Wow, how time flies

I can't believe it's been so long since I posted. The work at East has been wonderful, so so so busy, scary, and heartbreaking. I will never be the same again. So much so that I am already worried about going back to Warner once my sabbatical is over. More on that in another post.

To say that we (the UR) underestimated the problems we would face is an incredible understatement. The longer we were there, the more dysfunction we found. To be clear, this dysfunction is not unique to East; it's endemic in urban schools. It is also crucial to say that we have truly amazing teachers, administrators, and staff at East. And the students are fantastic. These are systemic problems: overwhelming bureaucratic practices, deficit views of students and their families, and a "that's just the way we've always done it" mindset. I can't list everything we found because it's too depressing. In spite of all this, this is soul-filling work and great things happen everyday.

The good news is that a leadership change resulted in Marlene Blocker, formerly the lower school principal, taking charge of the building. She is keeping us breathless with meaningful changes that are dealing with low hanging fruit and with long term issues. I am excited to see what she does next.

One thing in particular has stopped me in my tracks.

As my relationships with students, teachers, and administrators at East deepen, I have come to believe that we have forgotten to address basic human needs for love and hope. We have underestimated the levels of trauma our students come to us with and the impact learning about and working with those traumas has on our teachers and administrators.  Several teachers have told me they have no hope or that hope is for suckers. We just have to get better at dealing with the social and emotional foundations of what it means to be human and what humans need to thrive.

I know that “trauma” has been so overused as to become trite these days, but that does not mean that real trauma has not happened. I know that my own experiences with my oldest son Eric and my youngest son Marcus have traumatized me and have traumatized my family. Eric was suicidal. Watching as he was mental health arrested and hearing him scream how much he hated me while this was happening, listening on the phone while Eric was running from police dogs through Highland Park, seeing Marcus at 10 years old being dragged by four armed security personnel at Johns Hopkins to a padded room where he was given a forced Haldol injection, having to pull over on the expressway because Marcus was so violent I couldn’t safely drive, and watching Marcus walk into an adult courtroom in handcuffs haunt me. None of these traumatizing experiences compare to what our students go through, but they have made me realize trauma is real. I am not the only one with similar experiences. Each one of us has traumatic experiences we deal with every day – loss of a family member, family member mental illness, divorce, children with disabilities, and many other experiences of grief and loss.

Rape, physical abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, witnessing violence, committing violence, daily microaggressions, homelessness, miscarriages, having the power cut off, hunger, incarceration, police brutality, bullying, fleeing war torn homelands … are all experiences students have shared with me. People estimate that 70% of our young women have experienced sexual abuse and 40% of our young men. This on top of all the other factors I just named. Chronic, complex trauma - everyday. This is unacceptable.

Teachers have shared losing students they deeply care about to murder, sexual abuse, prison, or drugs. Teaching is an act of love. But when you love students who are traumatized, that trauma also traumatizes you. And our teachers and students face a society that ignores them, except when scores come out, then they are blamed for the failures of that same society. To be clear, “they” are not blaming suburban teachers and students, they are blaming us.

We have only scratched the surface of what’s wrong in urban public education. East is but one example of profound sickness and neglect. As we dig deeper into systems at East to find dysfunction, put out daily fires that seek to overwhelm us, recoil in shock at roadblocks and an uncaring public, we can’t just respond with old practices of increased policing, stricter mandates, or forcing compliance. I think we need to step back, breath, and remember we are human beings who care deeply about the people we work with and about transforming urban public education so that our students can go forward into productive futures. And then take action. 

I know people will say, “There goes Joanne on another soapbox.” Fine. Dismiss me. But it’s not about me. It’s about our students and what’s going to help them develop into authentic, caring, and productive human beings. What I’m saying is we can’t forget the human for the “student.”