A Modern Weapon for Justice?

One of the most interesting people I've read about in a while. I'm somewhat tempted to read this with my students but I'm not sure if it would send quite the right message...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/09/technology/hacker-informant-and-party-boy-of-the-projects.html?_r=1&hp

When I sit down and chronicle this entire year after it is all over

When I sit down and chronicle this entire year after it is all over, I will finally be able to break down and cry like I have been wanting to this whole time. I will finally be able to cry not just for myself, but for each of the children who I have seen come and go. The weight of what I have seen and the experiences of the kids I have met are too much to bear. And I despise the role I have played in all of it, or almost all of it. I have not been the leader, the teacher, the mentor, the role model, the support that I would have hoped I could be for these children. Instead I was often an antagonist, trying and failing to assume the role of the “tough love” role model and always falling too far to one side or the other.

But for the time being, I have the lamentable lot of expending every last ounce of energy I have into just making it through. One day at a time. Maybe that’s the problem though, maybe if I really gave up that last bit of thinking about myself in all of this, if I gave up thinking about how I am failing, how much it hurts me, and turned my attention fully over to what is going on for each of my students, then maybe things would start to get better.

ideas and reality

This article I just read about how black students are more likely to be suspended really reinforces my belief in two things:

First, that our education system is neither designed nor adequately equipped to serve all students, particularly low income students of color. And second, that it is in fact designed to create a certain fate for those students, which is containment and isolation from society at large.

And of course now I am the teacher who frequently suspends students and adds to that number.

Bad day

Today was just one of those days. It was a combination of me being really off and my kids being a little off. I came into the day already feeling like I didn’t want to be there, and I really wasn’t as prepared as I needed to be either.

I don’t know how I feel about this medication. It definitely keeps me from getting upset or anxious, but I also think it makes me let myself get away with doing stuff halfway. I’m also just a lot slower on it, so I think it might take me longer to get things done. That was part of the problem: yesterday I took a long time to do my planning, longer than normal, but overall it turned out being lower quality than normal too. There were just huge gaps and things I didn’t do. And I didn’t feel stressed out or pressured to do something about it. So I just let it be. And I kind of think that’s why I had such a terrible day today.

I’m just so exhausted too. Every layer of exhausted. I wouldn’t be sleep-deprived exhausted except that this stupid medication makes me so drowsy.

All I know is that I feel really miserable right now.

Things I don't understand

Interesting incident today. K----- said something about M------’s mother this morning, so M------ got up, walked all the way to the back of the room, and pulled K-----’s chair out from under him while he was sitting in it. Of course, K----- jumped up off the floor and got in M------’s face and the two started fighting, pushing and shoving up to the front of the room, I, meanwhile, alternating between demands that they stop what they are doing and commands to the rest of the class to stay seated in their chairs. Then, M------ slammed K----- into the wall at the front of the room, at which point I directed him to leave the room and go to the office. He responded by walking to the back of the room, picking up K-----’s backpack, walking back to the front, soundly shoving it into the trash can, and resolutely spitting on it as a last blow. I again asked him to leave, and he finally did, only to come back five minutes later, retrieve K-----’s backpack from where I had placed it next to K-----’s desk, and return it to its place in the trash can.

I don’t retell this merely to vent or even to enlighten you about what exactly goes on in inner city classrooms in Kansas City. Rather, I have the very particular purpose of asking the question: what is it, what combination of experiences, what sort of psychological make-up, causes a ten year-old to behave in such a way? Lack of attention, surely, but there are many other ways that children demand attention that are not so extreme or so odd. M------ has a very rough life. He is homeless. His father is in and out of the picture. He is considered a thief by the other children and a miscreant by the teachers. But how all this translates into the actions I saw today is beyond me. My background in psychology is far too limited.

If M------ were my only student who did things like this, and if this were the only time that he had done something like this, the questions would stop there. But many of my students do things that are equally bewildering, some of them on a daily basis. How did each of them become the way they are? How do their interactions play into these extreme actions? How does their common socio-cultural environment create the impetus for such behavior? I really don’t know. I'm working on it though.

