by Ilana Garon
“Will you do it with us?” one of the kids asked. The others immediately chimed in, “Yeah! You have to do it with us!”
It hadn’t occurred to me that they would be remotely interested in hearing my writing. “Sure, I guess,” I told them.
I wrote a story for them about my best high school friend (and unrequited crush), Edmund, who had gotten into a car accident when he and I were both sixteen. He had fallen asleep at the wheel and killed another driver. I tried to tell the story in a way that conveyed how I had felt at sixteen—the age that my students were now. I read it aloud to them that Friday, and for once they were silent.
“Miss,” said one of the boys, Carl. “You should write a book.”
I had never thought about it until that moment. I knew I found writing cathartic, at the very least; in fact, I had been crafting small stories about my teaching experiences, as well as keeping copious journals, ever since my first days in Explorers. But I didn’t think I was creative enough. Now, I shrugged off Carl’s suggestion. A book? Me? What could I possibly write about?
“You should,” said Carl, persistently. “You should write a book for teenagers. I’d read it.”
The seed was planted in my head, and several months of consideration did nothing to dislodge it. It was true—I liked writing. It was what I had always done instinctively, absent any course telling me to, when I had wanted to process anything I was having trouble with. So, I thought, “What the hell?” I sent in three stories I had written, all about teaching, to a few MFA programs in the New York area. To my surprise, I was accepted to all but one.
I told the kids I would be graduating with them. For the seniors, this made perfect sense; they were on their way out anyway. The sophomores had a harder time with it.
“Are you leaving because you hate us?” they asked plaintively.
I felt horrible when they said things like that—like I was yet another adult abandoning them. Teaching in the Bronx was, in some ways, like watching a car accident, I had realized: You couldn’t just turn away once you had seen the grim spectacle of inner-city education. And here I was preparing to do just that.
“No, that’s not it at all! I love you guys—I mean it! I just . . . I’m in my mid-twenties, and it’s a convenient time for me to go to graduate school and get my master’s.”
“Why can’t you do it after we graduate?”
“Well . . . at some point, I’m going to want to settle down, have kids of my own, that sort of thing . . . and I’ll want to be finished with school by then.”
“You can have kids right now!” they protested.
I was floundering. “Right, but I want to be able to focus on being a mom when I have kids—it will be harder to do it if I’m a student still.” I said this very deliberately, with the hopes that some of the girls were listening. “And that means I have to get this graduate school stuff done before I get married or start having a family.”
Comprehension seemed to dawn on them. “Ohhh,” they said. “You go do that, Miss.” I wondered what I had said that suddenly clarified everything.
I found out a month later, when cards started appearing on my desk saying things like “We will miss you! Good luck with the wedding!” They never said anything about graduate school.
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They threw me a surprise good-bye party at the end of May. It had been planned for after school, but whoever had been in charge of luring me into the classroom where the kids were waiting had clearly fallen down on the job. One of the boys, Pablo, came to get me in the teacher’s lounge. “They’re trying to surprise you, but you were supposed to know where to go,” he said, looking dismayed. “The girls are all crying now.”
“Oh my goodness—I’m sorry.”
I followed Pablo to the room and walked in. There were about twenty-five kids in the room. The girls were crying, just as Pablo had said.
“Guys! I’m here! It’s okay!”
“You’re leaving!”
“Geez, I’m not dying! The school year doesn’t end for another month—and after that, I’ll be teaching summer school as well, so you’ll see me there!” I said. “And what’s more, I’m not leaving the city—any of you can come see me whenever you want. Just take the 2 train down to Ninety-Sixth Street. Seriously. I’ll buy you all lunch.”
It was no use. They were inconsolable. One of the guys grimly cut into the cake—a strawberry jam-filled confection with butter cream icing. We ate it in near silence, with isolated whimpering throughout the room. It was the saddest party I had ever had.
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On the last day of school for teachers—the kids didn’t have to come in anymore—I was cleaning out my classroom. I took the posters down from the wall, folded the ones that were salvageable, and put the rest in the garbage. I stacked the remaining homework folders, whose owners had forgotten to collect them, and made a mental note to leave them in the principal’s office in case the kids wanted to claim them in the fall.
I looked around my classroom. Without the kids’ work on the wall, their colorful hand-drawn posters, and the big WELCOME TO ENGLISH 4 sign, the room looked cavernous and unfamiliar.
I felt a lump in my throat. It’s okay, I told myself. You’ll see most of them in summer school anyway. And then you’ll remember how annoying they can be. It’ll be fine.
It took me a while to sufficiently blink back tears so I could go into the hallway where the other teachers were hanging out.
______
I taught summer school, and then I went back to school—this time as a student. I spent the next two years writing mostly stories about my experiences being a teacher in the Bronx. I kept in touch with many of the kids—in the age of Facebook, Google-chat, and email, I discovered it was pretty easy to keep tabs on them, and not only because I was still writing college recommendations for half of them.
