I love being a teacher. No lie, if our society were to fall apart and we had to trade services for goods instead of money, I would be out here with lesson plans so I could feed my family.
This morning I woke up a moment before my alarm clock sounded. I dressed and left home before the sun rose. I had an extra pep in my classroom step because today was my first observation of the year. Now, “when you stay ready, you ain’t gotta get ready” is a true story but even the best of us get an extra ounce of motivation when we know there are extra eyes on us.
The night before, I put an extra layer on my lesson plan. My Powerpoint was affixed with bells and whistles and the Quizlet slides were as clear as possible. During a free period in the morning, I made copies and had another conversation with my co-teacher to ensure our synergy was flawless. This is our second year co-teaching, and I already feel like our names should be added to Coolio’s verse from the intro to Kenan & Kel. Co-teaching is a critical component of the Integrated Co-Teaching method of Special Education.
I greeted my observer with a hearty handshake and was about to get started when two of my students started arguing. It was escalating quickly and looked ready to get physical. I spoke with the less angry student and had them go get some water outside of the classroom. The other student’s anger subsided and we were able to proceed with the lesson. After class, my observer provided feedback on the class and mentioned the altercation. She praised my classroom management and noted that the mutual respect I share with my students is evident. The importance of de-escalation obviously isn’t lost on me, and I am fully aware of how sour that situation could have become.
In too many classrooms, students and teachers fail to attain mutual respect and lack the ability to resolve conflict without further disruption. Vital instruction time should not be lost to struggles for power in the classroom. Although some criticize the precipitous drop in out-of-school suspensions across New York City (from 382 in 2011 to 28 in 2014), something must be said for the intention behind the method. Schools must be weaned from the pipeline to prison. As articulated by theUrban Youth Collective, the school-to-prison pipeline describes “the direct and indirect push out of young people from the school system and into the juvenile justice and criminal justice systems. Across the country, and in New York City, we experience this through the overuse of suspensions, zero tolerance policies which involve the police in minor incidents, school-based arrests, referrals to juvenile detention, and incarceration.”
It grieves me to think that there are other classrooms across New York City and the nation where police would have been involved in the aforementioned conflict. Education is a tool for liberation. Marcus Garvey once opined, “Liberate the minds of men and, ultimately, you will liberate the bodies of men.” As the safe keepers of young minds, we have a solemn responsibility to expand the narrative, fortify our students’ dignity and abandon the cowardly stream of white supremacy. Expanding the narrative occurs when teachers challenge themselves to speak about the full range of their students’ humanity. Too often, students are reduced to anecdotes of trauma. This reduction is self serving. Students are more than the sum of their obstacles. An educator who does their job effectively reinforces a student’s feeling of self worth. Any classroom that is more interested in control than liberation is abetting the systemic white supremacy that oppresses our students.
Our desire to dismantle systems that stifle our children should be matched with a similar vigor in lesson planning and professional preparation.
Every teacher worth their salt has had that moment where the problems seem too large to fix. Yet, we have a responsibility to our students and to society to speak the truth about them—to uplift youth’s stories in the context of their reality. In turn, all of us, teachers and non-teachers alike have a responsibility to challenge ourselves. When you think about education, do you do more than focus on its brokenness? Are you solution minded? When you consider politics and the issues of the day, do you consider how your loci of control is finally expanded?
Perhaps it is your time to serve society and run for public office. School boards, city councils and similar elected positions will continue to let us down until we work up the gumption to fill them. Admittedly, that is long term. In the meantime, we agitate.
Participating in democracy allows us to collectively remedy the ills that affect students’ lives. The personal malaise many feel regarding the presidential election is understandable, but educators must be the drum majors reminding society that voting does not exist in a vacuum. The ballot is much longer than one contest and our ability to participate in the democratic process is too costly to leave on the proverbial table.
Burton is a NYC school teacher. His writing is part of an op-ed series curated by #WeBuiltThis in which Black millennial contributors explore the sordid relationship between state violence and elected politicians.
The views expressed by Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.