Back at School A, the ghetto school, I encountered a young man last year in one of the classes where I was substitute who has an interesting story.
When I first met him, he tried very hard to conceal his name. He signed the sign-in sheet I passed around, but when I asked him what his name was he gave me a false one. What I immediately saw about this kid was that he was very popular with the other students, the sort of person they gather around and like to socialize with during class instead of doing their classwork. He is moderately good-looking, not an athlete, but with a football player's build, and larger than most of the other students his age. In the midst of the class we got into a conversation.
Several of our exchanges remain firmly in my mind. I asked him who he lived with, and he mentioned a younger brother and a sister. His sister was in her early twenties and worked at a local drugstore. His brother was in middle school.
When I asked M. what his hobbies were or what he did outside of school, he said to me, "You don't want to know." This sounded to me like a statement that he sold drugs. When I asked him what he wanted in life, trying to get the conversation directed towards the importance of education for achieving success, he replied, "The only thing I value is money." He also added that he didn't expect to live beyond that age of 22 or 23, so he was going to enjoy it while he had it.
Unless you live under a log, you cannot live anywhere in my city without knowing a little bit about the life of people who deal drugs. They die fairly young, usually shot up in some drive-by shooting or ambush. You see them in their neighborhoods, walking briskly and constantly looking nervously over their shoulder to see what cars or people are behind them.
I imagine some readers of this blog will think I should have called the police and turned this kid in as a dealer. With what proof ? My surmises wouldn't be evidence enough. You don't call the authorites when you suspect something. You call them when you can prove it. And further, I just didn't feel inclined to get anyone else involved in this kid's life when I thought there might be a chance that with someonme to talk to he might straighten out.
I asked M. if he had any adults to talk to. He said, "No." And then the class bell rang.
M. showed up in a few more classes I subbed in last year. I was certain he was a drug dealer. He knew that I knew and I knew that he knew and he knew that I knew that he knew. And I turned over in my mind what one could say to refute the notion that other things in life were more important than money. I told him that he should stop whatever he was doing, and that my assessment of him was that he is a good kid with a kind heart, and he needs to find some other way of life. His reply was that where he lives, there aren't many choices. My suggestion was to move his family to a better part of town. He mentioned how much that would cost, and I replied that he should use the money he probably had in a shoebox in his closet, and not worry about putting it to a better use, because that's the best use he could put it to.
He said that the "Bottom" was where his friends were. It was all that he knew. He would feel uncomfortable living somewhere else.
Over the summer while I was creating an online store or two and going about other business, I thought about this idea that the only thing worth valuing is money. How can one refute this ? And especially to a kid who isn't ready to believe anything else anyways ?
This year after I'd been back on campus a few days.I saw him again. He greeted me with a hug. and stopped to talk. I told him I'd been worried about him and whether or not he'd come safely through the summer. He told me that he almost hadn't. He'd owed some people a large sum of money he couldn't repay and they'd come after him with guns, but finally he had repaid them, and now everything was "cool." "I'm glad to see you back alive." I topld him. I knew the results of not paying drub dealers. I had known someone at a gym where I used to work out who'd appeared one day with two broken arms. He'd owed someone some money he couldn't repay and the main man's lieutenants had come after him with baseball bats.
All summer I'd been turning over in my head the central problem: How does a teacher divert a kid like this from the sort of drug life he leads back into a happier mainstream ?
I kept thinking of things to tell him. In the news school year I stopped him, once and discussed what he knew and what I knew. I told him that we were like two people living on opposite sides of a ten-foot high fence. All he could see was the "Bottom" where he lived. On my side of the fence, I'd been around. Now 70, I'd seen a lot of things that might make him happy, but that he'd never experienced or thought about. (Was I talking about Plato's The Allegory of the Cave ?)
Another time, I told him, "Listen to what the Godfather says, and think seriously about it. The Godfather says you need to get out of the "Bottom." Take your girlfriend on a 10-day trip to Hawaii. And don't tell me you can't afford it. Go see what some other kind of life is like."
He appeared to absorb this and seriously think about it.
I wasn't subbing at the same school for several days, but when I returned I heard about something new involving M. During my absence, his younger brother, a student at a middle school and who was already said to be dealing, had been shot five times and was now paralyzed for life. M. is said to have gone "crazy" out in front of the school, screaming and shouting and crying until the security guards came and calmed him down.
