Attempting An Anti-Racist Classroom

Today was the first day my students scored respectably on their end-of-day assessments. We were learning to compare and order integers, and though on the diagnostic test they’d scored at about 50%, by the end of today, they were scoring around 80%. By now they know they’re expected to follow along taking notes on their notetaker packets, and giving them number lines to model the integers along helped immensely. I was confident in my lesson plan as I walked around the classroom, cold-calling and group calling and standing next to the potential trouble spots with just a finger rested on their desk to get them back into line. Best of all was walking around and being able to control the number of people who needed help; for the most part, the students got it, and having them work in explicit partners really helped. At the end of the day I posted the names of everyone who got 80 and above on a tracker board; they got to file past and see their names up there if they’d done well enough. I was a bit uneasy about publicizing the names of the 80’s and up, because everyone could see who had a blank beside their name, but my FA told me it was good incentive to work harder. I’m still considering how I feel about this.

During reading group, my three intervention students read a book titled In the Barrio. The one who read the title read it hesitantly. Then he looked up at me.

“Barrio?” he asked.

“Yep,” I told him.

“I know what that is,” he beamed. I grinned. That’s why I had chosen it. I wanted him to stumble across a few words he would know well.

“He’s Spanish,” said the little boy beside him, who most definitely shares his ethnicity. The first boy was nodding.

“Excellent, you’ll have a lot to tell us, then,” I told him. And he did. We read about chili peppers, mariachi bands and enchiladas, and he was super-enthused to share with us. Then, as we moved on and I asked what else the boys had seen in the book, the one white child in the group spoke up.

“Mexicans. Lots and lots of Mexicans. There’s too many Mexicans in America, they’re taking over,” he said. I checked;  the others looked immersed in their books.

“We do NOT say that,” I told him. “America is full of immigrants, of Irish and Poles and Italians, and it’s immigrants that make America great. We do NOT say that anyone is unwelcome,” I waited for him to think about it.

“But they took my mom’s job. And there’s so many of them,” he told me.

“You can’t blame a whole group for taking one job. And we’re glad of people who come to America to help work,” I told him, and then brought the group back together, wondering what his mother will say when he tells her what he learned in school today.

I’m struggling with my advanced students. They do the work excellently when they’re on their own, but asking them to share and discuss is like pulling teeth. The second I move away to the intervention group, they’re back to reading silently and writing down their answers on the worksheet. Today they were meant to come up with certain kinds of questions and answer them together, but they resisted speaking until I coaxed and coaxed. I need some incentive to get them talking.

When it came time to line the kids up to walk them to the car load area to wait for their parents, there was some confusion amongst us teachers. I’d been doing it previously; I love the extra time to chat with the kids. But I thought I ought not to hog all the time, so today a different teacher walked them out. As the decision was announced, groans went up. Groans that I immediately disciplined but secretly cherished. There is nothing that can make you feel as loved as a bunch of rude middle schoolers.