One earnest liberal's experiences teaching in an inner-city school

"Teach for America" was an effort--started by a conservative--to get college grads who weren't teaching majors to volunteer to teach in inner-city schools.

In 2008 a naive liberal college grad--a white male--volunteered for the program, as did thousands of other white college grads.   

The earnest young leftist lasted two years, and wrote an account of his classroom experiences (edited version below).  It's a story of total defeat, achieved through a combination of stupid liberal policies both in public school systems and in broader government policies that have made blacks a "specially-protected class."

Until around 1950 most American public schools were first-class, and many still are.  But in Dem-ruled cities, schools with significant minority populations are total disasters.  Most of us know the reasons, but liberals bleat that the real reasons are "oppression" and "systemic racism."
And at this point the problem seems beyond fixing.  It's not that it *can't be fixed,* but that the Democrat party will never agree to what needs to be done.

"Teach For America" sent thousands of graduates of America’s elite universities into all-black inner-city schools.  Like regular education majors, none of these volunteers had any idea what they were getting into, as the Mainstream Media avoided reporting on the true situation in inner-city schools for fear of offending liberals.

Our earnest young leftist volunteer says every white person who has taught in a black public school knows that “non-school factors,” as they are carefully called, set the stage for what happens in those schools.  He says that even those who've taught in those schools often can't bring themselves to name the problem, because doing so would cause their liberal friends to cancel them.

The first, crucial step in problem-solving is to recognize that there IS a problem, and then to specify exactlly what that problem is.  None of that has been done in this case.

His experience (edited):

What's it like teaching ten-year-olds in an all-black school?  There are many anecdotes to choose from.  Here's one:

I am planted in my classroom doorway. All 29 of my fourth-graders are behind me in the classroom except for Deandra, who is in the hallway in front of me, screeching insults at me (“White motherfucker!”) and repeatedly trying to force her way back into class so that she can continue pummeling Justina.

Deandra back up to the opposite wall of the hallway, then launches herself into my torso, repeating this several times, balling up her fists and screaming.

This was actually Deandra’s third fight of the day, each with a different student. Fights are so common in my classroom that the head office no longer sends help.

This poses a unique problem with Deandra because most of my students are between 10 and 11 years old, but Deandra is 12, half a foot taller than the others and 30 pounds heavier.  She can do real damage.

The liberals who run this school--and every public school in this city--tell us it's against the law for teachers to physically break up fights unless they're "certified."  But they also tell us we're legally liable for any injuries students suffer in our classroom.  No one bothers trying to resolve the contradiction.

Another problem is that Deandra doesn't give up.  Most students are ready to call it quits after a fight breaks up, at least for a while. If you can separate them and get them to opposite sides of the room you’ve probably bought yourself an hour or two.  But the moment I turn to the blackboard  Deandra resumes attacking the girl she was just fighting.

And this is a normal day.

There is a classic inner-city teaching fantasy, beloved by Hollywood, in which a dedicated, inspired teacher defies the odds and “breaks through” to their formerly angry, violent, disruptive students.  

It's easy to see why Hollywood liberals love that fable.  It's designed to appeal to them.

Classic liberal theory holds that the implacable anger of many of my students, and their refusal to learn what adults believe they should, is entirely due to oppression and poverty.  Once you buy that, it follows that whites must be the problem.  Liberals directly blame failed inner-city school on "systemic racism" of America's past.

[Even after his experiences, the author says he actually agrees with both points above.]  

A second-grader’s grandmother sent him to school with a loaded gun because he was being bullied.  Another student's problems were due in part to his mother holding a curling iron to his feet as a baby to stop him from crying.

How do you stop those things?  

This is a story about horrors.  No other way of telling it approaches the truth. Richmond Elementary was a horror.

On several occasions TFA higher-ups warned us not to mention negatives when sharing our classroom experiences, lest we be accused of “victim blaming” or of perpetuating an image of inner-city Black communities as defective or dangerous.

Certainly.  Wouldn't want the public to think inner-city communities were dangerous or defective, right?

The founder of TFA claimed studies had shown that the single most important driver of learning was not school funding or neighborhood income but teacher quality.

Had she blamed culture, no Democrat would have green-lighted her proposal.

Our training lasted five weeks.  In the last week we joined summer-school classrooms as teachers’ aides.  It was the only classroom experience any of us would have before getting our own.

First lesson in your own classroom: Nothing matters if you can’t control your students.
And in my case it was chaos from day one.

Going to the cafeteria to pick up my students from lunch, I saw a large fifth grader holding a small third grader against the wall, bouncing the smaller boy’s head against the concrete.  This was normal.  And again, the administrators told us we couldn't break up fights unless we were "certified" by the school system to do that.

Astonishing.

A friend of mine from TFA training had a typical story: On his first day a 4th-grade student got up to leave five minutes before the bell.  When my friend asked the student to return to his seat the student said “Go fuck yourself.”

My friend quit that same day--as I suspect most rational people would.

I thought about quitting all the time.  But TFA had a clever strategy to dissuade people from quitting: they guilted liberal volunteers by talking about the terrible harm this would do to your students.

It was brilliant, because without education most of my students were looking at a lifetime of functional illiteracy, low wages and a likelihood of incarceration or early death, particularly for boys.

But from my first day in the classroom, the idea that my students were actually learning *anything* useful from my teaching totally evaporated.

