urban journal | by mary anna towler
Urban schools’ challenge: a community dialogue Over several weeks in May, my column focused on the crisis in Rochester’s schools – what I believe has caused it and what I think we ought to do about it. A number of readers responded with their own thoughts, creating an important dialogue on what I believe is the most important issue facing the Greater Rochester community. Their comments have touched on the role of “culture” and poverty, the influence of unions, the role of volunteers, and their own experience in Rochester classrooms. This is a discussion taking place in urban school districts throughout the nation – because these district have two crucial things in common: tragically low student achievement and a tragically high level of concentrated poverty. It’s a valuable discussion, one that ought to continue, and ought to be broadened. Providing urban students with a quality education is vital, for the students, their cities, and the future of their region. And we won’t be able to
We won’t be able to provide a quality education unless we take a hard look at the complexity of the problem.
do that unless we take a hard look at the complexity of the problem and deal with all of its contributing factors. I’m turning over my column space this week to a selection of those comments, beginning with a letter from someone with firsthand experience in city classrooms: a retired teacher. Next week, I’ll wrap up this expanded series with a few comments of my own.
Reader feedback I taught in the Rochester school district for 33 years.
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june 6-12, 2012
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Since then, I have volunteered by doing read-alouds and history presentations at my former school. I have tried to be a good representative of urban teachers and have praised them and defended them. But I’m thinking about giving up. Why? Because the people who have any realistic chance of turning urban education around are so stupid or blind that things keep getting worse. Governors, education commissioners, politicians – even the president has it wrong. All it would take is for them to spend a week in an urban school to see what all urban teachers know: It’s not the teachers, the programs, the curricula, or how many times we test the students. It’s the poverty, the homes, and the neighborhoods that these kids go home to every night. Many come to school angry, hungry, and scared, with little home-taught basic knowledge or nurturing.
They don’t know common things suburban kids know. Most are not read to when they are little and are not taken places that would expand their knowledge. They do know things at young ages that suburban kids don’t know, however. They know that you survive by being tough and fighting if you have to. They know to hit the floor if you hear gunshots. They know that only the strong survive. This year my volunteering has been done in a fourth grade. I read books and then attempt to have the children discuss the themes and write about them. Here’s how that has gone: The regular teacher usually has to remove a couple of students who are so angry about previous issues that they will not allow others to listen. A couple more sleep through the session. A few are routinely not in school. Seven or eight of the 20 to 25 students do pay attention and respond.
After the first book I read, I gave the students instructions on how to write a response. The next time I came, seven kids had bothered to do the assignment. This is the norm in urban classes, not the exception. In a primary class, the teacher has a parent conference with a mom who is 24 and has five children. They are sometimes homeless. The teacher says that the child is angry. A boy comes to school every day smelling of urine. Child Protective Services goes to the home and finds 10 pit bulls. A mother comes to school “in her fighting clothes” to “rip the teacher’s hair out.” Every urban teacher can tell stories like these. They can also tell of bringing kids food and buying clothes with their own money. They can tell of kids who beg them at the end of the day: “Please don’t make me go home.” What is the political response to all this? “Why are the schools failing the children? We need more