The week before each break, I would make a point to travel up to the school and see them: Usually I would come in at their lunchtime and go downstairs to the cafeteria, where I would join them. They would jump all over me until I begged for air. Then we would take cell phone pictures (totally against the rules of the school, which forbade students from bringing in cell phones), and someone would usually “buy me a drink”—a can of juice from the vending machine. I would escort them back to their classes at the end of lunch, say hi to some of the teachers, and then head home. I always left feeling really loved. It was impossible to deny how much I missed teaching and how much I missed them.
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In the spring of 2009, I prepared to leave the two-year MFA program and reenter the working world. Though I was beginning to write professionally, my plan was to return to teaching as my main source of income, at least for the foreseeable future—and I was glad about this. I had missed the classroom. I interviewed at a bunch of different schools: some charter, some private, some new public “small schools” with themes like gaming, or arts, or “green” living. None of them seemed quite right. I wanted to work near where I was living—I hated the commute to the Bronx—but I wasn’t finding a place where I was particularly comfortable.
So, I emailed the principal of the small school I had worked at on the Explorers campus. It was a new principal now—she was smart, organized, and had a great reputation for being supportive of teachers.
“It’s really improved from when you were there,” Dan told me when I asked. He was still teaching biology. Most of the teachers I liked were still there, as well.
The principal and I talked. She offered me the opportunity to teach the courses I wanted, the late schedule I wanted, and perhaps most importantly, the feeling that I myself was wanted. The commute started to seem less insurmountable. Maybe I could move closer to Ninety-Sixth Street, I told myself. “Just let me know in the next couple of months,” the principal said.
The students knew I was up there; some of my former sophomores, now seniors, were milling around in the hallway as I exited the principal’s office.
“You’re coming back here, aren’t you?” someone asked.
“I knew it! Miss Garon! How you gonna come back right when we graduate? That’s wack!”
“Guys. Chill. I have no big announcements to make,” I said flatly.
“Yeah right. We know what’s up. Pablo told us you’re coming back.”
“What? Since when is Pablo privy to my professional decisions?
“Whatever. Come on! Tell us! Are you coming back, or what?”
I walked towards the exit. I was smiling.
CONCLUSION
Final Thoughts
Agroup of students I taught a few years ago had a game they liked to play with me after school: They’d hang out in my classroom messing about while I cleaned up or graded papers, sometimes making half-hearted attempts at their own homework, and all the while try to persuade me that I should call one of them “n—ah.”
“Come on, Miss!” the ringleader would say. They’d all be gathered around my desk by this point, barely able to contain their laughter, and the ringleader would always be pointing to some equally game friend. (Not all of them were black, either—apparently, you could belong to any of the ethnic groups represented in our school and find this game hilarious.) “Just say it once! Say it to him, ‘Hey, n—ah!’ or ‘N—ah, please’—he’ll answer you!”
I’d look at them warily, bemused by their regular insistence that I had to do this. “Guys. You know there’s no situation in which it’s remotely okay for me to use that word,” I’d tell them.
“Come on! Just once! No one here’s gonna tell. Right guys?” And they’d all immediately concur—“Yeah, sure, Miss! Doesn’t leave this room!”
I never took the bait. It wasn’t that I doubted they’d keep their promises; I truly believe this group of kids both liked me, but I was keenly aware of the trouble I would face as a teacher if I were ever legitimately accused of using such racially charged language in everyday conversation.
But to me, it would have felt too uncomfortable. Even in the sense that they were using it and were encouraging me to use it—emphasizing the last syllable not as the Jim Crowera “n—ER,” but “n—ah,” which was closer to “dude” in their parlance than it was to a pejorative term for blacks—the whole idea seemed unequivocally wrong in my eyes. I just couldn’t get around the fact that, no matter how comfortable I was with this bunch of kids, my saying the “n-word” as a white teacher to mostly black and Latino students would in some way give life to a vicious system of thought that needed to be put to rest.
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I’ve thought of this series of interactions many times, in trying to articulate the ideas behind this collection. In relating my experience teaching in the Bronx, it seems naïve to ignore the reality of my being suburban, middle-class, and white. To the extent that tolerance, connectedness, and even affection has existed between my students and me—and I do believe that I’ve had that rapport with many students—it has never been under a pretense of “sameness” or of overlooking the vast disparities that have existed and continue to exist in our backgrounds. In most cases, I believe the students saw and continue to see me as a sort of bewildered traveler in their world; they grasp that I am eager to understand, experience, and know my way around, yet I am already far too displaced from it all to do anything but emphathize with what daily life as an inner-city student entails. In short, I’ll never be a permanent resident.
