Friday, December 20, 2013
Sunday, December 15, 2013
The Choke-hold: Why Urban Schools in Public Education Are Failing!
A Librarian’s Retort: Why I Despise Urban Public Education
I am torn. Part of me believes that hard working poor Americans want an education for their child. Not just an education but all the successes that come along with it. Then there’s the other half…cynic row, as I like to call it. This part believes no matter how much we try to move forward and progress the urban poor, they are stuck in their tortoise shell. Hoodies on, Jays (Jordans tennis shoes) clean and tracks hidden—the woven tracks of hair in her head, the dried tracks of sorrowful tears or the tracks from drug use, your choice—and that’s where the tear in me occurs. Not all the students in urban neighborhoods are downtrodden. A few are thirsting for a quality educator. As positive as I want to be daily, the "bad apples" drain the positiveness, the joy and the grit needed to endure an urban school setting.
At the moment, I’m questioning my career choice, my country and my life-goals. I had the obvious warnings signs that spoke loud and clear to me before I moved to an urban, poverty ridden school—unreturned phone calls, no functioning computers in proximity to my location on campus, kids that curse educators and a principal that hadn’t had a librarian in at least five years-- but because of my militant conviction that I can make anything succeed, I’m now burned out a week before Christmas break, thankful my kid has the flu and praying something miraculous to happen to prove to me that the last 5 months were all worth it in the end.
To bring you up to speed, I’m a former English Language Arts teacher, who has taught everything from high school English, English as a Second Language and Literary & Creative Writing. That right there ought to show you how complex and diverse of a teacher I am. As an additional additive, I’m a young Black woman that grew up in a white middle-class suburb and attended a private university. I’ve had privileges, but by no means exhibited the status of wealthy. As a babe, I ran before I walked and electrocuted myself at 5 because I wanted more super-powers like the vacuum cleaner. Regarding education, I always wanted my answers to be different from my classmates and took like a songbird to the arts: cellist, chef, and creative writer. I despised (and still do) any structured box others tried to place me in. Who wouldn’t fight a choke-hold grip on your natural creativity?
However, those attributes are for not. As a recent article published by Slate.com –Inside the Box: People don’t like creativity—remarked, the powers that be “don’t like creativity.” They prefer agreeable, inside the box thinkers. Get as close to the boundaries of the box as you want to…hell we’ll even make you a star for that because you’re edgy! But once you cross that line, “your ass is toast!”
So naturally, as an original thinker, my creative arse was in violation of that rule and labeled uncooperative and resistant to coaching! Go figure that! You mean I went to college, inherited tens of thousands of dollars of debt, and can only achieve wide-range success to pay off those debts if I align my brain along the rest of the “No waves, Dave!” mentalities?
So my next best option was to get out of the classroom (while my test scores were still admirable) and go back to school for a masters degree. Hmm…how about I become a librarian? I can read my assets off and still enjoy influencing the minds of the future. Plus, NO DAMN STANDARDIZED TESTS! Fate brought me a grant opportunity and I seized it. In the mean time, I needed to exit suburbia hell and go to where I was needed.
Therefore, off to urban school! There, the need was great for creative and ambitious minds! I can inspire and assist the economically challenged but aspiring youth. Furthermore, I could be of great use. Leech from me as much knowledge as you can! But, what I found was oppression in its modern form. I jumped from one misery into the lair of hell. All I can tell you is read the article “Four Reasons Why Teachers Avoid or Leave High Poverty Urban Public Schools.” It is a bright light into the new hell I find myself in.
So after months of listening to students being cursed out by professional colleagues—“because that’s the only shit they respond to”—and covering classes for sick, depressed or newbie teachers—“because you’re a librarian, you don’t have a class right now and you’re such a strong teacher”—I’m hiding out in my home-office, nursing a flu-ridden son, hoping he stays ill for the remaining two days of this week so that I don’t have to return to Satan’s liar! Did I just wish for a SLOW recovery for my own child? Wth? And, by the way, all those quotes are literal remarks from co-workers! Again, wth?
