7th Inning Stretch! Almost There!

All year, I was feverishly driven by one significant, inevitable event: third grade state testing. All of my planning, my classwork, and my after-school programs centered around preparing my students to the best of my ability so that they could earn themselves passing scores. To this day, and for many more days into the future, I still maintain the complete absurdity of the standardized testing system. But until we find a better way to hold everyone accountable, I have to accept the MCT2 as an unavoidable presence in my teaching methods.

This past week, my students finally took those state tests, and I know for a fact that I suffered greater anxiety and turmoil than my students. I never imagined in my life that I would become a test administrator for a standardized test, much less that I would do it for three days straight, and never have I ever imagined that I would be held so accountable for the performance of fifty-four children.

But all things considered, I am hopeful that these tests turned out to be easier than the practice test I had been using for weeks. I tried to refrain from reading the questions over my students’ shoulders, simply because I did not even want to know the questions, and I thought in this case that ignorance could actually be bliss. But what I did manage to witness were questions that seemed somewhat reasonable, and my students had mixed performance. All I can say is that these third graders will likely have better test scores than last year’s third graders, and that is an achievement—especially considering the previous third grade teachers had over eighty years of teaching experience between the three of them, and I am a lowly and naïve first-year.

So now what do we have? Glorified babysitting for the next five days. I already realize my students will not be the best behaved little ones, but I also finally have a few days to do fun things with my kids, and this far outweighs the looming classroom management challenges.

On Friday, my students helped me collect our ridiculous number of textbooks and clean out the cubby holes. They were such eager and actually helpful helpers! I remarked to my co-teacher on the unexpected dependability of one particular student, and she replied, “Well, that is probably the role he must play at home. We both know that woman [his mother] is crazy.” I quickly agreed with her sentiment. After all, it makes sense with comments I have already made—my students are still children when they start to take on adult responsibilities by caring for younger siblings and possibly nieces or nephews. This particular child has one hell of a negligent mother, so it would make sense that he is often left to care for his baby sister. All of that means that I am surrounded by children who can do—and are eager to do!—all sorts of chores around the classroom. It was a surprisingly fun morning.

For this final week, I am so excited to do the fun learning activities that I never made the time to do while we were under the hefty pressure of state tests. We are going to color and do art projects, play Language Arts Bingo, go outside, and just enjoy these final days of school. I refuse to get stressed about any type of summative, unexpected school assemblies, or obnoxiously bureaucratic end-of-year paperwork, because I am going to miss these kids terribly once they are gone, and everything else is just drivel.

My brother remarked while he was here that he was taken aback by the constant references to race here in the Delta, and even though I agree with his sentiment, I still see the importance of race in my ongoing experiences. With that in mind, two interesting events worthy of note: I realized these past few weeks that I am a white woman who has been educated in the black way of Southern living. I happened to meet the daughter of a fellow teacher at my school—a speech therapist and a white woman (side note: all of the white teachers at my school are in cushy, specialized positions. None of them are in high-pressure classrooms, but hold jobs as the gifted teacher, the reading lab coordinator, and the speech therapist. Not a coincidence, I will tell you). Her daughter was at school taking private guitar lessons from our TFA music teacher, and her mother introduced her in passing. The content of the small talk is lost on me now, but what is important is the impression this young lady gave me: while friendly and arguably attempting to be charming, I was HORRIBLY offended by this girl’s informal manner. When I first met her, I had assumed she was a young teenager at most, but she acted as though we were equals, so I reframed my thinking to assume she was a young teacher like myself. Only later did I learn that she was indeed a young teenager, and to this day, I cannot see this girl without getting offended all over again!

I have come to consider myself an adult full of real-world responsibilities, as well as an educated professional in my field. My interactions with young Southerners have been limited to my co-teacher’s daughter, who has always treated me with humility, respect, and cognizance of my adult position over her. I understand the differences and the limitations of using these two girls as my sample, but I am still appalled by how this white girl treated me as though we were equals. I am not more than ten years older than her, but they are an important ten years—she was a child talking to an adult, and yet she acted as though she was trying to charm a new kid at her school. I found it to be terribly inappropriate for reasons I still do not completely understand.

In any case, I do recognize this incident is poorly articulated and probably makes me seem a snob, but I think the important element of all this is to note that I have somehow become programmed over the past year to expect deference from children and teenagers and to get offended if I do not receive it. I insist upon students addressing me as “ma’am” and never fail to point out its omission. I demand respect from any and all students I encounter, and do not hesitate to discipline them if they do not demonstrate it. I have noticed that this is a behavior pattern I have picked up from my black co-workers; they are all tough and stern women you wouldn’t dare get caught addressing without the proper “ma’am” attached. Many of my parents act in a similar way towards their children. I do not even know what the adult/child or parent/child relationship looks like in the white Southern community, but given my experiences I would venture to guess that the relationships are closer to what I experienced as a child in the North. The emphasis would be more on talkative nurture than unyielding respect.