Of course I'd expected things to be bad. I’d heard the horror stories.  But until you're there the horror stories are waved away as merely the scary first act of the inspiring story of redemption you believe is in store for you.

I expected initial difficulty, but I also expected to eventually succeed.  I stayed longer than I should have because I knew I'd feel guilty if I gave up.

Professional "educators" have debated the effect of "recess" for years.  Did it help by letting kids burn off energy, or did the activity make it harder to teach?  The debate raged endlessly.  But in any case there was no recess at Richmond because the System had ruled that it was unsafe for students to go outside in that neighborhood.  That should tell you something.

In any case, on any afternoon ten or 20 kids would "run the halls," completely unsupervised.  The principal and other honchos didn't seem to notice or care.

In the spring of my first year a school social worker delivered Shawn back to my classroom.  Shawn had been “running the halls.”  I’d seen him leave my classroom 20 minutes earlier, staring right at me and grinning.  But you can't chase 'em down.

I was terrified of Shawn, and he knew it.  I tried to ignore Shawn’s return and keep going with my lesson. A minute or so later, I was pointing at a problem on the board with my back turned, when the class erupted in laughter. I turned around and saw Shawn next to me. He was sticking out his butt out to one side, eyes rolled up into his head while he mirrored my pose.

This went on for an hour.  [It never occurred to our earnest liberal author to cold-cock the little bastard, both because he would have faced charges, but also because taking action--*any* action--against a black student is literally unthinkable to a liberal.]

Classroom order quickly deteriorated.  I threatened to call Shawn’s mother, the greatest threat of all for some students but an empty one for Shawn, as both of us knew.  “Go ahead, call her,” he said.

The mother rarely picked up my calls, and in the few instances where I had gotten through her response was "Why you pickin’ on him all the time?”

Eventually I sat down at my desk.  Shawn dragged a student desk next to mine and sat down, imitating my defeated expression.  What lesson did he learn from this?

Shawn stood up on his desk and started stomping out a beat.  “Spring break!” he chanted. Boom-boom.  He kept going and soon most of the class had joined him.  At one point I put my head in my hands. “He’s crying y'all,” someone shouted.  I wasn’t crying, but I wanted to.

As noted earlier, TFA's founder claimed these students could learn.  All they needed was good teachers.  But my experience was the only thing they learned was that the way to be popular and "cool" was to constantly disrupt all efforts to teach.

As a result, the students at Richmond Elementary learned nothing that could have improved their future prospects.   

The realization that most of my students were virtually illiterate--and would likely always remain so for life--increased my sense of futility.  

As children get older it becomes increasingly difficult to develop reading skills.  If children aren't reading at or near grade level by the fourth grade it’s a genuine emergency.  Surely the people running the schools must be smart enough to know this, and to realize that the lack of discipline prevented teaching the skills needed to change the paradigm.  

But if they realized it, no one ever acted on that knowledge.

Of course students couldn't know that not being able to read well ensured poor life prospects.  They had no way of knowing that by encouraging and supporting disruption their prospects for a better life were evaporating each day.  I knew, as rational adults should have.  Yet no one did a single thing to try to solve the problem.

Part-way through my second year the school system bought special "leveled libraries" for every classroom. The books also came with a diagnostic tool, which said only six of my students were reading at grade level.  Most were two grades behind.

One disruptive student--Justin--had his mother's name tattooed in dark black script on his forearm.  I was never able to reach his mother. There was a rumor that she was a gang member.

One day he didn't show up.  With Justin gone, classroom discipline improved dramatically.  Of course fights still happened, but maybe three or four a week instead of two to three a day.  Students actually seemed to be learning.

Then one day as I walked into the main office I saw Justin standing next to his mother, who was signing some paperwork.

“Hi Mr. E,” he said, cheerfully.  “Hi Justin,” I said, trying to play it straight.  “What brings you here?”

“We moved again.  I’m coming back to Richmond.”  He looked up at his mother, who totally ignored me.

Justin was back in class the next day.  That afternoon I caught him throwing a crayon at another student.  When I moved his name down to yellow from green, he kicked his desk into the back of a smaller boy sitting in front of him.

I moved Justin's name from yellow to red.  Justin soon left to run the halls, ripping some posters off the wall on the way out.

Justin’s absence showed the huge effect one out-of-control student had on the behavior of others.  When he returned, students who had never had behavioral problems began acting out.  One was a bright and cheerful girl from a very religious home.  A month after Justin’s return, when I scolded her for interrupting a lesson she yelled back, “Who you talking to white boy?!”

When those two years were finally over,  like many ex-teachers, I had nightmares about the classroom. Occasionally I still do.

Like many teachers I had spent thousands of dollars on school supplies, especially getting copies at FedEx, where I’d stop at least twice a week on the way to school.  To get copies at the school you had to submit the worksheets 3 days in advance, but I was never that far ahead in my planning.

One of the questions I often get about my experiences in TFA is whether I wonder about what’s become of my students. The answer is I try not to.
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People like Candace Owen, Ben Carson and Condi Rice show that blacks are capable.  But for the education establishment to successfuly educate a majority of inner-city blacks to would require a total rebuilding of the white-hating element of black culture.

It doesn't take a PhD to realize that this won't happen.  Instead, white liberals write book after book, and pull down $40,000 per speech, blaming "white fragility" and "systematic racism."

Democrat pols then use this to demand more money for public schools.  But since they refuse to permit the systems to exclude deliberate disruptors, nothing ever improves.  But it makes liberals feel virtuous.