What We Are Up Against

Possibly the best received holiday card I've ever given

I went to one of my favorite schools today. It’s one that I don’t go to as much because it’s not walking distance - in fact I have to take a Lyft there because it’s not safe to get out before dawn and wait for two unreliable busses and take what is about an hour long trip. I never take my car to schools because there is no parking and the car would not be safe. I drive a good old girl - 2004 Subaru - and she is in great shape, but if anything happens to her I can’t afford to get a new car and insurance won’t cover damage or theft of a car that old (maybe at insane rates) so she stays home except when we go to the suburbs to visit my mom and get groceries. I do a whole lot of walking and take a whole lot of public transit. Today’s journey home involved a long bus ride, made longer by the fact that I took the wrong bus and ended up waiting to get on the next one going the other way. Oooops. The driver was very nice though, gave me directions and didn’t make me pay twice. I walked the rest of the way home and got home just as the dark was descending.

I love giving holiday cards, and I wrote one of my black cat holiday cards to the faculty, staff and administration of the school I gave it to the Assistant Principal, Mr. J., who is one of my favorite leaders of all time. When I think of the phrase “honorable man” this is the person who comes right to mind. He had to come in twice, maybe three times, to handle issues with the kids today. It is their break after tomorrow and they are antsy in the extreme.

In an effort to accentuate the positive I tend to leave out a lot of the tough things we deal with every day. But these things are an essential part of the story. The struggles that teachers and administrators face every day in neighborhoods that are dominated by poverty, violence and criminal culture are almost insurmountable. So when people are actually winning, actually turning the tide and educating young men and women to become successful, productive citizens - dare I say it eventual responsible fathers and mothers of their own children - it is remarkable. It deserves more than a holiday card, but I do what I can.

Some of the things we deal with on a daily basis include:

— a constant stream of foul language, including the “n” word, which black youth are using to describe and address each other every minute of the day

— kids throwing objects such as pencils, papers and Vaseline

— fighting and “play fighting” The kids will rough house with each other to an extent that is dangerous to themselves and others, and is obviously extremely disruptive in the classroom

— unprepared students who show up without a pencil and claim they can’t do the work. I have a whole chapter on this one.

— kids who are so addicted to technology that they have withdrawal symptoms when they are not allowed to use computers and phones

— kids who flat out lie when confronted with their bad behavior

— cheating by copying each others’ papers or using AI. And they don’t understand why it’s wrong.

— parents who back the students and at times threaten the teachers and administrators with physical violence

The level of discipline in the charters where I work is light years ahead of the regular district. That’s why I feel safe working in the three I will go to. The administrators are there when something goes wrong, and deal out real consequences. But the kids still try to get away with as much as they can. The blatant disrespect for adults is pretty disgusting on a visceral level. Can you imagine talking back to a teacher when you were a kid? Calling a teacher “girl” or worse yet, “bitch?”

Even the schools that try the hardest only have kids for seven and a half hours a day. Even the parents who try the hardest, and I know some of them, fight the gap between the family and the neighborhood peer group. Then there’s social media.

The administrators who work so hard to give these kids a chance at a good life get little appreciation. So I wrote a card to all. I gave it to Mr. J when he brought in piles of photocopied work for the kids for today (in a regular school I have never had work be provided by an administrator if the teacher did not leave it. In the charters either a teacher has left impeccable lesson plans or if she is out unexpectedly, the administrators provide adequate and reasonable lessons.) He was so shocked and happy and said he’d give it to Mr. S, the principal, to share with everyone.

On my lunch the principal himself stopped by and personally thanked me for the card. He shook my hand. It was so sweet.

I was reminded of back on a cold, cold night in Northeast Pennsylvania, on the eve of the first strike I helped run at a hospital in 2003 (for those of you who missed this chapter, I was a union organizer and then Director of Organizing for twenty years). The night before the strike, my Executive Director who eventually became one of my closest friends and I went to use our free drink tickets at the hotel bar where we were staying. I had just months before won the biggest organizing campaign ever to be won in Vermont, and the largest one in the whole country that year. At age 27. I was offered quite a few executive jobs after that in the labor movement, but I took the one as Director of Organizing at a start up nurses’ union in my home of Philadelphia. Everything I wanted, by age 28.

“Most people can’t understand what you did in Vermont. But I do,” he said.

And he did. It takes another organizer to know what it takes to win a campaign like that. He knew.

Since I’ve taught in two very urban, very poor, very crime saturated districts and full time or substitute taught in many schools, I know. I don’t have the viewpoint of a young teacher with a lot of knowledge but no real world experience. I know what it’s like to lose sleep over kids who just can’t seem to get how to behave in school. I know what it’s like to see them leave and be afraid that they’re going to mouth off to the wrong person out there in the world and get beat up or shot. I know what it’s like to find out that a father, brother, uncle, was murdered or put in jail. That mom is in jail. Kids get evicted. We are their stability.

It’s funny because I crave stability so much, and in the bizarre life of being on call and ready to leave at six am but not knowing where I’m going more days than not, I find the stability of working with my five favorite AP’s and many favorite deans to be the most comforting in person stability I have. There’s a steadiness about these people (four are men, one is an amazing woman who I want to be when I grow up, which would assume that I ever grow up!) that makes one think, “Against all odds, even though it may not appear so right now, things are going to be okay.” Sorta like the moment when Lando walks in and sees Poe talking to Leia’s dead body in The Rise of Skywalker.

Poe: I’m not ready.

Lando: Neither were we. Luke, Han, Leia, me. Who’s ever ready?

Poe: How did you do it? Defeat an Empire with almost nothing?

Lando: We had each other.

That’s how I felt when I was an organizer. How did we do the impossible, organize thousands of workers against extremely well funded management opposition who had all the money, all the control, all the power? We had each other. Was I ready when I was 21, 22, 23, 27, 30? Who’s ever ready?

It’s been so long since I’ve been on a team like that. Teaching in Reading was the closest I’ve come, in that time when I was embedded in a school for kids who had failed out of one semester at the high school and on the ESL team. Who’s ever ready to help kids who have to wear an ankle bracelet to school get his credits so he can graduate? I just jumped right in. My mentor Ms. T believed in me, and Mr. Z did too. I miss them so much.

I need winter break too. But I’ll miss the kids and my colleagues. I won’t miss the “n” word and if I do I can get on any form of transit and hear plenty of it. I’ll miss the steadiness of “Good morning, Ms. Smith, thank you so much for coming!” and “HI MS. SMITH IT’S STICKER LADY!!!!”

Yes, it is Sticker Lady.

Khalessi Sticker.

On my way out, I asked a few kids if they minded if called my dragon to come pick me up.

“What Miss?”

“My dragon. Do you mind if I call him to come pick me up? He won’t eat you. He only eats bad kids and you’re a good kid so you have nothing to worry about.”

“Okay Miss.”

Then I walked a block and caught the wrong bus.

Even though I caught the wrong bus, I think I’m heading in the right direction.