That Boy In Your Classroom

127 “That Boy In Your Classroom”

My family is pretty much a set of professional feminists at this point. As two of them visited over the past week, both inquired about the salience of gender in my school. Whereas our teenage identity issues revolved strongly around our womanhood, for the students in my school, I think race and class are the primary issues. Women tend to achieve academically where their male counterparts won’t, and although every position on the matrix of intersectionality is fraught with its own issues, Black womanhood has a strong voice and Asian womanhood a determined scholarship that steer them towards success (Latina women are, I think, more at risk for academic failure than Latina men, in our school—but that’s purely anecdotal. Gotta check the data). However, for me, gender still throws regular curve balls.

Student-teacher communication at the end of a test: commentary on the state of society.

 Friday, I showed up at 6:30 am for a conference with a parent. Of course, she was a no-show. That early in the morning on a teacher workday, it was just me and the security guards chillin in the office. As I wedged my way between two of them to reach the copier, one appealed to my professional opinion as a woman:

“You like your man to open the door for you, right?”

“Ummmm, I dunno. Guys never really opened the door for me until I came south.”

“Oh, you from the north? So your man didn’t, huh? And you didn’t mind?”

“I didn’t really think about it.”

“And so he didn’t really think about it. But your man now, he better open that door for you.”

I coyly pressed the start button on the copier to avoid having to answer for all womanhood.

“And I know women. Women love hard. They love hard, but when it goes the other way, that goes hard too.”

You know what? I didn’t need those copies until Monday. Leaving sheets of IB essay outlines to froth forth from the copier for the next comer, I told the men to have a nice day and fled, terrified that anything I said would show the hard side of womanhood.

Lately, I keep anything I don’t want stolen from my classroom on a cart, which I wheel into a friend’s room in the building near us every afternoon and pick up every morning. On the first day of this semester, I knocked on the door of his new classroom, and entered to muted applause from the young men sitting near the door. Pretending I didn’t hear them, I began to thread the technology cord through its complicated thief-defying tangles.

“Ms. W. He’s got something he wants to say to you.” My helpful friend was directing my attention towards a student.

“You beautiful, meees.”  

I nodded graciously. “Thank you.” I made an effort to keep my eyes from narrowing as I bit the inside of my cheek. Beautiful, my ass. I’m a teacher. Don’t even start with me, child. And even if you were an adult on the same page as me, don’t go down that route. I’m smart. I’m competent and funny and even patient, now (at least, in the classroom). Beautiful doesn’t begin to approach it. No male teacher has to take this crap. Wait, do they?

I can never decide, in these situations, if I’m more uncomfortable because the student is abrogating a line of authority, or because they’re taking such a frankly male view of things (I’m a guy, and I can hand out accolades to women even if they are in charge of me), or because beauty is considered an achievement by our culture instead of an accident. All three thoughts stumbled around inside of me, and while I wanted to make it a teaching moment and somehow refuse the kid’s compliment, I also realized he just wanted to say something nice. So I smiled and walked out and reminded myself, “a child thinks I’m beautiful, and that’s okay, too.”

The next afternoon, all of the male students in the school were called to the gym for an announcement about football. It was during my planning period, so I went, and met the principal on my way in.

“It’s okay if I come, right? I want to see what it looks like to have all the boys in one place.”

“Oooh, boy,” the principal answered. “All the boys in one place? I did not think this through.” We laughed.

“What do you have for the girls?” I urged him. “If the boys get football as an incentive, the girls should get…” We thought.

“Softball? Volleyball?” Then our attention was turned to quieting the crowd.

Whoever thought that the football coach could contain the attention of 800 boys without a megaphone didn’t quite plan this out. There was the punk contingent, that didn’t give a hoot about football, and shouted every second they could. There were the nerds, hunched together over game consoles. There was a mass of boys who couldn’t fit on the bleachers, swaying and slouching by the walls. They ranged from little boys whose backpacks were larger than they were, to men with full beards.

I was one of three women in the entire room. A female security guard stood at one side, and the assistant principal sat on the floor. I don’t know if either of them felt as strongly aware of their femininity as I did. Both wore pants. I, in a pencil skirt and blouse, was staunchly keeping a section of the bleachers quiet, but some of the shouts unnerved me, so once things quieted down, I found my favorite security guard and stood beside him. We were privileged to witness the football coach stir up the boys with a ritual shouting: “it don’t take nothing to join something that already exists. But building something up that ain’t exist yet, that’s what books get written on and movies made on.” At the end the boys overwhelmed his speech with noise and stampeded out, impervious to the overtures made to their masculine teamhood.

On Friday’s workday, I attended a professional development on the black male and literacy. Titled “That Boy In Your Classroom,” it purported to be about how to reach an African American male demographic heavily at risk for failure. It actually just raised questions it didn't answer. Statistics showed that only half of African-American males in our district are literate by third grade, and overwhelming numbers of them are suspended compared to other students. When we saw the statistics on reasons behind suspensions, it seemed unequal.

African-American males’ most common reasons for suspensions were: disrespect, loitering, and talking back. Caucasian males’ most common reasons were: smoking, leaving class without permission, and abusive language. The second is much more objective, the first dangerously open to cultural interpretation. 

Yes! You go, kiddo!

The presenter opened with the question: “do you think African-American males actually misbehave at much higher rates than the rest of your students?” We thought it over, and agreed that at least anecdotally, it isn’t so. Then he asked whether he should, in a year, entrust his African-American male child to the public school system, when it only has a 50% chance of teaching him to read, and a high (can’t remember the numbers) chance of suspending him until he drops out. The African-American teachers who were also parents in the group weighed in:

“My child is very active. How will others see that? As inability to follow directions? Or just hyperness? As a threat? Or cute?”

“I’m not worried about my child. His education starts at home. He’ll do fine.”

“My child has a strong mind. If he thinks you’re wrong, he’ll say. How will that be perceived by his teachers?”

I listened to their fears for their children and pondered the larger question posed—why do so many young African-American men do worse academically than their peers? The presenter showed data that took into account class and location—it was apparent that even in the same schools, and classes, they were faring worse. Why? Is there an answer that people know, but aren’t telling?

I thought about the boys in my classes. They range in capability and achievement. Some of the most intelligent fail because they don’t show up enough. Some of the most ignorant work terribly hard until they pass. The most frustrating element in my classes each semester? That snarky but illiterate girl who needs to prove her street creds to a class that largely doesn’t care. The worst cases of burnout I’ve seen? Hispanic kids so frustrated by their inability to read English on an academic level that they give up from day one. Still, whatever happens in my classroom aside, statistically speaking, the African-American male is the most at-risk. What do you think is the reason? Whatever jumps to your mind first, most likely has something to do with it… it probably establishes his teacher’s expectations, too.

My class had their picture published on the James Madison U website!
Three college students volunteered, running a college application workshop day for my IB crew.
P.S. I know they look adorable here, but they're actually fierce scholars. Fierce adorable scholars.