Places

I’ve been reading this book lately, Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge 1990-2003. First of all, I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in any way in California. It is superbly written, totally fascinating, and extremely enlightening, especially for a born-and-raised Californian ex-pat such as myself.

            Reading it has brought up all kinds of interesting reflections along with bouts of nostalgia and homesickness. One of the most intriguing of these has been a new way of contextualizing my place here in a place like Kansas City, Missouri as well as this place’s place in my life. California really is a place of extremes and I do think that growing up there had a really affect on my psychological development.

Kansas City, on the other hand, is in the odd position of being in the “mid-west”, “west” in the American lexicon signifying the frontier, a place divergent from the norm, and “mid” at the same time implying that it is at the center, the core, of American life. Kansas City really embodies both of these. I recently took a trip to St. Louis and was struck by how distinctly “eastern” that city felt compared to KC. The prominence of more ornate old world-influenced architecture in St. Louis starkly contrasts with KC’s distinctly western eclectic mix of hyper-modern (P&L), faux-Spanish (the Plaza), and turn-of-the-century industrial (crossroads, west bottoms) buildings. Of course, KC can hardly be considered a frontier of any kind in modern times, when competing with SF or LA, but it does retain that hardier and more rough-and-tumble feel than many places to the east. At the same time, a look at the people crowding into the Shamrock gas station on 47^th and Mission for a taste of Okie Joe’s barbeque on a Saturday afternoon provides what every Californian would recognize as a typical slice of America’s heartland (though I always feel a little uncomfortable in the company). The same can be said for the numerous churches dotting the landscape, the party-goers packed into O’Dowd’s on a Friday night, or the fans in the field level seats of Chief’s stadium.

All of this provides a very interesting backdrop for me as a Californian. On the one hand, the things that make the west coast so different from the rest of the country never have seemed so stark. At the same time, I feel a deep, guttural connection to elements of this place, especially after my first bite into a Z-Man sandwich or after hearing the anthems of a rock band from Joplin blasted through their Fender amps. I have never felt so homesick in my life, but at the same time I know that there will be things that I sorely miss about Kansas City.

To close I want to make note of the fact that I am referring in this post to white Kansas City. Black Kansas City is another world entirely, and one which I have a much different and even more complicated relationship with. Of course, the two are closely tied, but I would argue that they truly are two different realms.

Ideals and reality

I think maybe that's what this whole ordeal will end up being about: finding the intersection, the functional relationship, between ideals and reality. My belief in social justice, through my daily interactions with my students, is transformed by my love for them as people. Which is prior to the other? Of course the ideal was the motivating factor in my positioning myself thus in the first place, but from whence were these ideals born if not from my love of humanity, that love which now manifests itself in my relationships with my students.

What is a teacher? This exchange begs the question. On the surface, a giver of knowledge and an organizer of daily life for children. A layer deeper he is a moral guide and a role model, a sculptor of character and behavior. But there is a deeper, more human layer. This layer is borne in deeply personal exchanges of hatred and love, in screams of anger and proclamations of joy and pride. It is something akin to the relationship of parent-to-child, but it has yet a different character. It is deeply personal, perhaps the deepest non-familial, non-romantic relationship I have encountered.

Given this it is no surprise that such a genteel, sheltered person as myself would be absolutely destroyed by engaging in such a relationship with a group of children that harbor so much anger and frustration as my students. In this dichotomy we begin again to run into the relation of ideal-to-reality. The difference in our identity, and its presumed sources, is a reification of those motivating ideals of social justice.

How then does one conceive of the struggles of the classroom in this context? I have to find something in my own peaceful, reflective, intellectual (bourgeois?) soul that is stronger than their anger and frustration. It is an unknown enemy to me though. Or maybe conceiving of it as a battle or a struggle is wrong outright. Perhaps the quelling of that anger will come through recognizing it, accommodating it, and ultimately redirecting it.

All of this is complicated by the social structure of my school context, where I am the clear outsider.