"I saw, not so much a culture of pathology, as a culture fitted for a pathological world."
I taught in a Baltimore City public high school for five years before moving to a Baltimore County private school six years ago. The public school was the one I attended as a high school student, a science and engineering magnet school. It's one of the top-performing schools in the city.
Creating relationships at the private school is a faster, deeper, and more universal experience than it ever was at the public school for me. I connected deeply (one-to-one) with no more than a handful of the 1300 or so students I taught at the public school over those five years, while I connect pretty quickly and deeply with nearly half of my students at the private school.
Class size is a big contributing factor to this phenomenon - the time and attention that I can give students at the private school lay a pretty solid foundation for developing relationships. However, there's something more visceral at work too.
I've considered that it was racial - I'm white; the public school was a large majority black; the private school is a large majority white. While I think (and not so much feel) that the racial differences between my students and me played a role in my lack of connection in the public school (as did my less developed teaching skills and philosophy at the time), I'm much more aware of a sense that it was something else. The students at the public school seemed to bring a lot more 'stuff' into the classroom with them - a lot more stuff between me and them, not because I'm white and they're black, but because the nature of their lives leaves them with a lot of 'stuff'.*
The stuff that my private school students bring into the classroom is a different kind of stuff in general. It's of a more material nature, less of an emotional and existential kind. It's $30 t-shirts paid for not as a symbol of status or a financial facade, but because they're the kind of clothes they wear (ie. afford and value). It's conversations about MacBooks vs. Razer Blades. This material stuff brings with it its own relationship challenges, but these are relatively easily surmounted compared to the existential stuff my public school students generally brought into the room with them.
Regardless of what people walk into the room with, I notice that I seem to have a choice about what I bring into the room with me. Whether it's a rich lax bro, a recently homeless girl, a kid on scholarship, or a recent gang initiate, I have a choice about what I bring into my interactions with them. So many of the students at both schools have no idea that they're carrying palpable (though invisible) baggage into the room with them. Alas, perhaps I have no idea of the emotional and spiritual baggage that I'm carrying either.
The world and its people need us to step it up, and while illuminating all my dark corners is an ongoing and important task, it isn't always an immediate requisite. Whatever they're bringing into my classroom, my commitment is to bring compassion, engagement, and integrity. That's my best. And I want to bring my best.
Though I'm sure that on some level I brought this into my old classroom, I sometimes wonder what if did a better job in the past of communicating through my own baggage, through their baggage, with compassion, engagement, and integrity as my medium and a transformed, just, and enlightened future the content...what if.
So I'll bring it the best I can, and in the end at least I'll know I played hard even if I didn't win. The invisible stuff we bring into the classroom is worth breaking through for the future we can forge together.
* Yes, the nature of their lives is in large part a result of their blackness (or, perhaps more accurately, a result of white people's whiteness), but I mean here that it wasn't an us vs. them kind of racial experience for me.
I taught in a Baltimore City public high school for five years before moving to a Baltimore County private school six years ago. The public school was the one I attended as a high school student, a science and engineering magnet school. It's one of the top-performing schools in the city.
Creating relationships at the private school is a faster, deeper, and more universal experience than it ever was at the public school for me. I connected deeply (one-to-one) with no more than a handful of the 1300 or so students I taught at the public school over those five years, while I connect pretty quickly and deeply with nearly half of my students at the private school.
Class size is a big contributing factor to this phenomenon - the time and attention that I can give students at the private school lay a pretty solid foundation for developing relationships. However, there's something more visceral at work too.
I've considered that it was racial - I'm white; the public school was a large majority black; the private school is a large majority white. While I think (and not so much feel) that the racial differences between my students and me played a role in my lack of connection in the public school (as did my less developed teaching skills and philosophy at the time), I'm much more aware of a sense that it was something else. The students at the public school seemed to bring a lot more 'stuff' into the classroom with them - a lot more stuff between me and them, not because I'm white and they're black, but because the nature of their lives leaves them with a lot of 'stuff'.*
The stuff that my private school students bring into the classroom is a different kind of stuff in general. It's of a more material nature, less of an emotional and existential kind. It's $30 t-shirts paid for not as a symbol of status or a financial facade, but because they're the kind of clothes they wear (ie. afford and value). It's conversations about MacBooks vs. Razer Blades. This material stuff brings with it its own relationship challenges, but these are relatively easily surmounted compared to the existential stuff my public school students generally brought into the room with them.
Regardless of what people walk into the room with, I notice that I seem to have a choice about what I bring into the room with me. Whether it's a rich lax bro, a recently homeless girl, a kid on scholarship, or a recent gang initiate, I have a choice about what I bring into my interactions with them. So many of the students at both schools have no idea that they're carrying palpable (though invisible) baggage into the room with them. Alas, perhaps I have no idea of the emotional and spiritual baggage that I'm carrying either.
The world and its people need us to step it up, and while illuminating all my dark corners is an ongoing and important task, it isn't always an immediate requisite. Whatever they're bringing into my classroom, my commitment is to bring compassion, engagement, and integrity. That's my best. And I want to bring my best.
Though I'm sure that on some level I brought this into my old classroom, I sometimes wonder what if did a better job in the past of communicating through my own baggage, through their baggage, with compassion, engagement, and integrity as my medium and a transformed, just, and enlightened future the content...what if.
So I'll bring it the best I can, and in the end at least I'll know I played hard even if I didn't win. The invisible stuff we bring into the classroom is worth breaking through for the future we can forge together.
The problems of education are merely reflections of the deepest problems of our age... Education which fails to clarify our central convictions is mere training or indulgence. For it is our central convictions that are in disorder... Education, far from ranking as man's greatest resource, will then be an agent of destruction.
- E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered
* Yes, the nature of their lives is in large part a result of their blackness (or, perhaps more accurately, a result of white people's whiteness), but I mean here that it wasn't an us vs. them kind of racial experience for me.
I believe your efforts at your former school were more relevant and effective than you indicate. And by knowing you, I'm sure that the students that needed your input most, received more than you imagine. We need to get together and talk. CVA
ReplyDeleteThanks Catherine - I appreciate your reading and your feedback. You were an important and early voice to me.
Delete