Savage Inequalities: Life In a War Zone

Yes, I am reading Jonathon Kozol. I thought I would learn about students in inner city schools. And, as I read about students who go to schools where the basic infrastructure is broken, where they play in toxic sludge that seeps through the playground dirt, where they have 20 books for 100 students, and where it is clear that MLK’s dream has never surfaced because the student population is entirely black, I realize with shock that this is where I teach. How can you live in a reality and be completely oblivious of it? Yes, of course my students are mostly minority. And of course there's a connection between their races and the lack of resources they face. But I hadn't quite connected the reality of everyday school life with the statistical, general anti-racist endeavor I've embarked upon. 

This is what you call ironic. 56 years ago, Dorothy
Counts tries to integrate my school and leaves after
four days because of violence and harassment.
Half a century later, the school is segregated once again,
but with a different race. The violence remains. 

Friday was an adrenaline-rush day. The campus felt like a war zone. Police were everywhere. There’d been a gang fight at a neighborhood park that had bled over onto campus in the morning, and the principal recruited some extra security. Apparently gang violence ramps up around Thanksgiving time. The principal came on the loudspeaker to ask teachers to check their email—we were in “restricted movement,” meaning that students would stay in the trailers and could only leave in an emergency, escorted by a security guard.

What bravery looks like

My classes were 1/3 down in size. Many students had been suspended during the fights over the past few days or, during the campus-wide searches, been found in possession. Class was a lot calmer with only 25 students, and I felt incredibly peaceful as I moved around the classroom. It’s much easier to keep track of that many bodies, and give them the attention and guidance they need.

During one class, an assistant principal came in with two security guards and asked for two of my students. One is a boy whose previous communications with me have been: “I don’t do anything because I’m from the G,” “Fuck this test,” “I’m fucking suspended because you won’t let me go to the fucking bathroom and I said ‘what the fuck?’ ” and on this day, when I showed him his grade and asked him, straight-up, what he could do differently, he said, “yeah, I know, I just did nothing and chilled all the time, but you talked to my mom, and I’m going to do my work now" (yes!). The other boy is a bright hyperactive kid who likes to eat in class and litter the wrappers on the floor, sit on the desk with his back to me, and interrupt class. He's a ninth grader who sucks his thumb. The only time he listens is during lectures, when his eyes get wide at the historical facts being presented. Anyhow, they were both taken out by the principal, and I found out later during a faculty meeting that student searches have been approved. And a good thing, too-- a knife was found on campus.  Last week it was a clip of bullets. I think about how I feel strangely safe and untouchable—as a teacher I’m mostly background noise— and then contemplate the danger my students move through daily.

After school ended, a school-wide faculty meeting was called. The head sergeant on campus walked us through what gang signs look like. Apparently all that cute patriotic insignia is actually gang colors. Black means ready for a fight. Camouflage isn’t good either. We’re told to be very observant, and I think about how I have no idea what to observe.

That day, in my fourth block, a truly enormous cockroach crawled down the whiteboard. My students yelled and jumped up on their seats and I stood indecisively in front of the whiteboard with a paper towel in my hand, unwilling to touch such a large specimen. After it disappeared behind the board, I forgot about it and took it as a matter of course. Another teacher had popped in earlier to tell me about the enormous rat he saw scurry beneath his trailer. It all seemed normal, or at least something to smile at. But the truth is, it isn’t.

What my high school window should have said years ago

In the school I teach at, the heating was broken in the gym for the first two months and students sweltered in 90+ degree heat as they played volleyball and basketball. One teacher I know teaches two classes at the same time, running up and down between the floors to give instruction and set her kids working independently. Another teacher has a class of 65. I teach classes of 35 students in a trailer with space for 25 and desks for 33. The administration is too small to handle all of the 1,700 students' needs even with their sleepless dedication, and passes on the impossibilities they face to the teachers-- everyone is making bricks without straw. One of my students was suspended because she was attacked by boys in the bathroom and everyone involved got suspended, including the victim. I was thinking of going in to do some grading today but on second thought realize that it’s not safe for me to be on campus on a Sunday without security and plenty of other teachers around. My students who live in the area get to make no such decision. The school has more cockroaches than teachers. The part that adds a Daliesque surrealism to the whole? The fact that this takes place in a completely pre-Civil Rights, almost utterly segregated school. I have 2 and a half white children in all of my 110 students. Can we look at such inequality and say that race has nothing to do with it?

The thing is, that it’s hard not to accept these things as normal. Talking about the difficulties seems like grandstanding, emotional drama queening, and, especially in TFA, a constant battle of one-upmanship where everyone wants to prove that their school has the biggest challenges. I mean, Friday was crazy. But it was also a good day. There was a blood drive on campus, and droves of students flocked to donate (supervised by security guards, of course). While waiting to donate, two of my brightest students debated with me about women in combat in the marines. My classes finished their Industrial Revolution projects with serious intensity. One student started a classwide karaoke of Katie Perry songs which everyone joined in with as they worked, as only adorable 9^th graders can. I debuted the snowball activity which I’d been taught in my recent workshop, and at the end of 4^th period, as I saw a whole lot of paper on my classroom floor, I held up the wastebin and beckoned students to ball it up and make a basket. By the end of five minutes, my floor was pristine.

 

So you see, the students are eager and curious and work hard when given the chance, and are also silly children eager to sing and play and have fun. But they do these things in an environment that is filthy and violent and sometimes downright scary. We bring up inequality and race and power differentiation often in class—after all, world history is full of it. But how aware are they, really, that the mere fact that they have lost an average of ten minutes a week of learning due to insect-related invasions of their classroom gives them a disadvantage to students in schools that never see a cockroach? Will colleges take into account the fact that my students cannot take books home because we only have 35 for 110 students when they’re assessing applications? Will my students whose band practice or basketball games are cancelled due to safety considerations or equipment malfunctioning still receive scholarships to the universities of their choice? And will anyone ever say anything about the fact that America has lost its dream?

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up 
like a raisin in the sun? 
Or fester like a sore-- 
And then run? 
Does it stink like rotten meat? 
Or crust and sugar over-- 
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags 
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?