Flying... Falling

He is 15 years old and he wants to fly. But his anger holds him on the ground. It is not that he does not wish to make good choices. He just cannot seem to find the place in his life that affirms the path of difficult righteousness. So he explodes. And the world expects something different of him. And school expects something different of him. We do not ask him why. From a distance, we judge, condemn, and move on. Leaving the young man alone to figure a way forward.

"There Are No Weeds"

Last year, at the senior class community meeting in the first week of the school year, I stood before a group of 78 12th graders at City Arts and Tech High School, pointed to a list of their names on the wall behind me, and explained that I expected to see every one of them walk across stage at the graduation ceremony on June 12, 2009 – 9 months later. My words were not intended to be empty inspiration. I truly believed this was possible – for some, it would take extraordinary measures on the part of them, their families, and their teachers - but it was possible.

Such expectation for success did not arise blindly from the liberal heart of an educator detached from the material and emotional realities of his students. Though I do not look like them; though I did not grow up in the same homes and streets that surround them, I have learned from them nearly everything I know about teaching. I have been taught to believe in them – these most informed and honest teachers. They have taught me hope.

Still, most educators disagree. Dialogue about the possibility (or impossibility) of success for all proliferates in our schools – and I believe too much space is being made for impossibility.

Last year, a friend and colleague offered me an analogy that caused me to pause and reconsider my stance. He believed, as most educators do, the expectation of success (i.e. high school graduation) was a setup for failure and disappointment. “Doctors occasionally watch their patients die before their eyes despite their greatest efforts. Lawyers sometimes lose cases that they should win. Sometimes there are just factors beyond our control.” In other professions 100% success is not an expectation. Nor is it a practical expectation in education, given the fact that we operate within a system that does not - has never - embodied the purpose of educating all young people towards success. Be that as it may, the problem unique to teaching lies is the slippery slope - once we concede the demand that every student who enters any school building in this country is supported in reaching their full potential (for the sake of this conversation – high school graduation), the game begins – schools, teachers, administrators, and others start to arbitrate who will be served and who will not. It does not take a veteran educator to conclude what the result of such selection looks like.

Acceptance of any level of failure due to “factors beyond our control” leads to our complicity in the inequities of the system in which we operate: Freddy cannot stay in his seat for more than 20 minutes at a time becomes “maybe school just isn’t for him”; Veronica enters my class reading far below her grade level – “she is too far behind to even have a chance of success”; Jacob’s struggles with English comprehension because he has only been living in the US for two years becomes “the school can only do so much to support him”; and Brian’s constant defiance of her teachers – “he just doesn’t want to learn.” Such separation and disparate treatment based on perceived (and prejudged) abilities begins as young as Kindergarten.

Most teachers have no trouble identifying barriers beyond their control that keep young people from learning in their classrooms – and, as an educator going on my 11th year in urban high schools, I do not reject the burden of any of these myriad factors. However, we do control how we respond to the barriers.

And to build a pedagogical foundation on the acceptance that some of our youth are not going to be successful is to accept failure before our students even have eyes, hearts, minds, and names. This is the culture we must struggle against in our schools and this struggle begins with the affirmation put forth by Professor K. Wayne Yang: “there are not weeds” in our schools.

Paulo Freire's 7 Indispensable Qualities of Progressive Teachers for Their Better Performance

I don’t remember benefiting much from my credential program at SFSU nearly ten years ago. I was a first-year teacher, teaching full time and taking classes two or three evenings per week, so most of my time there was a somnolent blur. The one piece of positive feedback I had to offer was that the program’s lack of rigor allowed me to focus on my teaching. For this, I was deeply thankful. Had it been different, I may not have made it through my first year.
During the year-long program, I had a few solid professors who challenged me to reflect honestly on why I wanted to become an educator – or what it meant for me to step into a classroom of 30 students who looked and lived very differently than me. But my true teacher education came in the classroom every day; my dreaded 6th period, who seemed to find a way to subvert every seamless lesson I had taken hours to prepare; sleepy 1st period, which started every day with half of the seats vacant; individual dialogues with students who stayed after school in room 321 because they had nothing better to do; trash talking on the basketball court during lunch (to this day I have found no better way to earn the respect and trust of students than on the basketball court or the soccer field). I remember my very first conversation with a parent. Mrs. C told me her son was enjoying my class and I hung up with phone with soaring confidence.
So, I learned by doing, which is really the only way one can grow into a strong teacher. However, looking back, I realize there were tools I lacked, even as a first year teacher, that led to me not serving my students as well as I could and should have.
A few years ago, I came across one such tool (for lack of a better term) in Paulo Freire’s Teachers As Cultural Workers; one that I wish I would have been handed on day one of the credential program. In his fourth in a series of ten “letters to those who dare to teach,” Freire offers a set of qualities that he considers “indispensable to the progressive teacher.” Re-reading the text for the third or fourth time, I am struck by the relevance of these qualities, all of which I have been introduced to through my students over the past ten years in the classroom. How powerful it would have been to receive this letter during my first year of teaching, for it is this kind of pedagogical and political framework that helps one to become a lifelong teacher, not simply learn the act of teaching.
Though Freire’s experiences as an educator took place in a specific context, in many ways disparate from that of teachers in the US, I believe that the following list of 7 qualities remains relevant for all educators, perhaps most importantly those engaged in the education of the most underserved young people in this country and throughout the world. Below, I have done my best to summarize Freire’s ideas along with some language relating to how I have come to understand these qualities in my own teaching experience. When you get a chance, please check out the entire text Teachers as Cultural Workers.

