illuminating reflections on racism & discipline

This past semester of student teaching (as you know if you've been reading)--well, it was not my proudest hour, let's just say that. Yes, the teacher made my life difficult, and I think I did okay all things considered, but "all things considered" covers a lot of ground.

One of the issues was that my classroom management style (or the style to which I aspire) is very different from hers. (More another time). The climate and rules etc. that she created were very different from what would have benefitted me and made it easy for me to teach. So I often found myself just grasping at straws, in terms of discipline, trying to get through the day/week until I would be done with student teaching. Not good practice for my own classroom, but I admit that, right or wrong, I gave up on "good practice" back in November, and just tried to (a) adapt and (b) survive.

So I found myself writing referrals (student gets sent to detention room, call home, they lose points that they try to accumulate for rewards, goes on their permanent record, etc) as a way out of routine-level problems that I should have been able to handle. I wrote quite a few referrals toward the end, and I admit with shame that it was due to exhaustion as much as anything else.

Thus, I find myself on the other side of the divide from when I wrote with such rage and conviction, my first semester, about teachers who "can't be bothered to help a kid so they just want him out of their room." Yup, that's me now.

I reflected on this as my time there was coming to an end. It was illuminating for me, so I'll describe my reflections here, even though it's not pretty.


For whom did I write referrals? Basically, three out of five Black kids.

Which students did I threaten with referrals, but never write any? Two out of five Black kids in the other class.

Did I ever write a referral for a white kid? I think only once, for actual fighting. Did I threaten to? I think never.

Was it because the white kids were better? No, on the contrary--the two kids I considered most likely to grow up to be mean, nasty, and abusive were both white.

Was it because the white kids were less disruptive in their misbehavior? Not really. I interrupted myself to chide white kids all the time. I would not say there was a big difference in terms of the number of times I asked white vs Black kids to be quiet, get on the right page, quit tapping (singing, whistling, whatever), stop disrespecting their classmates, etc. (This little list makes clear to any seasoned teacher how ineffective I was!)

There are probably other reasons and issues at hand, and I may be distorting the record in favor of my point (white guilt is not useful). But here's the interesting part.

When I thought about it, when I asked myself, "Why doesn't your hand go to that little pad of referral slips when a white kid is misbehaving?" the answer that came to me was intriguing.

It was as if there was a force field around the white kids--an intuition within me that said, "don't touch them, could be trouble."

It seemed very clear to me that somehow, *that* would be a Big Deal. People would notice. They would judge whether I had been fair or whether it was okay to give this kid a referral. The kid's parents might come in and yell at me. The principal might come and talk with me to see if I could justify myself. That's the last thing I want to have to deal with.

Is this all in my head?

Maybe this is what would really happen, maybe it's all in my head. But even if it's all in my head, the question is, how did it get there?

Where did I get the idea that it's okay to punish Black kids, that it almost doesn't even matter, but white kids--you have to be really careful about punishing them.

If it's not all in my head, why does it seem that the white kids would be better protected? Is it racism in the administration? Is it that their parents feel more empowered, less intimidated in the face of white authority figures? Is it that when their parents holler, people listen?

Jury's out on all these questions, but what I am sure about, is this unspoken, unnoticed assumption on my part that writing referrals for Black kids was no big deal, and for white kids, it would be a big deal.

The most charitable possible interpretation (charitable towards myself) is that since the students who got referrals generally got them repeatedly, it probably did not seem like such a big deal to write them another one. What does that mean... that after a while I may have felt that "they obviously don't care if they get one or not."....?? Wait a minute, that's not a charitable interpretation at all! Wow, that's almost the worst one!

Aren't I always telling people that kids want to succeed, that if they see the path they'll walk it? That if they act out it's because they feel themselves to be out of options? Holy cow, I'm a hypocrite! Man, the inside of one's head is an interesting place!

The reason I do this is not to make myself feel guilty--and I don't really, I mostly just feel very sad.

The only time I feel guilty is when I didn't act on something I knew how to do better--then it's a failure of will, of empathy, etc. So I do feel bad about getting so tired this semester and basically just hanging in there at all costs, when the costs were the kids'.

