Ms. Cheng is the pseudonym for a first-year middle school teacher in the Bronx.
“Parents in the ghettos don’t care about their children’s education.”
So they said. I do not buy it.
About an hour before my very first parent-teacher conference in November, Jose’s father called my cell phone to remind me that he would be there as soon as he got off his shift. In fact, Jose’s father was the first one to arrive. A week earlier, he had been there to discuss with me ways to help prevent Jose, a 6th-grader, from shouting profanities, and so Jose and his father came a little early hoping for some positive feedback.
“En la semana pasada, Jose ha portado mas mejor en la clase,” I enunciated these words to him as clearly as I could using my high-school Spanish. Mr. Gonzales patted Jose’s back, showing Jose and me how pleased he was to finally get a positive report from school. For the rest of the year, despite the fact that Jose’s behavior improved significantly, Mr. Gonzalez continued to show up to the parent-teacher meetings and share his concerns and hopes for Jose with me. A few months later, when I was invited to speak at a Teach for America panel for 300 new teachers about what inspired my success in teaching struggling students like Jose, I attributed it to the determination and involvement of the parents and community.
When I first started teaching, the entire school community was skeptical that a petite, young Asian woman from the suburbs would be able to teach and relate to the sometimes unruly Latino and African American students in a large, inner-city middle school. What they gradually learned over the next two years was that I was the oldest child of working-class, immigrant parents and the first person in my family to graduate from college. Like many of my students, when I moved to the United States at the age of ten, I spoke no English. Growing up, I was sometimes forced to miss school to translate for my parents in hospitals, attend my younger siblings’ parent-teacher conferences, and cook meals for them while my parents worked. My experiences were very similar to those that my 6th-graders face, and this connection allows me to understand that their struggles encompass more than simply educational issues.
Soon after speaking with Jose’s parent, my entire classroom became packed with families. The sight of so many families waiting patiently for over an hour in order to find out how their children had been performing sustained my enthusiasm throughout the long night. “Parents came to see you because their kids have told them that you are a great teacher,” my principal said to me. Forty out of 64 families met with me, the most out of any of the classes in the school, according to him.
“And by the way, we heard gunshots coming from down the street a little while ago, so be careful when you leave,” he added. This news of violence on such a meaningful night startled me. Throughout my teaching, there had been countless factors, such as racial unrest at the school and the vandalism of my car on school property that made me question the strength of my commitment to teaching and social progress. However, the resilience of my students and their families and their support have continued to inspire me to overcome the small and large challenges of teaching in an inner-city school.
Indeed, when I reflect upon that long night, I become invigorated with a renewed sense of commitment to help bring far-reaching changes with my students. Just as I have learned that parents in the “ghettos” do care about their kids’ education, my students and their families have come to recognize that teachers in the “ghettos” do care about their kids’ education. It is from this common ground that we teach and learn from each other.
1 Comment:
1 phyllis c. murray
· Mar 24, 2007 at 8:29 am
WHAT IS A GHETTO TODAY?
By Phyllis C. Murray
“A ghetto is an area where people from a specific racial or ethnic background are united in a given culture or religion live as a group, voluntarily or involuntarily, in milder or stricter seclusion. The word historically referred specifically to the Venetian Ghetto in Venice, Italy, where Jews were required to live. It was later applied to neighborhoods in other cities where Jews were required to live. The corresponding German term was Judengasse; in Moroccan Arabic ghettos were called mellah. The term came into popular, world-wide use during World War 2, in reference to Nazi ghettos.The term now commonly labels any poverty-stricken urban area.” Visit Wikipedia.com
In 1972 I wrote about Harlem for an urban anthropology class. I described the visible and subliminal impressions that remained within ones total body of experiences. I described these experiences as being both real and personal as well as vicarious and impersonal. Thus these experiences seemed to cloud ones objectivity as a barrage of responses were triggered through various word clues. i.e. June 19, 1964:Riverton Apartments,and the Lincoln playground, bongo lullaby’s, and helmeted police responding to a riot
on 125th Street.
We can read a lot while we are in Harlem (I wrote). There are murals to read . They have been executed by the captives in the ghetto who remain on this reservation of timelessness. They remain plastered against the muted browns and grays of old tenements in a collage which could be entitled “Despair.” The painting depicts all of the manifestations of poverty, alienation and racism in our society. It personifies the endurance of racial bias in the country as well.
The invisible impressions, created by a stagnancy that grew out of abandoned buildings, uncollected garbage and the purposeful neglect of an entire race, provide messages as well. This stagnancy prevails throughout the confines of Harlem as refuse seems to bury the ladder of economic mobility which lies somewhere horizontally at the base of its ghetto walls. And the stench from this smoldering decay permeates the air…stifling young hopes and dreams.
Such a stagnancy is allowed to exist in a nation where such basic rights as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are theorized for all. Yet, where these principle upon which our country stands become a reality for “all” depends on its ability to allow black American to make the transition from alien to full citizen.
Ghettos exist today as positive and viable forces in society but they are ghettoes of economic and intellectual sameness. But a ghetto-slum can only serve as a permanent blight on the America conscience.
Phyllis C. Murray
Urban Anthropology
CCNY 1972