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In recent years, it seems that everyone has developed a theory about “what’s wrong” with inner-city schools. From poor teaching (including the idea that teacher tenure facilitates an inherent disincentive to improve), to lack of technological resources, to the need for more standardized tests, most of the theories proposed have failed to take into account the challenges faced by students like the ones whom I’ve taught.
I would submit that poverty itself is the issue within inner-city schools. As far back as elementary school, the students I’ve taught are already, in many cases, at an incalculable disadvantage compared to their wealthier peers. They know fewer words when they start school. They read far less frequently at home, no doubt because in the process of working two to three jobs to support a family, their parents simply have less time at home to support their literacy skills. They have been babysat by the television and (more recently) the Internet all too frequently, to the point where the intellectual effort required to read a novel or solve a math problem becomes a frustrating delay in gratification—if there is no immediate pay-off (in literature, that means graphic sex or violence within the first few pages), the kids become bored. They come to school hungry, tired, without eyeglasses. Whether this is an issue of economics—they cannot afford food or eyeglasses or had to work late supporting the family and thus got no sleep—or whether this is simply parental inattention, I’m not sure. The issue of “fault” is irrelevant when the effect is the same: The students come to school emotionally and physically unprepared to learn.
In the direst situations, these students have been bereft of parenting altogether; they’ve been raised in foster homes, or by siblings not much older than themselves. They dodge family cycles of abuse, teen pregnancy, drugs and alcohol, involvement in gang activity, and jail time. While it would be a gross generalization to imply that this is the norm, it must be said that I’ve seen these situations far too many times. To expect that the students who endure these crises can regularly come to school, quietly sit down at their desks, and turn in their homework without incident—ignoring the reality of their lives outside of school—is absurd; the only thing more shocking is that sometimes they actually do manage this herculean task.
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I cannot suggest any one single panacea for these ills, but I do think that recognizing their economic underpinnings is key to coming up with a relevant solution. And I don’t think the solution can be addressed solely through inner-city classrooms, as what happens there is merely a symptom of the greater problem; rather, we need to elevate entire families—make Head Start programs widely available; offer healthier (and better-tasting) school breakfasts and lunches; provide lower-cost, postsecondary education options; build opportunities to learn and work at skilled trades starting at the high school level and continuing into adulthood (through community colleges and factory-based trade programs); and empower community-based organizations.
The culture of education also is due for a change, and that’s not something that’s more pertinent to my students than to their peers in wealthier districts. However churlish it may be to say this, it must be mentioned that the prevailing trend is one wherein students—and this applies particularly to those at the high school level—are no longer held accountable by the adults around them for their own educational progress. It is common for students to misbehave by talking incessantly, cursing, or fighting in class, and these disruptions (which set back not only the disruptive students, but also their classmates) are seen as normal occurrences in inner-city schools, even in high school, even in students as old as eighteen.
I always find it particularly eye-opening to view this trend through the eyes of students who are not American-born, who are frankly shocked and offended by the behavior of their classmates. “These kids take education for granted,” more than one of them has told me. “They ruin class for the rest of us, and their parents and school officials just let them get away with it.” Administrators at every level, from the school to the state, have failed to set consequences for such misbehavior; for instance, expulsion from public school is illegal in New York State, and students can go so far as to “curse out” a teacher without receiving a suspension, as a result of legislation designed not to “deprive students of their education.” Punitive systems are problematic in their own right, but so are systems wherein poor citizenship goes unchastened and uncorrected.
Too many of the parents are inclined to blame the fact that their children “don’t like the teachers” or “aren’t interested in the material” before considering their o
wn responsibilities to instill discipline within their families. But there comes a point when blaming the teacher for poor instruction, or the class for not being “engaging” enough, ceases to be relevant. Certainly, parents and guardians must act in support and protection of students, promoting their best interests. But to fail to hold them accountable for their own success—as students and as human beings—is to promote a culture of failure, and ultimately, to subvert them as masters of their own futures.
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It becomes difficult to talk about the problems of inner-city education without acknowledging the fact that poverty and race are so inextricably linked in this country. I was once trying to explain to the owner of a bar—who was, herself, African American—that my students would have trouble with Toni Morrison’s Beloved, a book she was suggesting I teach, in its more ponderous sections.
“But why?” she exclaimed. “Don’t you think they’d get behind the idea of an African American author and protagonists?” She seemed offended that I wasn’t going to try it on my tenth-graders. “Are you saying you don’t think they could handle it?”
I had trouble conveying to her that the issues they’d have with the book weren’t about identifying with the characters, and moreover, that their issues connecting with different novels didn’t really have anything to do with the skin color of the protagonists. Then there was the question of reading level (I myself read Beloved in twelfth-grade AP English, while my students were only in tenth grade); even their peers two years older would have trouble with a book of such complexity. And my assessment that they would likely struggle with Beloved wasn’t me thinking, Black kids can’t handle such a difficult book. It was, Kids with low literacy skills will struggle with such a difficult book.