So what’s the point? The point is this: corporations and districts alike want to blame educators for the flaws in public education, when the accountability is with one group, the American family…all of us. Corporations that lobby for standardized tests and refuse to raise minimum wage that keeps the rich rich and the poor struggling. Teachers, who learn several pedagogies, just to toss them all out the window in order to survive with urban hellions. Parents, who didn’t take advantage of an education when they had one, so now they work multiple jobs just to make ends meet and don’t have the proper time to bond and raise their children! Lawmakers, who forget those that elected them because the corporation’s lobbyist sweetened a sway in their favor, and school districts that cater to the laws established by agencies that are made up of non-educators or educators that have been out of the classroom for so long they don’t know the first thing about it. Voters that BLINDLY put these buffoons into office. And, the rich, who have enough money to remove their children from public education and let the “scavengers fight amongst themselves… where up here!”
Hell if I’m honest, I believe every decision maker, in the realm of education, should as part of their contract serve one paid week in an inner-city urban public school twice a year. They must be in the classroom and can have no assistance with lessons, classroom management and/or technology. Then, and only then will those haughty wanna-be intellects know the plight of my kind. Plus, it’d give those white-collar twits a bonafide reality check!
We all have accountabilities in public education. However, the only resolution I can come to grips with right now is to leave public education. Or, some kind of way, find an authentic version of the MIB (“Men in Black” movie) memory eraser and make everyone stare at the light. And, start the public education system all over again.
Nevertheless, I need to find some career that supports my desire to be around kids, as well as home-school my own. No buckets of cash over here! No money-bags husband! No faith in public education…at least not at the campus I work, presently. Perhaps, I will open my own private school one distant day. However, unless I win the lottery, I will still have to deal with opinionated investors, who want it done their way or the highway. Now, my arse is right back to those haughty wanna-be intellects! What a vicious circle!
P.S. It’s safe to say that these ideas are all my own, in case the powers that be connect the dots and fire me for having an honest refelection.
I am torn. Part of me believes that hard working poor Americans want an education for their child. Not just an education but all the successes that come along with it. Then there’s the other half…cynic row, as I like to call it. This part believes no matter how much we try to move forward and progress the urban poor, they are stuck in their tortoise shell. Hoodies on, Jays (Jordans tennis shoes) clean and tracks hidden—the woven tracks of hair in her head, the dried tracks of sorrowful tears or the tracks from drug use, your choice—and that’s where the tear in me occurs. Not all the students in urban neighborhoods are downtrodden. A few are thirsting for a quality educator. As positive as I want to be daily, the "bad apples" drain the positiveness, the joy and the grit needed to endure an urban school setting.
At the moment, I’m questioning my career choice, my country and my life-goals. I had the obvious warnings signs that spoke loud and clear to me before I moved to an urban, poverty ridden school—unreturned phone calls, no functioning computers in proximity to my location on campus, kids that curse educators and a principal that hadn’t had a librarian in at least five years-- but because of my militant conviction that I can make anything succeed, I’m now burned out a week before Christmas break, thankful my kid has the flu and praying something miraculous to happen to prove to me that the last 5 months were all worth it in the end.
To bring you up to speed, I’m a former English Language Arts teacher, who has taught everything from high school English, English as a Second Language and Literary & Creative Writing. That right there ought to show you how complex and diverse of a teacher I am. As an additional additive, I’m a young Black woman that grew up in a white middle-class suburb and attended a private university. I’ve had privileges, but by no means exhibited the status of wealthy. As a babe, I ran before I walked and electrocuted myself at 5 because I wanted more super-powers like the vacuum cleaner. Regarding education, I always wanted my answers to be different from my classmates and took like a songbird to the arts: cellist, chef, and creative writer. I despised (and still do) any structured box others tried to place me in. Who wouldn’t fight a choke-hold grip on your natural creativity?
However, those attributes are for not. As a recent article published by Slate.com –Inside the Box: People don’t like creativity—remarked, the powers that be “don’t like creativity.” They prefer agreeable, inside the box thinkers. Get as close to the boundaries of the box as you want to…hell we’ll even make you a star for that because you’re edgy! But once you cross that line, “your ass is toast!”