But generally when it comes to racism I do believe that we all grow up infused with it because it infuses the air in this society. The only way to see how it works, and then weed it out, is self-education and introspection. Guilt just gets in the way of that. Reflection is research, and what you learn is fascinating.

So mostly I just feel sad when I see what I've done. Sad for all of us, that this is so hard to see and to fix. But the more I learn the more I also find myself able to catch and repair my mistakes, and that part is hopeful. The process itself is hopeful. It can be done.

Kid tasered at Memorial HS???

This is bullshit! I can't believe I didn't hear about this.

The "school safety officer" shot a Black 15-year-old kid whom he was trying to arrest.

Oh, but, oops! The arrest warrant turned out to be a clerical error! Still, the new police chief refuses to apologize!

Here's an article: "Mom Of Teen Shot With Police Taser Disappointed In MPD." (I'll bet she is! Holy cow! Probably just a tad more than "disappointed in"!!!!)

School board member Ruth Robarts wrote a letter to the Wisconsin State Journal in which she (1) suggested that school police be deployed in pairs, or at least that a backup officer be summoned for arrests, since that would reduce the need for employing force at all, and (2) questioned what policies are, or should be, in place to guide police and school officials regarding arresting students:

"I have doubts that we have appropriate policies and procedures in place on the police or the school side. I wonder what justified immediate arrest of this young suspect. Why did the police not arrest him at home? At another location away from school? Contact his mother to ask her to bring him to court? I also wonder what role school officials played or should have played in making a less confrontational arrest possible."

She also asked whether the student's mother had been called, which immediately struck a chord for me--I would be willing to bet that she was not called, and that was SUCH a strong contrast to how this would be handled with a white student.

*sigh*

Since I ultimately want to make this blog public, to solicit comments, I begin arguing in my head about racism here. My imaginary commenter claims that I don't know she wasn't called, yadda yadda. I will say more about this in my next post.

march 2003? what th'....?

One of the things I want to use this blog for, is to collect some of my old notes and ideas from the last two (or more) years. I will be posting them with their original dates, which means they'll appear in the archives. That's why there is suddenly a "March 2003" link in the archives. (Not that you probably noticed (or care), but anyway, that's what I'ma gonna do.) I'm hoping that this, together with the book/article responses, will ultimately help me organize and remember all this vast amount of information and ideas more easily (and maybe, just maybe, get others' feedback on some of it).

idea: toolbox portfolio

Determine six (?) skills I want them to master. Create a portfolio for each one, showing student's progress; design lesson plans to produce work around each one. Call the skills "tools" and keep the six portfolios in a "toolbox" for each student.

Possible "tools:"

• analyze primary souirces
• determine perspective
• support an argument with evidence
• understand an author's point
• etc.

Could divide tools into 3 & 3 - 3 reading skills, 3 writing skills; or, 3 input, 3 output, so I could include different kinds of analysis and production skills.

Rationale: to help students understand why they're doing what they're doing, that they're practicing skills of genuine practical utility.

teaching & buddhism - maitri

I've been studying Tibetan Buddhism lately, not because I am joining the religion, but because it is recognized even by MDs in the US as a useful tool for disciplining and calming the mind--and heaven knows, I need help with that!

Anyway, one concept is "maitri," translated about fifty million different ways, but basically something about friendliness & caring for oneself and others ("love your neighbor as yourself" would be the Christian counterpart, as long it incorporates the viewpoint of a sermon I heard as a kid, in which the pastor asserted that this was a statement of fact--one can only love one's neighbor to the extent that one loves oneself--as well as a proscription).

Anyway anyway, I often think in terms of little slogans to give the kids, because kids find them memorable & helpful--heck we all do--the whole 12-step universe and the army are based around slogans, and those are two very effective training programs. So the slogans I'd thought of in connection with maitri are...

• be a friend to yourself and others
• take care of yourself & others
• be kind to yourself and others
• smooth the path for your feet and others' (meaning, just do the homework when it's due; don't drag it out and make us all suffer!) - one I should take to heart.

I dunno. Maybe this wouldn't be useful, maybe it would. The general idea anyway is to make life easier for yourself and others, which is the same thing--calm, consideration, discipline, etc.

can I tell the grain from the chaff?