1. HUMILITY – the understanding that we all know some things and we are all ignorant of some things; this allows us to listen and learn just as we speak and teach; embracing a democratic instead of an authoritarian classroom
2. LOVINGNESS (or ARMED LOVE) – great teachers love what they do, even in the face of struggle and injustice; being willing to fight for what is right by ones students; devotion
3. COURAGE – facing and overcoming ones fears both in the classroom and beyond; the willingness to stand against unjust power
4. TOLERANCE – embracing and respecting that which is different than us; “being tolerant does not mean acquiescing to the intolerable”
5. DECISIVENESS – careful evaluation of many sides then coming to a clear decision; willingness and confidence to make a difficult choice that you know is best for students; commitment to permanently seeking justice in ones actions; “democratic educators must not nullify themselves in the name of being democratic”
6. TENSION BETWEEN PATIENCE AND IMPATIENCE – balance between permissiveness or resignation and blind activism; “verbal parsimony” – the understanding of the power of words and how to use them responsibly for maximum effect
7. JOY OF LIVING – giving oneself fully to life and teaching

Jian's Dream

Jian is a student of mine. And he is also my teacher. Weeks ago, holding back tears, I thanked him for reminding me that America can be a dream, not always the nightmare or empty promise whose image I have come to understand by looking through my lens of easy cynicism. And, though this nightmare is often truth, it humbles me to be reminded that it is not the only truth.

Six of us sat in our chairs preparing for Jian’s senior graduation portfolio defense, a presentation shaped to fit a well-defined academic box, into which students can cleanly fit their leadership skills, growth, metacognition, and demonstration of academic prowess. Just enough to “prove” they are ready to successfully navigate college and beyond. The grad portfolio defense is an exercise that fits nicely into 60 minutes and a dozen note cards. It needs not be more. But when a student chooses to take it on with heart, to burst free from the expectations of the page, transformation is the result, both for the student and, more importantly, for those gathered to witness. I was one who had the fortune of being transformed by the wisdom of Jian’s heart.

“In Malaysia, I was a robot,” Jian asserted multiple times through the course of his presentation. The education system in his country of birth had taught him primarily to conform and care only about earning a grade. “Coming here,” he explained, “helped me to become human.” This was not hyperbole - sweet rhetoric conjured for the purpose of pleasing his graduation portfolio committee. Jian was speaking his truth. He went on to describe the myriad ways being “American” had shaped the person he is – and who he would become. This person is worlds different from the one he was destined to grow into had he continued on his educational trajectory in Malaysia. Yet, Jian also made it clear that much had been lost in his parent’s choice to relocate to the other side of the globe in order to give him and his brother greater opportunities in life. Family, culture, community – all had been sacrificed.

Still, Jian was thankful. He liked the shape of his life, the person he saw when he looked inside, and the opportunities that awaited him.

The lessons we learn when we listen deeply to the young people with whom we have the privilege of sharing too often, too hectic classrooms transform us – not just as educators but as human beings. Jian’s experience did not teach me anything new in the sense that I am thinking of these ideas for the first time. However, his presentation has helped me to open my consciousness to the more positive and hopeful realities this country bestows upon its privileged inhabitants. I am not naive. I get that the system is broken. I realize that I stand on shoulders made bloody through centuries of violence, oppression, and neglect. I struggle alongside those who wish to carve deep furrows into the path that this country is on and entirely change the direction we are headed. But honesty is cardinal and that means I must also honor the opportunity and hope this land offers to so many, which is to honor Jian – and so many students and families in our schools.

Facing History Benefit Speech

Click on the link below to see the speech I gave at the Facing History and Ourselves 2009 annual benefit. The speech focuses on the need for a humanizing education in troubled times.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kkEN-rNK80