So naturally, as an original thinker, my creative arse was in violation of that rule and labeled uncooperative and resistant to coaching! Go figure that! You mean I went to college, inherited tens of thousands of dollars of debt, and can only achieve wide-range success to pay off those debts if I align my brain along the rest of the “No waves, Dave!” mentalities?
So my next best option was to get out of the classroom (while my test scores were still admirable) and go back to school for a masters degree. Hmm…how about I become a librarian? I can read my assets off and still enjoy influencing the minds of the future. Plus, NO DAMN STANDARDIZED TESTS! Fate brought me a grant opportunity and I seized it. In the mean time, I needed to exit suburbia hell and go to where I was needed.
Therefore, off to urban school! There, the need was great for creative and ambitious minds! I can inspire and assist the economically challenged but aspiring youth. Furthermore, I could be of great use. Leech from me as much knowledge as you can! But, what I found was oppression in its modern form. I jumped from one misery into the lair of hell. All I can tell you is read the article “Four Reasons Why Teachers Avoid or Leave High Poverty Urban Public Schools.” It is a bright light into the new hell I find myself in.
So after months of listening to students being cursed out by professional colleagues—“because that’s the only shit they respond to”—and covering classes for sick, depressed or newbie teachers—“because you’re a librarian, you don’t have a class right now and you’re such a strong teacher”—I’m hiding out in my home-office, nursing a flu-ridden son, hoping he stays ill for the remaining two days of this week so that I don’t have to return to Satan’s liar! Did I just wish for a SLOW recovery for my own child? Wth? And, by the way, all those quotes are literal remarks from co-workers! Again, wth?
So what’s the point? The point is this: corporations and districts alike want to blame educators for the flaws in public education, when the accountability is with one group, the American family…all of us. Corporations that lobby for standardized tests and refuse to raise minimum wage that keeps the rich rich and the poor struggling. Teachers, who learn several pedagogies, just to toss them all out the window in order to survive with urban hellions. Parents, who didn’t take advantage of an education when they had one, so now they work multiple jobs just to make ends meet and don’t have the proper time to bond and raise their children! Lawmakers, who forget those that elected them because the corporation’s lobbyist sweetened a sway in their favor, and school districts that cater to the laws established by agencies that are made up of non-educators or educators that have been out of the classroom for so long they don’t know the first thing about it. Voters that BLINDLY put these buffoons into office. And, the rich, who have enough money to remove their children from public education and let the “scavengers fight amongst themselves… where up here!”
Hell if I’m honest, I believe every decision maker, in the realm of education, should as part of their contract serve one paid week in an inner-city urban public school twice a year. They must be in the classroom and can have no assistance with lessons, classroom management and/or technology. Then, and only then will those haughty wanna-be intellects know the plight of my kind. Plus, it’d give those white-collar twits a bonafide reality check!
We all have accountabilities in public education. However, the only resolution I can come to grips with right now is to leave public education. Or, some kind of way, find an authentic version of the MIB (“Men in Black” movie) memory eraser and make everyone stare at the light. And, start the public education system all over again.
Nevertheless, I need to find some career that supports my desire to be around kids, as well as home-school my own. No buckets of cash over here! No money-bags husband! No faith in public education…at least not at the campus I work, presently. Perhaps, I will open my own private school one distant day. However, unless I win the lottery, I will still have to deal with opinionated investors, who want it done their way or the highway. Now, my arse is right back to those haughty wanna-be intellects! What a vicious circle!
P.S. It’s safe to say that these ideas are all my own, in case the powers that be connect the dots and fire me for having an honest refelection.
Friday, December 6, 2013
It's all a facade! Find out who OWNS the media!
Don't just glance at this...READ IT because it does matter. Perhaps because I'm a librarian or simply because my parents taught me to question everything in order to form my own opinion because "the Lord gave you your own brain, NOT someone else's!" but citizens, all folks alike, need to stop being apathetic and investigate what's presented to them. This is proof of hidden agendas by big corporations. Please, WAKE UP! Click here for a bigger image of below!
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