My experience in the NYC public school where I teach can be summed up, “One step forward, seventy-five steps back.” Sometimes I have these short but intense moments where I think I’m actually getting through. Turns out, these are just hallucinations or seizures on my part.
My students know so little. Okay, that’s not true. They do know where to buy drugs, how to stealthily alert others of the po-po, and how to kill a man with a Bic pen and a Kleenex. They know how to reject anything that doesn’t jive with the codes of the ghetto. They know how to bully others the way they’ve been bullied. They don’t know verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, etc. They have very limited vocabularies. Worst of all, they didn’t know who Jimi Hendrix was. When I alluded to the song “Crosstown Traffic” as a metaphor, students rolled their eyes and said, “Don’t tell us about old white people!”
The horrors!
I explained that Jimi Hendrix was a huge rock icon - a black rock icon. One of the greatest guitarists who ever lived. Someone may have asked if he looked anything like 50 Cent, I can’t remember. I just remember seeing all the blank faces and something inside me sighing very hard.
Similarly, students seemed to be understanding the twelve new vocabulary words we reviewed all last week. Students are bombing the state reading tests here, because 1) they can’t read at their grade level and 2) they have very limited vocabularies. So we reviewed the new words. Everyone was confident, but almost everyone still failed the quiz on Friday. And I love the reaction I get when my students learn anything new, “This is so dumb! I hate this class! This teacher is wack!” I understand they may be able to verbally demonstrate their knowledge, but not be able to do the same through reading and writing, but seriously, they are wack. They’ve got to work to be better or they won’t pass.
I’m trying something new this week. They have got to learn something before I go, because I’m certainly going.
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