A quick note: If you are listening, please note that there are many embedded links in the print version.
I’m nearing the end of the first quarter of my seventh year working for a small charter school in Detroit. Our district has two elementary schools and one high school. My role in this district has changed every year.
The first year I taught senior English Language Arts, freshman ELA, and junior SAT prep ELA.
The next year, I gained the title Master Teacher and continued to teach senior ELA and a writing elective for juniors.
The third year I continued teaching seniors and implemented a reading intervention with freshmen and sophomores.
The fourth year, I continued with senior ELA and the reading intervention.
The fifth year, I became an instructional coach each morning and continued as the senior ELA teacher in the afternoon.
The sixth year, I became Instructional Coordinator which included leading standardized testing, coaching, onboarding new teachers, and even a short stint back in the classroom.
This year, I am Academic Programming Coordinator, a newly created position for which the responsibilities are continuously evolving because of the ever-changing needs of a district like ours.
It’s part of the reason that I haven’t written about my work very much this year. Just when I think I have something to say, something shifts. My role continues to be defined.
We started the year with two vacancies — one science and one math (40 states are currently experiencing a teacher shortage in these content areas Source), so I’ve been managing long-term substitutes, assignments, and grading for those courses. I’ve also been involved with interviewing and onboarding — last week we filled the math vacancy with a certified teacher who zooms in from Texas courtesy of a company called Full Minds. Today, we’re bringing on a live and in-person certified science teacher who I will train and support so that she can join the students on Thursday.
I’ve been coaching, too — teachers in our building plus one teacher in each of our two K-8 buildings. I’ve been supporting teachers in their use of the No Nonsense Nurturer Four-Step Model to build engagement and reduce off-task behavior.
And there’s been testing. So. Much. Testing. First we administered the NWEA to gauge our students’ current reading and math grade-level proficiency, and then a PSAT/SAT practice test through Academic Approach to give our students much-needed practice in the style of high stakes, potentially life-impacting testing they take each spring.
Much of me is opposed to all the testing, even while I am training teachers how to give these tests and ensuring that they proctor effectively, because of the inherent bias in standardized testing, because it is entangled in profit and privilege, and really because it takes up so much of my time. However, testing does provide us with substantial data about our students that shows not only where they fall compared to other students in the nation, but also where our students are performing in relation to grade level standards. And since I’ve seen the numbers, let me tell you, few students in our country are doing great right now. Across the nation, the majority of students are measuring below grade level standards and those in districts like mine continue to measure even lower? (See National Data)
Why is that? Why, despite all the interventions we have put in place behaviorally and academically, do students in high poverty areas continue to lag far behind their peers just miles down the road?
Could it be because these students for most years of their lives have had (like my students this year and last) substitute teachers in core subjects for large chunks of the school year — year after year after year?
That is just one piece of systemic educational inequity.
My granddaughters who live in an affluent suburb in a major metropolitan area go to a well-funded public school district where they are instructed by highly qualified professionals in buildings that are in excellent condition, where they are fed their choice of entrees for lunch and participate in all kinds of extra curricular activities. Is it a coincidence that they score in the top 90%ile of the nation on tests of reading and math? It could also be that they live with parents who grew up similarly, who matriculated through post-secondary and grad school, who earn good money, who value education, and who have the time and space in their lives (and their budgets) to attend school events, travel as a family, and provide all kinds of resources.
Meanwhile, in districts not so far away, children their same age attend not-so-well funded public school districts that can never seem to find certified teachers, whose buildings are always either too hot or too cold, whose lunches and breakfasts arrive on a truck, one option a day. The parents of these children also grew up similarly and may or may not have graduated high school or gone to college. Certainly their lives and beliefs about education were shaped by the inequities that they experienced.
If you were an educator, where would you choose to work? In the well-resourced air conditioned district or in the one whose work also includes battling against centuries (yes, centuries) of systemic inequity?
The people I work with are trying to undertake the task of dismantling this self-perpetuating disparity — to disrupt it — to give students a different experience — to show them that they can learn, that they are worthy of high quality instruction. They (we) are trying to provide an experience that sends our students the message that they can achieve whatever they can dream and to expose them to opportunities they never imagined. And they (we) are doing it in a space that is what I call less than glamorous.
Let me paint you a picture: In the single-story former Catholic grade school building in which we reside, we regulate the boiler-powered heat by turning it on when it gets cold outside and turning it off when we start suffocating. When the boiler is off, to stay cool we resort to the hum of fans and the risk of hornets flying in through the open windows. Terminex comes weekly in the ongoing battle to eradicate the resilient cockroach population, and we have just enough classrooms for our needs but not an inch of flexibility. We do finally have a semi-repaired parking lot, the field next to the building has been lined and outfitted with goal posts so that we can have home football games during daylight hours (because, yeah, no lights), and we use a lovely gym for volleyball and basketball but it’s in another district building that is a twenty-minute drive away.
We can’t attract a huge pool of certified teachers when there are districts minutes away with climate controlled rooms, flexible seating, auditoriums, and athletic complexes, but who we do attract are people who love our kids and who want more for them.
And that’s why our enrollment is the largest this year that it’s ever been — because our kids know that we love them and that we will work with them through behavior issues. We will take a chance on them when they’ve burned all the other bridges. We’ll help them recover credit they have missed. We’ll stock the bathroom with feminine products, have a snack available if they need it, hug them when they break down in tears, and, as our principal and a few staff did this past week, we’ll stay until 8pm on a Friday so that a couple dozen kids can turn the school into a haunted house and host their younger siblings for a Fall Festival.
Our staffing is always thin, we’re always looking for resources, but this team is committed to these students. I can forget that. My role this year is making sure that all the programs we have in place — testing, online learning, interventions — run the way that they should. I’m continually popping into spaces to observe the way things are playing out, stepping in to offer support, and trouble shooting when things go wrong. My brain can forget that the adults in the room are really doing their best to make it happen — I can forget to look in their eyes first before I scan the room. I can, the recovering soldier that I am, jump to judgments before I check their reality. I can decide what is happening without asking what they are experiencing.
Such carelessness can damage the trusting relationships we’ve built. We can’t afford to risk that.
So, today when I’m training my new staff member, when I’m walking through the halls, when I’m responding to texts, when I’m answering calls, I want to remember what a rare opportunity we have here — what a privilege it is to work with people whose hearts match mine — how important it is to acknowledge their efforts.
That, right there, just may be my core responsibility this year. May I keep that front and center.
…acknowledge those who work hard among you…hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work.” I Thessalonians 5: 12-13