When I saw him the day after this, he appeared to be his normal self. However, he talked about going to France, to Paris. instead of Hawaii. The idea of travel seemed to be actively percolating through his mind. I told him he needed a passport, which he could get through the local State Department Office, that he should make sure his vaccinations were current, and that if he were really serious he should book his air flights as far ahead as possible.
He mentioned that he'd started working in a local store as a stock clerk -- which indicated to me that he had been considering getting out of the player's life for at least a few weeks. Maybe being unable to pay his drug debts over the summer had made him start thinking. And maybe what he really needed was an adult or two to give him some guidance. Maybe I can help.
Disappointing addendum, added 9 October 2008, several days after the above was written: Today I learned that M had a fight with another student and beat him up so severely that the other young man was taken by ambulance to the hospital. The beating was VERY severe. M is being held on charges of attempted murder.
[All material in this blog is copyright 2008 by Richard A. Goodman. If you are reading this somewhere other than on blogspot.com, see more at http://teachinginaghettoschool.blogspot.com/]
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
I'm Not As Smart As I Thought
I am not as smart as I thought. It turns out that the students I believed could not speak (see last blog entry) actually do speak a few words. The teacher who told me they didn't wasn't really acquainted with their abilities.
Maybe this will make it easier to teach them more.
Maybe this will make it easier to teach them more.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
The Kids in Special Education
Last year I worked in several special education classes for about three months, teaching students who, though in special education, still had a fairly high ability to function. They could all talk. All but one could read and understand history texts. They could all understand instructions and do pages of math, fill in the blanks on pages about health care, and so on.
Only one, Ralph, was fairly low functioning. You would not have known it from looking at him, but he could not read. He spoke well enough, but he could not remember his own telephone number, so he knew that if he pushed "1" on his cell phone it would ring his mother at home. When I first saw him, my immediate impression was utterly wrong. I saw a very dark-skinned African-American student who wore his hair in neat corn rows and who dressed in what I have come to call "the uniform" -- baggy pants with a bit of embrodery on one or both trouser legs, expensive sneakers, a loose pullover top, and, some of the time, a baseball cap. He looked very ghetto, very "street," and somewhat mean to me.
What I could not immediately see was this young man's kindness. He may have dressed very "ghetto," but he had one of the nicest dispositions of any of the students in the class. More than once when I saw him learn that another student didn't have food or money for lunch, I saw him offer to share what he had. As I got to know him, I saw there was no meanness in this kid.
This year, the autistic kids I have been working with for several days remind me a little of him, except that they don't dress "ghetto," they just dress clean and practical, trying to impress nobody. They also have the same kind disposition, However, as unable to function as Ralph was, his abilities far excelled those of my students this year.
At least half of this year's students cannot talk. They make inarticulate noises -- so inarticulate that the sounds really cannot be understood 99% of the time. They sit by themselves, paying almost no attention to anything but their fingers or their hands. A few do a lot of bobbing up and down. A few of the more active ones do a fair amount of screaming or noise making. They will be sitting in their chair, and all of a sudden they will simply hoot or scream. The ones who make the most noise this way seem also most prone to wanting to roam. We have to watch all of them all the time to be sure someone doesn't slip out of the classroom and wander around outside.
To teach them a few practical skills, we took the whole class on a short trip two days ago. We walked to a bus stop. As the bus pulled up, each student received a bus pass. Each boarded the bus and ran his or her bus pass through the payment machine. Then we collected their bus passes so they wouldn't be lost during the rest of the field trip. We ended up in a park. Some of them played on the swings. Others just ran around hooting and dancing and shouting. One of the lowest functioning kids sat on the ground, just playing with the sand.
After about fifteen minutes, the main teacher and I took three of the higher functioning students on a walk to a local grocery store. There we had the kids find the items we needed -- fruit juice, a package of frozen strawberries, etc. At the checkout stand, they were given money to pay for the purchases, which they did. They learned that the cashier will give them back the paper money owed, and that the silver money drops into a tray and they have to pick it up. They also learned that they would have to get a receipt.