I realize now that my behavior adaptations could be interpreted as something other than the chameleon tendencies that they are. I think that maybe some of my students and their parents could reasonably perceive me as racist. Here I am, demanding the utmost respect from their children, so much so that I could be treading a boundary invisible to my non-Southern upbringing and awareness. From what I have observed, the three white teachers at my school do not command the level of almost fearful respect that the black teachers do. Granted, there are many factors that play into this circumstance, but I still think the comparison is valid. I know that I am doing things differently than those three white teachers. I know that I am closer in mannerisms to the black teachers than to the white, but that behavior does not change the color of my skin. My parents do not often question the authority of these black women, but would they question the same type of authority from me as a white woman? Is there a double standard that I do not fully perceive?

Having asked the questions, I can already tentatively answer them: with only one or two exceptions, I have not yet encountered a parent who held me to another standard because of my race…or at least not directly to my face. I have never caught wind of an indignant parent because of my race (aside from my infamous exception) or because of my teaching and classroom management practices. The more I think about it, the more I believe that I represent a unique combination: I am fairly confident that I enjoy more respect than the white teachers and more popularity than the black teachers. I also think that I have earned more respect from the black teachers than the other white teachers, and the white teachers respect me more than the other classroom teachers. My co-teacher has always praised my ability to warmly embrace my school and my community’s culture, and I think my own, outward respect has started to reciprocate the respect of others.

Granted, I represent a paradox to some of my co-workers: I am a minority white woman in a black school, but everywhere else in Clarksdale and in the Delta I can claim a racial privilege that they can never hope to experience. I think this gives cause for some racial jokes made at my expense, but never have they offended me. I cannot help the color of my skin, but I CAN control what I do with it, and I refuse to act like a white Southerner. That is what has earned me the respect. My actions speak louder than my skin pigmentation, thankfully.

My co-teacher has maintained that I am destined to be a school administrator and has actively attempted to push me in that direction. She really wants me to enroll in a Master’s program at Ole Miss, but I have dragged my feet while my future has remained so uncertain. In any case, she has discussed my potential with other teachers at our school, and I was surprised to learn that the general consensus agreed with my co-teacher’s findings. I have been deeply humbled by the voices of confidence expressed on my behalf from some of the toughest old birds at my school, and so much so that I really do wonder how I manage to come across this way to others. My co-teacher even went so far as to discuss me with our superintendent. He made a recent visit to her classroom, and she took the opportunity to express her praise for my abilities and her hopes that the superintendent would be active in persuading me to stay beyond my two-year commitment. I even met a parent of a first-grader who asked me to stick around long enough to teach her son. She said, “Of course you will be here. We need to keep good teachers like you!” Words cannot express my appreciation for such acceptance. It has been hard-earned, let me tell you.

Ok, second noteworthy event: this past Friday I had the unique opportunity to interact with my black co-workers on a social basis. To celebrate the end of state testing, we gathered at a local Mexican restaurant for dinner and drinks. Heavy emphasis on the drinks. Now, anyone who has neighbored or been a part of a large table of heavy drinkers can understand the spectacle this group of teachers created. But what made it so interesting to me was the fact that I was seeing rabble-rousers from the other side of a racial divide. Here I am, sitting among the cackle and loud jokes of tipsy black women and the social weirdness of our lone male teacher, and I witnessed tiny social cues to which I had never before been privy. One flirted shamelessly and aggressively with our Hispanic waiter, another bossed him around in a clearly racist way, and another threw noticeably hateful looks toward surrounding [white] patrons. Usually the restaurants in town are unofficially segregated, but this one had no such designation. Despite that, I sensed a self-imposed divide between the patrons. None of the white customers made eye contact with members of my group, much less wanted to partake of the late Friday night frivolity. In fact, a police officer sitting with his wife kept a watchful eye on our party, and members of our group voiced disgust when they saw him enter. Apparently he had the sort of reputation that preceded him.

All of this stuff sounds silly to me as a Northerner—and perhaps not actually worth mentioning—but I am reminded absolutely every day that I am living in a place where race still matters in every way. It is unconscious and deeply ingrained, so much so that most people here do not even think twice about it. But my very presence as a white Northerner has forced those around me to confront their prejudices in new ways. I do not hesitate to point out what I observe or to ask when I do not understand, and I rank this honesty as one of my greatest enjoyments in the Delta. It helps to educate me, but it also inadvertently educates those around me. It forces some self-reflection from those who are out of practice and shines some understanding in the Delta’s dark and dusty corners. My curiosity and openness have been huge assets in unexpected ways.

The male teacher drank himself to shocking excess, which I found distasteful. I am well aware of the tiny nature of our community, and I am not about to act irresponsibly in public. I want to be a role model for my students. But aside from him, the group was tons of fun, and I do hope we will arrange an encore gathering before school is finished!

I also realized today that, regardless how much I struggled and suffered all manners of anguish this year, I am not looking forward to the end of this week. I am going to miss my students terribly. They have wiggled their giggly faces and sticky hands all the way around my heart.