Rachel: Basically, mutual respect. I make sure to get to know who they are as people, to learn about what they enjoy, their hobbies and interests. I also let them get to know me as a person. I try to be fair and equal, not pigeon-holing or giving up on students who have repeatedly been in trouble or not turned in work. A student knows when I yell at them it’s not to belittle them, it’s because I want them to get an education and am frustrated that whatever is happening at that time is getting in the way of that goal. I can’t tell you the amount of times a student has told me that I’m ‘black on the inside.’ I always find it to be the ultimate compliment, but at the same time, it just punctuates to me how the students still have a belief that black and white are different.
Rumpus: So how do race relations play out in your school, and between whom?
Rachel: Race is the unspoken number one issue. Students don’t like to talk about it. There are students who have trouble trusting white teachers, who make up the majority of the staff. The racial make-up of the staff is a constant underlying issue–the staff often divides into social groups by race. Many black staff members feel that there isn’t enough of an effort to recruit more black teachers, or that colleges aren’t producing enough black candidates to become teachers. Then there are white teachers who say things attempting to be funny that instead are racist. They don’t necessarily realize that their joke isn’t appropriate. However, we’ve also had black teachers make remarks about students that were inappropriate.
Rumpus: What do you think are the major differences between teaching in your school versus teaching in a higher income school?
Rachel: The job is hard no matter where you teach, you just end up focusing on different things. Unfortunately, in lower income schools both in the city and in the smaller towns, an enormous amount of time and energy is put into discipline and maintaining a safe and uninterrupted learning environment, which is time that could be dedicated to learning how to become a better teacher. Teachers who really want to perfect the practice will often choose to go places where they can teach without interruption and will see clear results from their lessons. They can use all their time to lesson plan, differentiate, assess and personalize lessons. They don’t get bogged down in classroom management, and can just teach. This often means more highly skilled teachers will seek out schools where it’s not as much of a daily struggle to keep kids interested and focused.
On the other hand, teachers in inner city schools often feel that they need to control every second of classroom time or they will lose their students to disruptions and misbehavior. This keeps teachers from creating lessons that are student-led for fear of what will happen when structure is taken away (with more experience, you learn that they are not mutually exclusive). Most of the time, it’s just a couple of kids per class that can bring a whole room down.
Teaching is a performance. You can perform in a high-end theater where people will be on time, will remain quiet and focused on your performance, where you have an amazing stage with a high-tech sound system and experienced lighting technicians. Or you can perform in some low-end theater where the audience enters late, talks throughout the performance, and your set is falling apart and old.
Rumpus: So if teaching is a performance, what’s your stage persona like? How does it compare to your behind-the-scenes persona (aka, the person you are outside of school)?
Rachel: My stage persona has to understand where the students are coming from. Our upbringings are so different, so I don’t always understand where they are coming from in terms of the need to fight and the lack of concern about their school work. The ‘real’ me wants to tell them to suck it up and deal, but the ‘school’ me tries to help them think through their choices.
Rumpus: How do teachers at your school work together and communicate about students?
Rachel: Teachers of the same grade are grouped into teams, so usually all of the students in a grade have the same set of English, Science, Math, and Social Studies teachers. Teams are given a good bit of autonomy. They can make decisions about how they want their team to run under supervision from the principal. This team decision-making can be both good and bad.
Rumpus: What’s the bad part?
Rachel: Sometimes it seems like we are constantly trying to reinvent the school experience by throwing out the things about schools that work. There is this overriding idea that everything about traditional education is bad while some of those things are what bring a school together. My school is in its seventh year and has already had two different principals and enormous staff turn over. Each year, about half the teaching positions are vacant. Some teachers move on to new schools, but many leave teaching altogether.
Rumpus: This year you went from being a teacher to an administrative position. You’re now the Dean of Discipline. Tell me about that transition and what that job entails.
Rachel: While in a classroom, you get buy in from the students about your attitude and commitment to respect, as well as your lessons and your systems. However, as a dean you’re usually fixing problems that originated somewhere else with someone else’s lessons and systems. I’m in charge of detention, handing out suspensions and other consequences, contacting parents regarding behavior, and responding to classroom issues and incidents as the come up. I monitor hallways, put students back in classes, enforce the uniform policy, mediate disputes between students, supervise middle school students in suspension, attempt to reduce recidivism, and attend superintendent suspension hearings. My co-dean and I often joke that we are the lawyer, judge, and jury for students. In some ways it wasn’t a difficult transition [from teaching], because I had already made it my business to try and work with students who were repeat offenders, to monitor hallways, and to contact parents. However, I wasn’t prepared to have to deal with the other adults being nasty and aggressive towards me, nor was I prepared to be so busy.
Sometimes I walk into school at 8am and I am already three deep with students in crisis. On a busy day, of which there are a few each week, we respond to and break up several fights. At any one time, I can have 5-10 students demanding my attention. I don’t take a prep or a lunch break. It is full steam ahead all day.
Rumpus: So what drives you to keep going? You mentioned the high turnover rate earlier…