Two of these three kids cannot talk. One of them can, and in fact is fairly articulate. He sometimes assumes a leadership position among the other students. For instance, I saw him several times urging another student to eat his breakfast during our breakfast time at the cafeteria.
I am wondering whether or not a few of the kids who supposedly cannot talk can be taught five or ten words. I don't know. I need to discuss this with the lead teacher and give it a try. If one who cannot really talk can say "pleh" when he wants play dough, he is certainly making the connection between his version of the word and an object. Maybe in the next months I'll be able to teach him a few more words like "food" and "sleep." We'll see.
Only one, Ralph, was fairly low functioning. You would not have known it from looking at him, but he could not read. He spoke well enough, but he could not remember his own telephone number, so he knew that if he pushed "1" on his cell phone it would ring his mother at home. When I first saw him, my immediate impression was utterly wrong. I saw a very dark-skinned African-American student who wore his hair in neat corn rows and who dressed in what I have come to call "the uniform" -- baggy pants with a bit of embrodery on one or both trouser legs, expensive sneakers, a loose pullover top, and, some of the time, a baseball cap. He looked very ghetto, very "street," and somewhat mean to me.
What I could not immediately see was this young man's kindness. He may have dressed very "ghetto," but he had one of the nicest dispositions of any of the students in the class. More than once when I saw him learn that another student didn't have food or money for lunch, I saw him offer to share what he had. As I got to know him, I saw there was no meanness in this kid.
This year, the autistic kids I have been working with for several days remind me a little of him, except that they don't dress "ghetto," they just dress clean and practical, trying to impress nobody. They also have the same kind disposition, However, as unable to function as Ralph was, his abilities far excelled those of my students this year.
At least half of this year's students cannot talk. They make inarticulate noises -- so inarticulate that the sounds really cannot be understood 99% of the time. They sit by themselves, paying almost no attention to anything but their fingers or their hands. A few do a lot of bobbing up and down. A few of the more active ones do a fair amount of screaming or noise making. They will be sitting in their chair, and all of a sudden they will simply hoot or scream. The ones who make the most noise this way seem also most prone to wanting to roam. We have to watch all of them all the time to be sure someone doesn't slip out of the classroom and wander around outside.
To teach them a few practical skills, we took the whole class on a short trip two days ago. We walked to a bus stop. As the bus pulled up, each student received a bus pass. Each boarded the bus and ran his or her bus pass through the payment machine. Then we collected their bus passes so they wouldn't be lost during the rest of the field trip. We ended up in a park. Some of them played on the swings. Others just ran around hooting and dancing and shouting. One of the lowest functioning kids sat on the ground, just playing with the sand.
After about fifteen minutes, the main teacher and I took three of the higher functioning students on a walk to a local grocery store. There we had the kids find the items we needed -- fruit juice, a package of frozen strawberries, etc. At the checkout stand, they were given money to pay for the purchases, which they did. They learned that the cashier will give them back the paper money owed, and that the silver money drops into a tray and they have to pick it up. They also learned that they would have to get a receipt.
Two of these three kids cannot talk. One of them can, and in fact is fairly articulate. He sometimes assumes a leadership position among the other students. For instance, I saw him several times urging another student to eat his breakfast during our breakfast time at the cafeteria.
I am wondering whether or not a few of the kids who supposedly cannot talk can be taught five or ten words. I don't know. I need to discuss this with the lead teacher and give it a try. If one who cannot really talk can say "pleh" when he wants play dough, he is certainly making the connection between his version of the word and an object. Maybe in the next months I'll be able to teach him a few more words like "food" and "sleep." We'll see.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Two Stories
In this blog entry I must tell two stories. The first concerns an incident that happened to me last year when I was substituting in School A.
The teacher had left a DVD to be shown to the class. I started it playing and circulated among the class, having the students sign a sign-in sheet. This took about ten minutes. Then, as the DVD played, I circulated around through the class. keeping my eye on what was going on. A few students were sitting with their eyes half shut, others were playing with their handheld electronic devices, and tried to put these away as I approached. A half dozen or more were simply chatting, paying no attention top the DVD.
When a teacher needs a substitute to fill in for him or her, many have the class shown a DVD. I think this is usually a terrible waste of time. Personally, I would rather administer a quiz deliberately designed with so many questions that students wouldn't have time to finish it before the bell rings. The students can be told that if they don't pass the quiz in by the end of class, they will get a failing grade for that day's assignment. This tends to keep them quieter and busier than any DVD.
