By Michael H. Brownstein
An anonymous donor sent us two checks for $250 each. I appreciate it a whole lot. The money will go for the development of a character-education program. It’s much needed at my school.
Yesterday, for example, I found myself rushing into the eighth-grade classroom because of screams and ugly laughter. A student was actually punching the substitute teacher, who was twice her size and trying very hard to restrain herself from punching the girl back. My first problem was getting to the fight through some of the girls who purposely blocked my way. I found myself physically removing students. Fortunately, the girl calmed a little bit and I was able to get her across the hall into my classroom to join my class and the other three students who were earlier removed from their classrooms and placed in my room.
My class, as usual, did brilliantly. The other seventh-grade class also shined like the stars they can be. I believe almost every student in the class is on my classroom’s homepage for excellence.
I read somewhere we should be color-blind to the skin colors of our students. I know this cannot truly, really happen. Unfortunately, even though I would love to say we can be color-blind, we cannot. There is too much racism: we have to force our students of color to work to a higher standard because they have to know how to compete harder, and we must understand white folk’s middle-“classness” is far different from the generational poverty class. For this reason, a lot of teachers who are middle-class do not always understand all of the issues poverty brings into a student’s life. I feel fairly strongly about this. I feel we can teach middle-class values, but we must also always be aware of the culture and the problems minorities face day to day.
The student who attacked the teacher lives with her grandmother and ten other grandchildren. I have an issue with the state giving legal custody of foster children to a parent who raised a family already – and failed – and is now trying to raise the grandchildren of her failed children. When she was younger and stronger, she could not handle it. Now frail and older, how can she be expected to do the job better a second time? She can’t. This particular parent, by the way, had six children all of whom are now either in jail or so strung out on drugs they have made a jail inside of themselves.
Anyway, we received five hundred dollars from an anonymous donor who resides in Idaho, and the final order from NASCO came in (paid through a grant I wrote last year), and Scholastic sent us class books and other great things – many of them free.
A good day for the most part.
| Copyright © 2021 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively. |
Never assume that silence means we are not moved, saddened, etc by what you tell us.
ReplyDeleteOnly thought about the silence once: https://moristotle.blogspot.com/2021/06/all-over-place-eighth-grade.html -- cause I really like this piece.
ReplyDeletescprice--Thanks for sharing your wisdom!
Unfortunately, the highly deserving writers whose work we offer reach too few readers through Moristotle’s channel. Perhaps if he weren’t an outspoken atheist, were less political, more soft-spoken, more respectful, less foul-mouthed – in a word, likable – there would be less silence?
DeleteThe silence following my confession of Monday is rather deafening, too. I hope the jury is still out, but I fear it has returned, too rigidly stony-faced to speak.
ReplyDeleteHey, the world's on fire now over Critical Race Theory. Who has time to really find out what it means but those of us on your site.
ReplyDeleteThanks for putting things in perspective, Michael. An assist: Wikipedia article on critical race theory.
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