Second Chances

[Editor's note: Bronxteach is the pseudonym of a second-year teacher in an elementary school in the Bronx. He blogs at bronxteach.com, where versions of this post first appeared.]

Recently I started reading Jonathan Kozol’s Letters to a Young Teacher. I’d tried to read it last year, but found it hit a little too close to home, especially when he was fawning over the first-year teacher and I was presiding over total chaos. Now, with a bit more confidence in my own abilities and the past in the past, I’m giving the book a second chance. It’s been a really gratifying read so far, as it’s reminded me of some essential ideas I’d forgotten in the course of the past year and a half.

Before I started teaching I read Kozol’s Savage Inequalities. I figured it was an important book for any teacher going into the Bronx, and once I finished I realized how right I was. The book, almost 20 years old, is an impassioned and moving portrait of America’s poorest schools and the children who learn in them. Besides bringing me face to face with some of the challenges I would face, the book also sparked a mixture of passion and outrage as well as a sense of purpose.

While Letters is written in the form of, well, letters, the substance of Kozol’s argument has not changed. It is a welcome reminder for me of the importance of reaching out to my students as whole people, and not collections of data that signify strengths and needs. It is also an important wake-up call that the frustrations and indignations that afflict my students on a daily basis are not ordinary or acceptable. Finally, it has reaffirmed my belief that education reform must be rooted in an ideology of social justice, because a quality education should be a right for every child in this country.

I don’t think I ever really forgot these ideas. However, I do believe that in the process of figuring out the practice of teaching, these beliefs that represent the foundation of my educational philosophy were drowned out by daily distractions. I’m glad to have them back in the center of my mind while I’m in the classroom.

* * * * *

Another result of reading Letters has been utter disenchantment with test sophistication. I’ve always despised it, but also held on to a bit of belief in it as a necessary evil. It helps that the tests are behind me now, but I’m frustrated at how learning gets transformed into “drill and kill.”

The obvious consequence is that classrooms and schools become joyless places, where learning becomes synonymous with direct instruction and rote bookwork. As much as I’ve worked to avoid that fate, even when doing test prep (e.g., creating an “operations race” we played in the gym), I do think the tone of my classroom has suffered from the pressures of the tests.

Another factor in the joylessness of the classroom could be behavioral issues. The kids in my school, as Kozol knows, bring a lot of baggage into the classroom. So often the planning of seemingly simple activities must account for a dozen possible scenarios. Teachers, myself included, get to thinking that fun equals problems, so why risk that? I know I have planned plenty of fun lessons that involved some combination of the arts, physical play or group work, only to have them fall apart into arguments or tears. This has turned me into a pretty humorless guy at times. And I don’t like it.

What worries me the most is that kids get turned off to the whole idea of school at such a young age. And in all the talk of the achievement gap that focuses on test scores, people rarely discuss the environments themselves beyond materials and infrastructure. The fact is, most of our country’s poorest kids spend their days immersed in tedious and rigid environments that middle- and upper-class parents would never allow their kids to experience. The result is a deficit in social experiences and emotional developments equally profound as the academic achievement gap.

But let’s end on a high note. Recently I had a chance to try out the alternative. The kids were asked to turn what they’d learned about the water cycle into a poster, a play, a song, a dance or a story. The results were great. The kids were creative and they got the information right. Most importantly, they had fun. I’m looking forward to having more of it over the next two months.

Tagged: Bronx, elementary school, Jonathan Kozol

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