SNOW DAY!!!

This post, I know, is LONG overdue. I really have no excuse, because I have slowly reclaimed some time for myself outside of teaching. Perhaps I will say that I did not want to use my newfound freedom dwelling on teaching yet again.... :)

In any case, today is a SNOW DAY!!! I kid you not, we have about a quarter-inch of snow, and Clarksdale, MS has officially shut down. Currently, I am sitting at my dining room table watching the overly-cautious Mississippi drivers creep by. As someone who had to literally dig out my car from several feet of snow last winter, I find such hesitation comical. But to be fair, Clarksdale has no snow ploughs, no salt trucks, and no perceived strategies for combating the very rare snowfall. I will give them their sluggishness if they keep the snow days coming. :)

In small, almost indistinguishable increments, my teaching days are getting better. My students are learning at every point of importance: they practice the reading strategies and recognize the parts of a sentence; they remember to say thank you to the lunch ladies and know exactly what I mean when I say, "Is that the correct way to ask permission?" Whenever my students hear the words, "Shut up," they automatically respond, "We do not use those words!" When I start to write on the board, I smile at the sound of rustling paper as my students scramble to get out their notes without prompting. And most importantly to me, I have found myself enjoying some time with my students. I have smiled, I have laughed, and I have joked. I can turn my back with every confidence that when I turn back around, they will still be working silently. Silence gets their attention faster than yelling, so that when I really do yell, it makes a huge impression. My students beg me to practice spelling words with them in the lunch line, and they ask hopefully, "Are we going to have time to practice the parts of sentence before we go to Unified Arts?" More and more, they are a true joy, which makes teaching exponentially easier and more rewarding.

But since this is not a perfect world, I now have to admit the above optimism comes with a huge "but." All of the above really only applies to one class. Ironically, the one amazing class is the terrible non-homeroom class with which I perpetually struggled at the beginning of the year. Remember when I could not do a thing with these students? When my co-teacher offered to switch the schedule so that I would have her homeroom for a smaller part of the day? It doesn't seem all that long ago that I dreaded switching classes, that the worst part of the day was the middle when I had the other third grade class. Now, I can't wait to switch classes, and I do not celebrate the end of the day when I have to take my homeroom back again. While the one class has improved so substantially, the other class has gotten progressively worse. Their behavior is out of control, and it shows in the grades of even my top students. They clown constantly, they hit and steal and cheat, they are bored for all types of learning, and the bad attitudes of some would rival even the worst of American teenagers.

It all came to a head a week before Thanksgiving when the constant picking between the boys in my homeroom escalated unacceptably. My special education child got hit in the face with a rubber band, leaving a two-inch welt across his right cheekbone. It was the last twenty minutes of the day when all chaos ensues, and my principal was out of town. Even though I knew this child's own behavior was largely the cause of the rubber band incident, I was very angry with the boy who did it, and I planned to make an example out of him. I sent him to a notorious disciplinarian in the school to have him punished, but in the meantime, the parent of the "victim" showed up...early as usual. I explained the situation to her and asked her to stay for a moment longer so that I could dismiss the rest of the students. She agreed, and in the general rush of the day's end, I forgot all about it. I went about my dismissal activities until I was interrupted by an older woman, who started screaming in front of my class about the injustice of the rubber band incident. I quickly figured out that this woman was the boy's grandmother, whom I had never met or even seen before. My initial thought was, "Excellent. Let this irate woman serve as a lesson to my class." The lesson ended, however, when she turned to her grandson and screamed at him to "beat the s***" out of the boy responsible. I asked her to leave, which she did, but then her fury turned on me. Her insults rained down in front of my students, other students, other teachers, and a few members of our maintenance staff. She had to be pulled away from the situation, which ended with her yelling, "Just because you are white don't mean I won't kick your a**!"