But we were destined to watch a DVD. As I roomed through the classroom, there were times when I was in the back of the room with my back turned.
Four girls who had been sitting in the very front took one of these opportunities to depart from the class when I wasn't looking.
I realized quickly that they had left, and I made a note of this for the teacher, but of course I didn't know their names, so I could be as specific as I wanted in my report. I planned to pass arouind a second sign-in sheet before the end of the class so I could identify them.
About fifteen or twenty minutes later, as I was standing by the door, there came a rapping on the glass, which was covered on the inside by paper so people outside could not look in. I opened the door and found the four miscreant student trying to barge their way in. I told them that they had left and that they would not be allowed back in. All four began swearing a me("motherfucker this, motherfucker that"), trying to tear my hands from the doorknob and trying to pull the door wide open.
Fortunately a female teacher across the hall heard the commotion and came out. "You can't do that," she shouted at the girls. "If a teacher says you cannot be admitted to a class, then you cannot go into that class."
The four girls turned away and walked together down the hall, chatting.
The rest of the day passed without incident until I was signing out. One of the assistant principals asked me to step into her office and informed me that each of the four girls had signed a complaint that I had "hit" them. Furthermore, each had called home and made the same complaint to their parents. The assistant principal asked me to describe what had happened. I described the event precisely. Then I added that the teacher across the hall had come out and witnessed the event and could also describe it.
The vice principal said she had spent an hour on the phone convincing one or two of the fathers from coming down to the school to beat me up. "I am sixty-nine years old," I told the vice principal. I have not hit another human being in more than half a century."
The next day the vice principal told me that she had talked with the teacher across the hall and it was clear that the girls had been lying. She had called the parents of the four girls and informed them of this.
My second story is more a description than an actual narrative. Several days ago I began teaching at School B in a special education class for autistic students. Today was my third day. I am sure I was being observed by the other staff members as closely as I was observing the students.
These students are all severely handicapped. One cannot help but have one's heart go out to them. More than half of the 17 cannot speak. They make little noises that have to be interpreted. Three or four of them simply screech loudly every few minutes. Some nod back and forth repetitiously. A few carry with them special picture books that they can open when they need or want something so they can point to a picture. One of the students, who always has a smile on his face, jumps up and down and runs around in circles, having fun. Odd as it may sound, his joy is wonderful to behold.
In the three days I have been there, I have noticeably quieted down the class' most difficult student. It took quite a bit to get him to bond with me -- yesterday, about 2 1/2 hours of play dough in which he would put the dough on the table, take my hand, and move my hand to show me what he wanted me to do. Today I made progress with the second student who is one of the two greatest disturbances. I was told by the main teacher that, "You're doing very well," and asked to be there as often as possible. Later in the afternoon, I got this second student, whom no one had heard talk, to say four words: "sleep" and "I'll see ya." One of the other teachers heard the student say "sleep" and was amazed. "You're not just good at this. You have a gift," he told me.
Many of the students in School A where the four girls misbehaved are simply low, low class. Both boys and girls are obsessed with how they look and with securing and keeping peer approval. Earlier in this blog I described how these kids dress. They are constantly on ipods and other electronic devices, and many spend much of their time trying to con their teachers, and probably each other.
Compare those students with the kids at School B, who come from the same areas of my city. At School B in the special ed class, one gets no sense of lower class, upper class, middle class, or any class. One simply feels presented with needy kids. Not a one of them seems concerned with what the others think of him or her. They are too much into their own worlds. They don't carry phones or ipods because most of them wouldn't know how to use them. They have no guile, no intent to deceive. Nor do they normally possess rudeness or cruelty or the intent to hurt others. These kids may be 90% non-functional. They are worlds apart from the four students who tried to bust back into my classroom in School A. I am far more sympathetic with the kids in special ed.
The teacher had left a DVD to be shown to the class. I started it playing and circulated among the class, having the students sign a sign-in sheet. This took about ten minutes. Then, as the DVD played, I circulated around through the class. keeping my eye on what was going on. A few students were sitting with their eyes half shut, others were playing with their handheld electronic devices, and tried to put these away as I approached. A half dozen or more were simply chatting, paying no attention top the DVD.
