So hi, I'm a future high school teacher of America, and I already know that I will be teaching in an urban setting. So naturally, that means that I have this great sense of hope for urban schools, that they are not so bad, that they do good things with bad circumstances, or that they can be changed for the better if only....something. (that something in my mind usually being good, caring, dedicated teachers continue to be present in ever-growing numbers) And this is all true of me - usually. But I must confess, I don't always think like that. As a suburban white boy growing up in New York, and a particularly white part of New York at that, my experience with urban schools came from various tv depictions and the occassional movie - The Substitute and the like provided the negativity, Stand and Deliver & Dangerous Minds, etc for the positive side. The sum of my personal experience with urban youth comes from a semester spent as a youth mentor of sorts in an urban middle school during my last semester of undergrad work in college. The racial difference between my own public schools and this one were pronounced, but for me not a big deal at all. I really could care less that eventually (and probably pretty soon, as Harold Hodgkinson points out in his article "Educational Demographics: What Every Educator Should Know") white students will be the minority in this country. At the moment I am colorblind, which he suggests as a weakness, in deference to "cultural fairness" - I'll work on it. Anyway, the kids were good enough in and of themselves, but there were also HUGE differences that made me, who was a good 10 years older than any of the eighth graders, a bit uncomfortable at times. Allow me to relate one such topic of discomfort - well, you see, call me old-fashioned or just plain ign'ant, but i really didn't expect to be conversing with eighth graders - 13 year olds, mind you, about their sex lives, and certainly about their SEVERAL (if not many) exploits. Granted, I understand that peer pressure being what it is, some of what I heard was probably just for show, but based on private heartfelt conversations I had with my mentee, I know that all of it wasn't, and in particular, I am convinced that one of his friends was having weekly orgy parties. My mentee saw nothing unusual about the fact that his mother had told him at the age of 12 that she didn't care that he had sex, she just didn't want any grandkids. Some of these things are foreign concepts to me - even the raciest of comments in my middle school didn't approach this level of... I don't even know what.
So, what is my point in saying all this?? Well, to be quite honest, sometimes when i think about some of the problems that urban schools have to deal with at least to more of an extent than suburban ones, I just feel like the whole thing is hopeless and that there's nothing I can possibly do except to try to make a positive difference, knowing that in the process I will utterly fail and burn out will soon follow. Luckily, I only feel this way sometimes. Then there are articles such as "The Promise of Urban Schools" by the Senior Fellows in Urban Education, who address some of the urban schooling issues with hope and determined optimism. (Despite the fact that they refuse to write a single sentence without breaking out their thesauri - honestly, there are perfectly good words that mean the same thing with fewer than 17 syllables...gosh, and don't even get me talking about the word pedagogy - it's so obnoxious....) But I digress. In this particular piece, they outline some very good broad aspects of good urban education such as allowing both students and teachers to examine teaching and knowledge critically, which encourages thinking and also makes knowledge gaining a deeply personal and therefor profound experience. They also discuss social justice and an "opportunity to learn" standard of education that should really be focused on more than it is. Overall, while a bit abstract, it certainly was encouraging in an "all-is-not-lost" sort of way. To be honest, this is the way I prefer to think about urban schools, and urban teaching. Despair is for sissies. Look, I know it's going to be hard - I know it'll be harder than I can imagine, and there will be student issues that arise that I, as a guy who comes from a very blessed and very rich background, couldn't even begin to anticipate, but that's where creativity and sympathy (if not empathy) comes in. That's where my perseverance gets to play its part, and where my deep belief in true hope for every student will be tested through the fire - and hopefully I'll live up to the challenge, and be what these kids need from me - in the end, that will be the rubric I will use for myself as a teacher.
-Rufus
