Landing Right Side Up

When I first started writing updates, I remember I kept saying that I would continue to work towards some conclusions about the curiosities I experience here in the Delta. After eight months of teaching and learning, I feel that I have finally embraced some concrete ideas. So here it goes.

TFA is not the solution to the challenges I am seeing in the Delta. It is great that we are trying to get rid of—or at least diminish—the evils of the achievement gap in this country, but I think the achievement gap in the Delta is merely a surface issue masking a more significant problem. Without addressing the deeper ills, we are never going to make any progress in education.

The problem is the role of education in this society: I am simply a glorified babysitter. As long as my kids are not bullied by other kids, and as long as they manage to not fail, then the parents are happy. They get frustrated when they feel that their kids have been somehow victimized, at which point the teacher becomes accountable for not better protecting the children. Academically, I have been taken to task for failing a child and the parent thinks it is my fault. Whenever I give a parent lower-than-expected grade summaries, I am immediately fearful for myself rather than for the student. Sure, the child is going to get his/her “tail whooped,” but the wrath will also fall to me. I will be challenged by parents who, if I am going to be brutally honest, are ignorant, self-entitled, and self-righteous. They are not interested in academic achievement; they just want me to pass the kids on and get out of the way. They see any below-average grade as my attempt to hinder their children, rather than a reflection of what the kids have honestly earned.

A parent once accosted me for not telling her that her daughter was failing. In truth, I had warned her constantly, but she was more concerned about behavior. What weapon could I wield against such selective, obstinate memory? But here is something even more interesting: my co-teacher insisted on significantly inflating this child’s grades in order to protect both the child and ourselves from this crazy parent. To an extent, fair enough. But she inflated them so much that this child ended up on honor roll. And when the mother found out at conferences this week, she screamed, hollered, and carried on like a full-grown third-grader. No words to describe the whole encounter, except: WOW.

As I write this, my school has been threatened with a lawsuit by a mother whose daughter is failing the first grade. The mother is suing the first-grade teachers and the principal for I-don’t-even-know. When the first-grade teacher told me, I was confused by what legal leg this woman has to take the school to court. It baffles me even now. But this is not the first parent—and certainly will not be the last—who seems to expect something different out of a school than her child’s education.

The point is this: though there are exceptions, many of my parents teeter on the verge of confrontation at all times. They are waiting to pick a fight because the children are getting into fights, because I am academically demanding, or because I refuse to inflate grades. I have to justify everything I do. I understand this accountability to an extent, but I really believe there has to be a limit. I also believe that these confrontations are the parents’ way of shifting the sphere of responsibility from themselves to someone else. Let’s face it: most of my parents were children when they started having children, and many of them remain mentally frozen in immaturity and recklessness. They unfoundedly expect so much of me because they still have not grown up, and I am the perceived adult and authority figure. How else do you explain parents asking ME, a 23-year-old novice in family, in education, and in life, for advice?? The important difference is that these reckless adolescents do not hesitate to pull the victim card and dream up a scenario of inequality, prejudice, and injustice.

Paradoxically, many of my problems in the classroom come from the fact that my students insist on “acting grown;” they chastise each other for behavior and seek to punish one another just as they do at home to their younger siblings, nieces, nephews, cousins, etc. They want to take on childish problems with “adult” attitude, “adult” consequences, and “adult” vocabulary. They get carried away and then refuse to submit to my legitimately adult intervention.

So we have children having children because they think they are ready for adult roles, and then they pass off those children to the care of other children (younger siblings, relatives, and even neighbors) so that they can continue their irresponsible and childish pastimes. Kids grow up already knowing how to physically take care of other kids, but everyone remains trapped in an adolescent mentality.

I can’t even get my head all the way around that phenomenon!

Then we have testing: the ultimate mark of so-called achievement in the public schools. But I think that such heavy reliance on tests as the solution to the Delta’s education inequity is missing the proverbial forest for the trees. Even if I manage to improve the test scores this year and next, that is a short-lived, short-term success. I mean, let’s be real here: I teach THIRD grade. Do any of us remember how we did on those state tests when we were eight-years-old? Or better yet, how many of us experienced long-lasting effects because of that third grade test? These tests only matter to the people in charge. It is important to the teachers, the principals, the superintendent, the state department of education. If you think about it, the state tests actually have VERY LITTLE to do with our students. It is a way to hold the adults accountable for how and what they teach kids. We judge children for a test they don’t understand or value, and then we punish the adults for how these children performed. The responsibility is inexplicably disfigured and distorted. We have warped the ladder of accountability so that the adults are responsible for all the prep work, the children ultimately have all the power over that test, and then we go back and execute educational justice on the adults. But who ultimately suffers? Exactly: the children. Please tell me how that is fair.

