Sunday, February 5, 2012

Making Peace With The Wild Things:
A Prayer For My Students





Student grades are due tomorrow, but we went to church anyway – we had to sing, and anyway, after two years of semi-regular practice as a Unitarian Universalist, I have come to a place in my life where I find peace and solace in shared practice which starts and ends with love and service, togetherness and open-ended truths, and a shared commitment to social justice.

Much of this is due to the particulars of our chosen worship setting. The UU church which we attend is in transition, with an interim minister who has my undying respect; wise, and gentle, with a knack for bringing new texts and ideas to the table, presenting them clearly and coherently, and then braiding them together to reveal the thing which we needed most of the world in that moment.

I experience her sermons as a kind of miracle of the mind, that binds my soul and body, and answers my unspoken need. Even when I am distracted by my own thoughts, her bright, intelligent prompting provides an avenue for me to come to myself with new eyes, and with a renewed determination to accept that which has been lurking in my heart and mind.

And in this case, a sermon on blessings and failures, and how we so often fail to allow ourselves to experience the joys and sadness they should bring us, has brought me back to my students.


The students I teach are ill-prepared for success. They are the product of a city that is stacked against them, a community that is in too much of a hurry to address the deep foundation issues which would support true progress, a system that is under too much pressure to make it look like things are working. They come to my ninth grade classroom with fifth grade reading skills, without the stamina to be learners for more than a few minutes per class day, with anger against me for enforcing the most basic rules, and an image of the classroom as a competitive space, where they win if they can overwhelm the lesson, or if they can sleep successfully, and thus avoid confronting their unpreparedness.

They also come, if indeed they come at all – one in five students is absent on a given day – with long histories of pitting themselves against the world, which make them almost unteachable for most of the semester, until and if we can delay the curriculum long enough to get into their hearts. Most of them are incapable of experiencing joy or sadness at all, let alone the empathy we assume is prerequisite for understanding a text. Instead, they experience only despair and bitterness, disappointment and pride – emotions they cannot acknowledge, to themselves or others, lest they appear weak, and lose the only game they know.

A few of them manage to survive and move forward, and a tiny, tiny percentage aim to thrive. But these are the minority: just 25% of students in the city where I teach even graduate from high school within four years, and it’s not hard to see why. Last week, a boy in one of my classes taunted a girl into attacking him; in the aftermath, his lack of ownership in instigating the fight was both frustrating and expected, but it was his comment that “It wasn’t a fight; she’s a girl” that reminded me just how unprepared these almost-men and almost-women are to accept even the basic conditions that we believe are necessary to help them move forward.

We do what we can for them, and sometimes more than we can afford, in an environment where each student gets just two minutes of my individual attention, if that, per day. In tiny slices of time we struggle to push our way in, to learn who they are as individuals, to identify the gaps between where they are and where the curriculum assumes they are, and construct a pathway for them that bridges their particular chasm.

But half a bridge is no better than none, and it may be worse, given that it contains so much false hope. In the end, it is our lot to hold them responsible for their actions, lest we become part of the machine that lies to them, and tells them that they are ready. It hurts to fail so many, but it would hurt more to pass them along without merit or ability, to undermine their next classes, to perpetuate the lie that a good heart, however buried and patinaed, is evidence of success.

And so many fail. Despite unanswered parent phone calls and teacher conferences full of hopelessness, long unattended after school sessions offered, a hundred new attempts at kind words and coaxing, over half of the 80 final grades I will enter into the database before the sun rises tomorrow are F’s. Of the remainder, another half are within the D range, marking their recipients as desperately unprepared academically but willing to struggle just enough to produce something that hints of promise, though probability says that not one of these 20-or-so students will pass sufficient classes this year to move on, leaving them stuck in the eternal-seeming limbo that is another ninth grade year.

Only four of my students from last term earned an A of any sort. Only six earned B’s. And of those, there are still one or two who only bothered and blossomed in my class, or perhaps one other – they liked me, but in a manner untranslatable to other teachers’ style.


How did we get from sermon to city? These things are related, somehow, though they are hard to untangle. But today, in church, as the minister read a section from Everything I Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, I was reminded that my students do not know what we taught them then, if indeed we taught them at all.

And although the time for sharing had passed, suddenly, in the middle of the sermon, I wanted to say a prayer for my students.

I wanted to light a candle for my beloved failures, curled up against the world so tightly that, like fists, all they can do is destroy.

I wanted to cry, and ask forgiveness; to say that I really did do everything there is to do, and let the feelings simply be, in the community I trust, even as I despair in the peace of my beloved wild things, who tear at me until the bell rings, and the clock runs out, and it is too late.

I wanted to, but I didn’t.

I offer it here, instead.



Category: Theme Posts 12 comments »

12 Responses to “Making Peace With The Wild Things:
A Prayer For My Students”

  1. Myck
    February 6th, 2012 at 7:48 pm

    Savage inequalities, indeed.

    After years of direct service in the trenches of a large, infamously decrepit urban school district, I now both consume and produce research about these so-called at-risk students. I needed a job where I mostly think, talk and write about it, rather than actually do it.

    At-risk?

    Well, yes … for even more and even worse outcomes than the seriously debilitating ones they’ve already experienced.

    You write eloquently of the seemingly intractable nature of their individual trajectories, of their own complicity in continuing the only game they know, the game their lives have taught them with such perfect precision, their personal well-being subjugated to preservation of firmly established mental models and self-fulfilling prophecies.