I was completely devastated by the incident, and really wished I could pick up and abandon such a hopeless culture at that very instant. How I could teach people who really thought they could treat a teacher that way? Just because I'm white??! Seriously? To this woman, one single sentence of racism was enough to nullify every hour and every day of honest hard work I was pouring into these students, and for a little while I agreed with her. I wanted to tell her, "If you do not think that my mission to educate your grandson is worthwhile, then I would be more than happy to catch a flight home. I can go and teach in an area that actually cares!"

But by the next day, I understood the lesson that I was supposed to learn from the situation. In the aftermath, students wrote me letters of support and love. The student who had attempted to get moved out of my class the week before brought me a handwritten page from Psalm 23 ("The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…"). Another gave me a page of quotes and explanation from Martin Luther King, Jr., and several begged their fellow classmates to behave: “We HAVE to be nice to Ms. Cook today!” My day was full of other teachers, assistants, and staff members stopping by to check on me and to make sure that I was ok, and to articulate their indignation at such an incident. Without exception, each person expressed disbelief and anger towards the grandmother, and encouragement and support towards me.

Well, one notable exception: my principal has yet to talk to me about the occurrence. At first, I felt angered and betrayed by this glaring oversight, but now I understand the difficult position in which she finds herself. My school district has made it routine to relent under parental pressure, and my impression of administration so far is that most of them are predominantly motivated and directed by a persistent fear of reprimand from someone higher up, a parent, or the Mississippi Department of Education. It makes for a whole slew of people who are constantly hunching their shoulders in anticipation of that inevitable blow, and who are sadly less effective as a result.

Regardless, I have experienced an outpouring of love and encouragement that has actually made the experience worthwhile. I know that I am appreciated and accepted, and even if this grandparent never gave me the chance to show it to her, the community knows and respects what I am here to do. It is not my intention to terrorize black children just because I am white or because I am in a position of power; I have come to give these students all I have to offer. I have presented them with my head and my heart, but I cannot possibly expect all of them to accept it with gratitude and goodwill. And besides, any opportunity for me to develop a thicker skin is a welcome occurrence, albeit tremendously uncomfortable at first.

Coming back from Christmas break, a fellow TFA teacher asked me if I was excited to return to teaching, and even now I struggle to choose an answer. A sizeable part of me dislikes the daily turmoil and struggle, and I resent the persistent obstacles we face in the Delta. It is impossible for me to imagine an American sub-culture even more fundamentally opposed to my beliefs and values, or a group of people even more resistant to a quality education. Those realizations make each day a battle rather than an opportunity for progress, a chore rather than an enlightening or entertaining experience.

But I also know myself well enough to understand that I am still my own harshest critic; I have no doubt that my students and I have made significant progress. I just want them to achieve even more. And I also know that I embody the quip, “Wherever you go, go with all your heart.” I don’t quit. I don’t give in. When I signed up to do TFA, I committed to all the challenges, setbacks, surprises, and rewards such an adventure promised, even if I didn’t fully comprehend the extent at first. Even if I am not perfectly happy, even if I do not jump out of bed every morning with frenzied excitement, and even if I struggle with the concept that so much of my success depends upon the whims of 54 children, I know that I am doing the right thing for the right reasons. This is my responsibility, and I do not shy away from what has been entrusted to me. If it is a choice between forever standing on the ledge, enjoying the view and basking in the suspended weight of my duties, or jumping into the abyss, not quite knowing what to expect but taking the risk of hardship in exchange for the possibility of reward, then I will always choose to jump. I will always choose to plunge ahead rather than to wait for something better or easier to come along. This wouldn’t be worthwhile if it wasn’t also hard. The Staple’s easy button is a fallacy that is great for marketing, but a terrible idea when choosing a personal mantra.

So I suppose my answer is, yes. I am excited to return to Clarksdale and to teaching. The limbo of the Christmas holidays was nice for a while, but standing on the ledge and enjoying the weightlessness must come to an end. I must move on, and whether they like it or not, my students are going to make the journey with me.