When a teacher needs a substitute to fill in for him or her, many have the class shown a DVD. I think this is usually a terrible waste of time. Personally, I would rather administer a quiz deliberately designed with so many questions that students wouldn't have time to finish it before the bell rings. The students can be told that if they don't pass the quiz in by the end of class, they will get a failing grade for that day's assignment. This tends to keep them quieter and busier than any DVD.
But we were destined to watch a DVD. As I roomed through the classroom, there were times when I was in the back of the room with my back turned.
Four girls who had been sitting in the very front took one of these opportunities to depart from the class when I wasn't looking.
I realized quickly that they had left, and I made a note of this for the teacher, but of course I didn't know their names, so I could be as specific as I wanted in my report. I planned to pass arouind a second sign-in sheet before the end of the class so I could identify them.
About fifteen or twenty minutes later, as I was standing by the door, there came a rapping on the glass, which was covered on the inside by paper so people outside could not look in. I opened the door and found the four miscreant student trying to barge their way in. I told them that they had left and that they would not be allowed back in. All four began swearing a me("motherfucker this, motherfucker that"), trying to tear my hands from the doorknob and trying to pull the door wide open.
Fortunately a female teacher across the hall heard the commotion and came out. "You can't do that," she shouted at the girls. "If a teacher says you cannot be admitted to a class, then you cannot go into that class."
The four girls turned away and walked together down the hall, chatting.
The rest of the day passed without incident until I was signing out. One of the assistant principals asked me to step into her office and informed me that each of the four girls had signed a complaint that I had "hit" them. Furthermore, each had called home and made the same complaint to their parents. The assistant principal asked me to describe what had happened. I described the event precisely. Then I added that the teacher across the hall had come out and witnessed the event and could also describe it.
The vice principal said she had spent an hour on the phone convincing one or two of the fathers from coming down to the school to beat me up. "I am sixty-nine years old," I told the vice principal. I have not hit another human being in more than half a century."
The next day the vice principal told me that she had talked with the teacher across the hall and it was clear that the girls had been lying. She had called the parents of the four girls and informed them of this.
My second story is more a description than an actual narrative. Several days ago I began teaching at School B in a special education class for autistic students. Today was my third day. I am sure I was being observed by the other staff members as closely as I was observing the students.
These students are all severely handicapped. One cannot help but have one's heart go out to them. More than half of the 17 cannot speak. They make little noises that have to be interpreted. Three or four of them simply screech loudly every few minutes. Some nod back and forth repetitiously. A few carry with them special picture books that they can open when they need or want something so they can point to a picture. One of the students, who always has a smile on his face, jumps up and down and runs around in circles, having fun. Odd as it may sound, his joy is wonderful to behold.
In the three days I have been there, I have noticeably quieted down the class' most difficult student. It took quite a bit to get him to bond with me -- yesterday, about 2 1/2 hours of play dough in which he would put the dough on the table, take my hand, and move my hand to show me what he wanted me to do. Today I made progress with the second student who is one of the two greatest disturbances. I was told by the main teacher that, "You're doing very well," and asked to be there as often as possible. Later in the afternoon, I got this second student, whom no one had heard talk, to say four words: "sleep" and "I'll see ya." One of the other teachers heard the student say "sleep" and was amazed. "You're not just good at this. You have a gift," he told me.
Many of the students in School A where the four girls misbehaved are simply low, low class. Both boys and girls are obsessed with how they look and with securing and keeping peer approval. Earlier in this blog I described how these kids dress. They are constantly on ipods and other electronic devices, and many spend much of their time trying to con their teachers, and probably each other.
Compare those students with the kids at School B, who come from the same areas of my city. At School B in the special ed class, one gets no sense of lower class, upper class, middle class, or any class. One simply feels presented with needy kids. Not a one of them seems concerned with what the others think of him or her. They are too much into their own worlds. They don't carry phones or ipods because most of them wouldn't know how to use them. They have no guile, no intent to deceive. Nor do they normally possess rudeness or cruelty or the intent to hurt others. These kids may be 90% non-functional. They are worlds apart from the four students who tried to bust back into my classroom in School A. I am far more sympathetic with the kids in special ed.
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