    Ever thought of thought of writing a book about it? There’s more substance in the terrible beauty you’ve shared here than there is in any damn journal article.

    Here, close your eyes, breath deeply and listen to this:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8Z9BoHXe-E
  2. Leon
    February 6th, 2012 at 10:04 pm

    boyhowdy,

    You have many fine entries on your blog, but this is the best I’ve read by far. This is the real problem in America that all too few talk about with any real knowledge.

    On the right, you have folks (even including Bill Cosby) with the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get on with it!” mentality that just kills me in its lack of understanding. On the left, you so often have a professed empathy with kids in this type of life, but little contact with them — that is, so many lefties kvetch about these poor kids over microbrews and cheese trays.

    So rare it is to hear what it’s really like on the inside. I agree with the writer above who said you need to consider writing a book or at least informing more people about the dead ends you see in front of you each day – and what we can all do to change that.

    The first step would be for America’s middle class to reclaim our public schools. Where I live, in the South, almost every public school is all black or all white. I know even many well-meaning, open-minded middle class neighbors of mine – both white AND black — who would never send their kids to the almost-all-black public school that we (white family) send our boys to. And I’m the PTA president there, so I too am right in the middle of things, not to your extent boyhowdy but to a great extent.

    Keep getting this message out. And more importantly, keep your spirits up when so many grades are F’s or D’s. The few that you are able to help point to a better place will surely benefit their whole life, even if they never tell you.

    And please continue to put yourself in their shoes.
  3. Kai
    February 7th, 2012 at 12:51 pm

    I usually come for the music. Today, I leave with a feeling of gratitude and humility. Peace.
  4. Marsha
    February 7th, 2012 at 1:59 pm

    Thanks for this beautiful essay. Thanks for caring about the kids. Keep shining that light for them.
  5. Andy Bridle
    February 8th, 2012 at 5:31 am

    Sorry to be pedantic – it seems almost churlish, particularly with reference to such a fine blog – but the cover of ‘Helplessly Hoping’ you published says the original is from CSNY. In fact the original is from the eponymous CSN album, released in 1969, before the magnificent Mr. Young joined them.

    I should get out more! Keep up the fine work.
  6. jc
    February 8th, 2012 at 10:46 am

    I started coming to your blog for the great music, but I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you through your posts. Thank you for your honesty and candor. I’m also a teacher, and luckily I’ve been blessed to teach in great international schools with great support. Take pride in the fact that you’re making a difference in their lives and ours.
  7. Berni
    February 8th, 2012 at 5:56 pm

    Very moving post.

    I live not much of a distance from you but in a middle-class suburb. I have been endlessly frustrated by a school system that caters to their “stars” offering them all sorts of AP classes, sports, languages (Chinese, anyone?) while blowing off my learning challenged kid. I wish he had even one teacher that cared as much as you obviously do about your kids.

    God bless you
  8. boyhowdy
    February 8th, 2012 at 11:50 pm

    Thanks, all, for the support and empathy, and for allowing me to use the blog as prayer space of a sort once in while, when most come for music and taste. The book will come, someday, I suspect. For now, it is enough to draft it in these fragments, and hope that those who believe that what I write has value to them will help pass it along to others.

    One additional tiny note, since it is late, and I always fret that revisiting such entries – broken and non-linear as they are – merely dilutes the waters:

    To jc, especially, and Myck and others: I have taught in the suburbs, too, where community and family support is the norm; have lived and taught in the rarified heights of private college prep school, too, where being with students in the dorm and classroom was a delight, and – for a while – I thought I would stay forever. It was a blessing to be able to move so much farther, then, with the kids; to attend to the top of the pyramid of needs, and not struggle so with the bottom.

    But after four years, I find my soul better served, and my mind better challenged, by what I write about above. I am, I think, an inner city teacher at heart. All students need good teachers, and I bless those who still serve, in any capacity, at any level, and bless, too, those who have done there service, and found it was enough for that time and place, and moved on. But for now, at least, having found the grace to let myself feel and let go of that which I cannot change, while knowing that a day’s good work is hard, and satisfying, and potent, as long as I approach the day and the student in front of me without prejudice – it is more than enough; it is my joy. I am glad, indeed, to see that this, too, shines through in my words above. Thanks, all, for being there to listen, and share, and respond. In your own way, your voices, too, have helped my students.
  9. Chris
    February 9th, 2012 at 11:57 am

    ((HUG))
    Thank you.
  10. Hugh Candyside
    February 11th, 2012 at 11:34 pm

    I’ve been following your music postings, both here and at the other place, for a couple of years now, and always felt a musical bond. We have much the same tastes and I’ve always appreciated your insights. I never thought much about your day job. You are a hero.
    While in college I took the odd Teacher’s Ed class and then spent two terms, student teaching in the Detroit inner city. I was so shocked by the very conditions you just described that I never stood in front of a classroom again. That was in the 1970s. I’m sure it’s worse now. Keep up the fine, fine work.
  11. Allie
    February 17th, 2012 at 2:16 am

    Thank you for your dedication and for your beautifully-written reflections. I hope to someday pursue a meaningful career with such tenacity and grace. You’re an example for all of your readers, and I’m sure for your students, colleagues and fellow church-goers. Keep it up!
  12. maine character
    February 18th, 2012 at 12:36 am

    If you’re as good a teacher as you are a writer, your kids are blessed. They may seldom be open to what you offer, but the offer always stands.

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