sitter’s house where I learned to appreciate the drama of General Hospital and One Life to Live.  I was often bullied, one girl in particular tried to get me to fight after school to no avail. The other kids would gather around and watch her taunt me and wait for me to punk out. The one time I did try to push her away she nailed me in the eye with a right hook that was clearly practiced.  I decided then and there that being a punk and having no friends was better than being hit so I ran away and avoided some more.  I would usually have one friend at a time, but they were always wooed away from me by the promise of greater popularity in exchange for becoming part of my torment. The last three years of Elementary school were pure hell, but I tried to hide it from my parents, feeling that if I could just be okay they would be as well.

Many  years later when I went to my thirtieth high school reunion I reconnected with some of those kids. One man who as a child had been kind to me, my whole body responded when I saw him with joy and love. The other was neutral, I had no particular memories of him other  than his name, as you know your whole class in a small school like that with only one class per grade. Later I would look up my bully on Facebook and discover she was a cheerleader for a pro football team, she had a beautiful family and had found Jesus. Her page was full of inspirational quotes and nice thoughts. I suppose a part of me had secretly hoped she would be suffering, and I had to take a look at that. Because the truth is I never knew why she was mean to me, what it meant to her to see me at her school, one of the only white girls. I decided not to write to her, but instead to use that insight for my work, to help me understand humans more deeply through understanding myself. 

My mother remarried the summer before Junior High and we moved again. The prospect of a larger school and not knowing a single kid terrified me and my mother describes the struggle she had getting me into the building that first day.   I literally wrapped my arms around a sign pole and she had to pry my hands apart and pull me into the office to get my schedule.  

I was so alienated from school that I would walk in the hallways reading to avoid having to look at other students. I was picked on endlessly and I got many  comments in my first yearbook along the lines of  “Sorry I was so mean to you, you seemed nice.”  My self confidence was super low and I read books to escape the torture of being so different. Most of my peers were from the flat lands of Richmond, one of the most dangerous cities in California.  Many of the kids who lived in our town and were from families like mine were in private school by the time we went to high school. But not me, I went to Kennedy High on Cutting Boulevard. It was the height of the crack era and there were five on campus shootings in my senior year. To say that I didn’t fit in was putting it mildly. My parents were so absorbed in their own misery and hard work that I tried hard to not complain and make things harder on them. I insisted I was fine even when I wasn’t and made the best out of things when I could. 

It wasn’t all horrid, and I had moments of really great teaching and learning, especially in high school.  I had plenty of teachers that gave me good grades even while I didn’t study hard because my advanced literacy proved that I was smart. I was from a college educated family and a father who was a fount of knowledge. We played Trivial Pursuit for fun and watched Jeopardy during dinner.  I did know a lot compared to my peers, even though at the time I wasn’t aware of this. When I was in school I always felt a little stupid and when I got good grades I didn’t think I had deserved them. I knew that there was an expectation that I should be intelligent just because of my race and at least in one instance I used this privilege to get into a class with a teacher I did like. I had Mrs Fynn for history and loved her class. When I found out she also taught pre algebra I convinced my guidance counselor to transfer me in, even though I’d never shown any aptitude in math. I told him I hadn’t been trying my hardest because I was bored in a class beneath me and because I was well spoken he gave in to me. I don’t know if I learned or did well in her class, I don’t remember anything except my ask. 

One of the best teachers I ever had was Mrs. Stewart, my eleventh grade English teacher. She taught philosophy literature and advanced essay and I enrolled because I didn’t think I was smart enough for Honors English but didn’t want to be in class with the “regular” kids, the same ones who had bullied me for years. This class proved to be a real boost to my self-confidence. Her policy was to allow as many rewrites as we were willing to do in order to raise our grade. I still have one paper that I took from a C- to an A through rigorous re-writes and her careful editing assistance. She wrote “still too many SPPATS do another rewrite”  on the second to last draft. Clearly attention to detail still wasn’t my forte, but this teacher didn’t belittle me for it, instead she gave me yet another chance to get it right. From my current perspective and a master’s degree in Education I know that her technique is essential for students to master basic skills like spelling and grammar. I didn’t learn it when Mrs.  Meanandnasty gave me endless lines to copy. But I did learn from Ms Stewart how to try a little harder and ask for help, a technique I use to this day.

I am the teacher I am today because of those experiences in the Richmond Public schools and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. It was because of the diversity of the student population that I haven’t had as much trouble as many middle class white teachers in understanding my students. I believe it’s the culture shock that often forces teachers to leave the profession. They don’t know all sorts of little things I picked up along the way. When I read Lisa Delpit it wasn’t a revelation as much as a validation and a giving of language to something I’d always known internally. I was much more able to put her theories into practice, because I had already been doing so and only needed to read Other People’s Children go help explain what my gut led me to know.  Later Chris Emdin would address it once again and I devoured his content, always seeking to better my understanding of myself and bring to consciousness any way I might be perpetuating the dominant paradigm

Although I was never wildly popular, I had plenty of friendships that bridged a lot of cultural divides.  In high school I found that I fit in with the other misfits and I hung out with kids from all races and classes and spent time in the homes of people whose way of life was radically different from my own. As a kid  that wanted to fit in and have friends more than anything else sitting with my friend Nanci while she got her hair relaxed or watching my boyfriends father sit on the sofa smoking marijuana to help him forget the land mine accident that had taken his eye and leg in Vietnam gave me an education I would never have gotten in a private school.

I can’t imagine what kind of teacher I would have been without the upbringing I had in the Richmond public schools and as many times as I felt alienated and out of place, I would not trade any of those moments for any amount of comfort. I know intimately that poor kids of color often get the worst teachers, lack resources and are assumed to not be as smart or capable as their white middle class peers. I was often given the benefit of the doubt that my Black and Latino classmates were not. It wasn’t fair and it was part of why I wanted to be part of the solution and began my teaching career in Oakland, a similar community only a few miles away.  

Twenty eight  years later I’ve changed cities but the cultural divide is the same. I’ve worked with many colleagues who just don’t understand simple things about our kids and in this ignorance they make assumptions that stop the flow of knowledge they so badly want to impart. For a while my school had an almost revolving door of staff who struggled and didn’t stay. We often don’t listen to the kids and instead label and react to them as if they are the stereotypes we want to fight against. I know we can do a better job of educating all children, but we are going to need to begin to talk more openly about the things that get in the way. We as white middle class educators are going to need to get over our guilt and pity and open our minds to the idea that we don’t know everything our students need to know. We in fact must start learning a little more from them about what we need to know. 

My journey from the kid who was always staying home sick from Adams Junior High to the teacher who sees through truant student’s excuses in Brooklyn, New York has had many pitfalls and milestones.  I’ve had two coming out’s in those years, first as a lesbian teacher and then as a woman of faith.  Both of these experiences have shaped me and both have been facilitated by my teaching. I have learned what I needed to learn by trying to teach my students. 

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