Freitag, 2. Dezember 2011

First field experience ends (at last) . . .

I finished up my first internship today, and it's been quite an education in the minutiae of the achievement gap. It's Hannah Arendt's banality of evil, a Hydra of millions of tiny daily decisions that I'm sure are being made in some form in tens of thousands of schools all over the country: an assistant principal who gives a 3-day suspension for being caught in the hallway without a pass but gives just an hour's in-school detention for cussing out a teacher; the placement of a long-term English substitute in 9th grade Algebra for a semester; an administration that schedules off-site meetings for the faculty with barely 48 hours' notice; a secretary who doesn't know if there's any more copier paper in the office and who won't get out of her chair to check . . . Yes, these students are being failed by their teachers, but not ONLY by their teachers, and the teachers are being failed by absolutely everyone else.

God save me from a job in a school like that.

Donnerstag, 1. Dezember 2011

"Incident Report" - Fight in class

In [Mrs. D's classroom], at about 1:00 p.m., I was helping a student with his creative writing composition while the rest of the class was supposed to be working on their own stories. Besides myself and the class, a substitute teacher and a City Year intern were in the room.

Suddenly I saw M. [an always stylish young man with an athletic physique and a spotty attendance record] shoving chairs out of the way. I went over to him to find out what was wrong, and he shouted past me, "Come on, let's do it, we've got plenty of room now." I looked behind me and A. [a known gang member, I've been told, who has yet to crack a book or notebook in this class as far as I can see] was at the other end of the room, taking off his jacket.

Several students went over to A. to try and calm him down, while I tried to prevent M. from getting any closer to A. - without success. They began fighting, and I attempted to get the rest of the class out of harm's way, telling several individuals to sit down and others to stay back. Everyone wanted to see what was happening, and all of my attempts to isolate the combatants failed. Within a few seconds, A. and M. had gone into the hall.

I stood in front of the classroom door to prevent anyone else from leaving the room, holding onto the door frame with outstretched hands and shouting at the students to remain inside. They crowded the doorway, and those in front began pushing me away from the door frame in order to get into the hall. I don't know who was pushing me, but it was gradual pressure from everyone at the door and possibly from those behind as well. I am not even sure the people who were pushing against me were actually trying to physically remove me, or if it was those behind them who were pushing, but everyone I could see was yelling at me to get out of the way so they could watch the fight.

As A. and M. continued to battle each other, with their arms locked around each others' necks, I tried again to get everyone into the room and was completely ignored. I tried to get past the students, who were now coming out of all the classrooms, in order to alert security - but the crowd was too thick. I ran for my cell phone and dialed 911, since there was still no sign of security. I got through to the police for a moment, but then the signal was cut off as it sometimes is in that hall. The boys were still fighting and some of the male teachers were trying to break them apart, so I tried one last time to get the class back into the room and was ignored once again.

There was an opening in the crowd, so I went down the hall and rounded the corner. At the far end of that hallway, past the cafeteria, I saw a lone security guard strolling in the direction of the fight. I shouted, "We've got a bad fight here, get everyone you can over here." His only reaction was to make a downward motion with his hands as if I was overreacting. I turned and went back into the hallway, where the fight was apparently still going on.

I slipped past the crowd and went into the room. One student was sitting there. Moments later, slowly but surely everyone else straggled in, elated by what they had witnessed. Several students expressed their anger at me for calling 911. I asked the class if anyone knew what had happened, and a few reported that A. had just been "playing with" M., but then it got serious. No one knew exactly what had been said.

*******************************************************************

I was, of course, distraught. The principal came jauntily into the room a few moments later, and told everyone that A. and M. had been suspended for 10 days and were on their way to being expelled. He added thank-you's to students who regularly come to school in order to do their work, and ended by threatening anyone who mentioned the incident in class with a five-day suspension. He did not spare me or the substitute teacher so much as a glance. As I was leaving the building later on, I ran into him in the hallway and told him that I had tried to keep everyone in the room but they had pushed past me. He told me to file an incident report; I'll bring in what I've written above tomorrow.

Later on, I went to my evening class on literacy strategies. It's full of working teachers, and one of them suggested that I use my cell phone as a video camera instead of calling the police - which I hope I will have the presence of mind to do next time. I feel partly responsible for the whole thing because I didn't do what the textbooks say - I didn't de-escalate the situation, but rather escalated it by shouting at the students and blocking their way out with my body (although in my defense I would add that nothing less than shouting would have been heard by anyone except those students standing within several inches of me). But I have to admit that I still can't think of anything else I could have done to prevent the students from leaving the room - or, for that matter, to prevent the fight - and of course I'll never know whether videorecording them (or pretending to) would have helped either.