What is the difference between "respectful but firm" and "a thin veneer of sweetness over punitive nastiness"? I know there is one, I'm just panicking a bit!

ok, back to winnowing

So I was reading Teaching with Love & Logic this morning, which I always find helpful.

(I'm trying to model my approach to classroom management on three books -- that one, The Essential 55, and Teaching Children to Care: Classroom Management for Ethical and Academic Growth--and yes, I've read Alfie Kohn's Beyond Discipline, which criticizes these approaches, but I have concluded that I don't feel his approach suits a diverse classroom. Sometime I'll post more about this issue per se).

I have always enjoyed these three books because of the fundamental respect for the children and their choices that is conveyed in them (as well as the strong priority of preparing children to succeed in "the real world," which is absolutely essential to a multicultural approach to education).

Anyway, what struck me forcefully this morning was that I did not seem to have that respect anymore, myself! I am really shocked and concerned at this change.

---

For example, the book told of a teacher working with a female high schooler who, when he put a hand on her shoulder, leaped out of her chair, threw the chair across the room, and screamed at him to "get the fuck off me!" The authors' recommended response was a step back, an apology, and a promise to discuss the event when both parties felt calmer, so that the problem could be avoided in the future. Extremely reasonable, yes? As it turned out (this was a true story) the girl had survived many years of physical and sexual abuse from three male relatives; she had just been transferred to a safer home. Naturally it was understandable that she would have a negative reaction to being touched.

But I find that I have now succumbed to a semester of being trained to react with "that's too bad, I don't care what happened to her in the past, she needs to learn to behave, blah blah blah."

Another example: about two months into my student teaching, I was flipping idly through Fires in the Bathroom, a book compiled from high schoolers' discussions of their perceptions of & needs from teachers. The students were talking about how they "sometimes just have a bad day and need some space," and so on, and I found my reaction was unsympathetic-- "Well that's just too bad, they have to learn to cope," whereas just a few months previously, when I'd first bought the book, I had felt that it was excellent, a great way to work toward a good give-and-take relationship with students.

---

This is just really scary to me, because this is what I had a problem with when I first entered my student teaching classroom--the teacher seemed overly rigid and not very sympathetic. Really, in a word, punitive.

I'm trying not to over-react to this, but it is upsetting. I think I need to ponder it some more.

No winnowing, just Tibet

Photo credit: Carmala N. Garzione
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Rochester

Tibet was the most beautiful place I've ever been. I know I'm veering wildly off topic, but once I got going on that I wanted to post a photo...

winnow, winnow, a lovely word

whenever i talk about winnowing i have a clear image in my head of the only time i've ever seen it done the old-fashioned way, where you toss the grain around in a basket and toss it up in the air and the wind blows away the chaff (hey, i wonder if the word "winnow" has to do with "wind"?). It was in Tibet, and we were driving past a village and I just got a glimpse of a woman tossing the grain in the air, the fine golden dust flying on the wind.

Wow... I went googling for an image and came across this page of amazing photos. They were taken in northern Nepal (apparently by a geologist or something--the captions say things like "Quaternary terrace, with Thakkhola deposits and the western basin-bounding fault in the background," whereas most people would something more along the lines of "In the high-altitude clarity of the air, the stunning mountain vistas undulate in deep, intense blues and purples.")

Anyway, taken in Nepal, but the people and buildings shown are Tibetan, and the landscapes are very similar to what I saw in Tibet, so if you go to this page, you can see not only some women winnowing, looking very similar to what I saw, but you can also see all the other fantastic scenery etc. that I was seeing at the time. So go already. It's fucking gorgeous.

winnowing 2: not necessarily deciding

So another way my student teaching experience is proving useful has to do with my attempt to become more open and less judgmental. Many teachers, myself certainly included, get an ego boost from feeling that we "understand" kids, are "empathetic" and "in tune." Well, whenever I would talk with my cooperating teacher about particular students, we would have completely different perceptions of what was going on with them. I spent some energy being angry that my cooperating teacher was so wrong. Then I spent some energy feeling stupid that I was so wrong. Finally what I'm coming to is that maybe that was just a particularly vivid manifestation of the fact that we never really know, do we, what is going on in their little heads--we have no idea--and everythign else is just ego. So I can release a desperate (and so obvioulsy futile) sense of needing to correctly diagnose and treat (i.e. control) all students' problems for them--wow, what a relief. There are a lot of things I can do for students, but reading their minds is not one of them. Instead of judging what is going on with them, I can just stay open, in the present, and listen. Maybe that will be more helpful anyway!

winnowing 1: rescuing

Student teaching was rough both times in different ways--I think it's a bit rough for everyone.

