Respect the Intelligence

When I first started working at the alternative school, teachers in the district offered to lend me "easy" texts for the students to read. I immediately rejected them. The assumption is that at-risk means dumb. There is absolutely no empirical evidence to prove this. It merely reveals the bias of the educator. Just this year when I was at professional development with the other ELA teachers, one of them commented that I should be teaching gifted students. I respond, "I do."

Early on I realized that my students had a very strong voice, but it was rarely listened to. This is why I started our Alternative Voices project which is a spoken word CD. Students at my school have been recording their poems for the past twenty years. We have gone from burning CDs to creating a YouTube channel, but the important thing to remember is that it is student created.

Throughout the years my students have created black history posters that are hanging around the district, interviewed people in the community about gun violence, published websites, and filmed videos. The poems they wrote about Michael Brown are part of the collection at the Missouri History Museum. When those poems caused controversy we invited the mayor to our classroom to discuss why they were problematic and how the police department in their town differed from Ferguson.

We have read Oedipus Rex, Tartuffe, Fences, Parable of the Sower, Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Flowers for Algernon, The Road, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lax and many other texts. These are not "easy" texts.

I have never "dumbed down" anything for my students which is why the current situation is so depressing. I have up to five classes in my room during some periods which makes it impossible to do project based learning, group reading, or watch movies such as Seven Samurai. Recently we lost our science teacher because she was not certified for high school, but instead of replacing her we now offer online courses and hire a behavior specialist because it is more important to teach "these kids" how to behave instead of to think analytically. More students are in online classes because of a scheduling catastrophe. In fact students are taking online courses in subjects in which we employ certified teachers. The systems is so disrespectful of the students that it was determined that the original online classes which actually had an instructor were too difficult, so we switched to E2020 which we have ample evidence that the students cheat on. I was literally told to give the students worksheets to complete while I am teaching the other class that is in my room. This is the very definition of "busy work." I am being asked to keep students busy instead of engaged.

My drives to and from work have become tearful as I mourn the wasted semester and wasted minds. The lack of respect for my students is appalling, and it is all happening because nobody wants to take the time to fix it. We are literally warehousing students searching through the master schedule looking for a bin that they will fit in.