Perhaps instead of worrying so much about a damn test we should focus more energy on community development. We need to create a culture that values education by training parents to accept some responsibility for their children’s moral upbringing. As it stands, the Delta is mass producing citizens who think that the number one rule, when it comes to accountability on every level, is: "Cover your own ***, and don’t be afraid to lie, cheat, steal, or sell out your friends in order to do it." Simple example: I once had two best friends tell on each other and try to get the other in trouble. When my reaction was, “Are you seriously telling on your best friend?” the two girls were not nearly as mystified as me about the whole ordeal. Parents do not believe that they have any responsibility for their children’s education. They do not help with homework, and so many of them were confused when I asked them to take their children to the public library and get them a library card. Their role is not to help them or encourage them to read. That is my responsibility. If I fail in that, it’s my problem, and it better not affect their children’s grades.

So where does that leave me? It means that I spend more of my time thinking about how to reach my students outside the classroom than in it. I see many of my classroom efforts as me trying to stand still in a stampede; moving the opposite (read: correct) direction is simply impossible. That doesn’t mean there isn’t value in my day; each moment is an opportunity to gain some respect and approval. Despite what many parents might initially think, I am not the enemy (a perception inevitably based upon the accident of my race). I am actually here to offer support in every way I can.

I understand now that I can make a much bigger impact on my students by mentoring them for three hours after school than I ever could in the seven hours I see them during the day. What my kids need is a guide to show them humanity. They need an education in what it means to see value in themselves AND in others. They need someone to take them to the store and teach them the value of money. They need to go to a restaurant and practice proper manners. They need to experience and find pride in diversity. (I actually had a fourth-grader tell on another student because he called her a “white Puerto Rican.” I told her to be proud of her heritage and stop treating it like an insult.) They need to learn charity and hard work and humility. Most important, they need to be taken away from their negative influences. My stupid, irresponsible, abusive parents and the idiots, jailbirds, and pseudo-thugs they call friends are the ones who manage to undo all of my day’s work in a matter of minutes. If I could remove my kids from that, I cannot even fathom the individuals these children would become.

Remember the kid who brought the BB gun? On his good days, that kid absolutely adores me. He will follow me around and call me his mother. Another teacher even said it once: “Here comes Ms. Cook with her son!” My reply has always been, “If you were my kid, you would be a very different little boy.” My students love that comment, and I never thought they completely understood the layers of meaning or implications, but then one of them got it spot-on: “Ms. Cook, if we were your kids, we would be straight-A students, and we would never get in trouble. We would be completely different.” Maybe. Maybe not. But the important thing would be that I would teach them how to be a good human being. Or at least, I would give it a more concerted effort than I see happening around me.

This past week, the Mississippi Department of Education visited my school for three days. We are on an improvement plan because we did not make AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) in our math scores. On Monday I had an observation and interview, both of which went as well as I could expect. The interview was particularly interesting: the woman told me that Mississippi is divided into three regions: the hills, the coast, and the Delta. She did not hide her disdain for the Delta (she is from the hills) and she certainly acted as though we shared a special bond (called race) that made her more a friend than a scary authority figure. The sensation was that together, we are fighting the depravity of this black problem in the Delta. She indicated that I should consider moving to one of the other two regions in Mississippi if I plan to stay in teaching. I appreciated the compliment that she feels I am already a good teacher, and in time I will become truly great. (I wish I had gotten that on tape for my TFA program director). As she left, her parting words were, “I will be praying for you.” That interview, in a nutshell, sums up what I experience daily as a white woman and a Northerner in the Delta. Suspicion from the black community; willful ignorance and neglect from the white. Wow.

More than ever, I am committed in my mission to help these children. I am revitalized by a deeper understanding of the problem and thus the solution. I can better visualize my purpose and my potential impact. I work with students four nights a week, and I can’t wait to work with my kids this summer. I already know what I need to do to improve for next year. Even though each day still has its own challenge, I feel better equipped to handle it, and I can see the progress we have made together.

I have also decided to track my daily answer to a simple but also hugely significant question: Stay for a third year?