This time around, my cooperating teacher and I were just completely different. We saw everything differently, had different instincts and values and ideas, etc. This was not always easy, but I did learn a lot from it. Some aspects of her practice I would really like to emulate, but other things, I disliked as much as she seemed to dislike my work. In the time since I finished up there, I have been reflecting on my experiences and trying to sort out which is which (emulate vs. trash).

One thing I got better at was the whole "rescuer" routine. Many teachers are compulsive rescuers. Rescuing, which I'd define as swooping down on a student the moment they start to struggle (so that they should never experience an instant of pain or confusion) is egocentric (savior complex, anyone?) and often counter-productive (it can be useful to struggle with a new idea, and it can be harmful to develop the habit of expecting that someone will remove all obstacles from your path the moment you wrinkle your cute little brow). Rescuing is an action that makes ME more comfortable (I feel guilty/panicky when my lesson is "making" a student struggle), instead of making it a priority to identify what the student is doing and what the student needs in that moment.

My cooperating teacher helped me to break this habit, which was a great step for me. However, she had a tendency to take it to the opposite extreme--"sink or swim!" A number of kids were shocked and demoralized by their struggles in the first few weeks of school, and never bounced back, just kept falling farther behind and getting more depressed. That was the "sink" part, and there were no swimming lessons; she seemed to think that either it didn't matter, or couldn't be helped.

So now it's a matter of trying to figure out what might be the "happy medium" between these two extremes. When is it helpful to swoop in, and when should I let the student struggle and acheive his/her own victories?

The really new concept (to me) is the idea that struggle and anxiety can be productive and useful. I really had a strong assumption that struggle and anxiety are just bad, bad, bad, and kids must be protected from them at all costs. But apparently that's not the case.

They did tell us in our teacher classes that all learning requires risk. I like what I understand of the theorist Vygotsky's "zone of proximal development" (definition here; a more extensive summary of Vygotsky's theory can be found here). The general idea is that between the comfort zone, where you can perform a task easily without help, and the zone of stuff that's way out of reach, there's a zone of tasks and activities that are within reach, but only with guidance and help.

It's essential to identify where each student's "zone of proximal development" is, because if you aim too high you depress and discourage them, while aiming too low can bore them or lull them into a false confidence. Stepping out of your comfort zone into what you can accomplish only with assistance is a risk-taking endeavor, and as such, will provoke anxiety.

The question is, how much is a reasonable level, and when do you say, "whoa, too much anxiety, let's take this back a step (or down a notch or whatever)"? And what do you do with students who learn to manipulate that response, so that they always generate help (rescuing) even when they might be capable of overcoming the challegne they face?

Needless to say, the idea that growth is necessarily accompanied by anxiety is very useful to me personally. Oh, you mean I'm supposed to be anxious? This is supposed to be hard? Well, in that case, I guess I can survive after all. ;-)

survival skills, the epilogue

well, i was back at school yesterday and i saw J, she of the survival skills. "today's my last day," she told me with a big smile. I asked where she was going (another middle school in town); wished her good luck, asked if I could give her a hug, and told her "you're such a sweetie, I'm gonna miss you!" at which she looked a bit confused and disappeared.

Only now does it occur to me that perhaps it would have been ok to ask, "did you find a place to live?" (since she was homeless before). I dunno, I gotta figure out this shelter-living etiquette. (I learned years ago that you don't talk abt someone being in jail; they are just "away," but is it ok to talk abt someone being in a shelter?).

Anyway, goodbye to sweet little J... may your skills indeed enable you to survive...may your sunny smile that last day be a good omen of better months and years ahead.