A Rock To Tie A String Around

Like most teachers, I can’t stand teacher movies, or books or inspirational quotes. As a teacher, I get flooded with all sorts of things that my well-meaning family and friends think will inspire me. I hate it all.

Yesterday I watched ‘Dangerous Minds’ with Michelle Pfeiffer. Not really out of choice, more out of laziness. Okay, if they’re trying to recruit new teachers with that movie, the producers are going the wrong direction. The lessons for new teachers that can be garnered from ‘Dangerous Minds’ are this:

1. Your first year will be horrible on a nightmarish scale
2. All administrators are evil dream-smashers who will go out of their way to stomp your ambitions and creativity
3. If you want to break through to your kids, you need to spend money. Lots and lots of money – money on candy, money on amusement park tickets, money on fancy, shmancy dinners.
4. You must spend every waking minute of your time away from school on your students, this means going to their houses, taking them out on the town.
5. You must be willing to sacrifice your personal life – dating, spouse, kids, etc…if you are to be successful

It’s true across the board for inspirational teacher stories. Since all the top hitter teacher books and movies are based on real-life people, I can only assume that I’m doing something wrong.
Ron Clark (The Essential 55 and made for TV move played by Mathew Perry) and Jaime Escalante (Stand and Deliver) both nearly killed themselves in their attempt to teach the masses. Clark nearly died of pneumonia, and limped back to school just to make sure his kids passed the test. Escalante had a massive heart attack and instead of staying put in the hospital, drug himself back to the classroom to prep his kids for AP exams.

I have no intentions of doing either. I stay home if I get sick, if I have pneumonia, I will do my best to leave a coherent lesson plan, but then I’m breaking out the hot tea and the Nyquil. I will not be worrying about my students. Does this make me a monster? Maybe….

Erin Gruwell (The Freedom Writers) worked several second and third jobs during her first year just so she could buy her kids books out of her own pocket. She also spent every waking minute at school, and as a result ended up divorced – at least according to the movie. Nope, not for me either. I will fight tooth and nail at my school to get my kids books, but I’m not going to be folding bras in a department store all night just so my kids can lose a copy of Siddhartha that I bought with my own debit card. Callous? Maybe….

Louanne Johnson (Dangerous Minds) came up with brilliant, innovative ways of teaching Bob Dylan to inner city kids to get them to connect to poetry, she visited the student’s homes, she bought them everything her teacher salary couldn’t afford. So what’s the problem? Well, the real Louanne Johnson did come up with a brilliant way to get her kids into poetry – by using rap lyrics. Why did the producers change rap to Dylan? I don’t know. ‘Dangerous Minds’ has been accused of whitewashing, I think it’s a pretty fair accusation, all things considered.

I’m partial to ‘Lean on Me’. You know, the story of Crazy Joe Clark, the principal of Eastside High. I like the scene where he suspends the basketball coach for picking up a piece of trash during the school song (in the real history, the coach was suspended for walking around during song – still pretty hard core), I’ve often wished that we had a principal with the balls to walk around campus wielding a baseball bat.

The problem with Hollywood Joe Clark vs. Actual Joe Clark is the question of accuracy. In real life, Eastside High was never under threat of state takeover, and while violence decreased, there was no major increase in test scores.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_on_Me_%28film%29

My first year teaching, I spent too much money out of my pocket on stuff for my kids, I stayed late at school every night; I went full throttle Freedom Writers ahead. Until that is, I realized my approach was all wrong. I was looking at my kids as somebodies that needed saving from their lives. They don’t need saving, they need knowledge, they need skills and tools, not another missionary disguised as a first year teacher.

I teach at a school that could have very well come out of one of these movies, it’s inner city, south central, gang-ridden, low income – my kids come to school with terrible stories, more crap on their plate than I’ve seen in my lifetime. Yet, my days at school are pretty normal. At the heart of it all, they’re kids. They don’t want to turn off their ipods, they chew gum even though they know I hate it, they make fun of me every time I have to wear my glasses to work. They’re just kids. They don’t want me sucking up to them with presents and amusement park tickets, they want someone who honestly wants to be there.