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............................   Cover Story Read Brooke's Journal

Teacher! Teacher! During her fellowship in New York City, Hilary Hobbs '02, a history major, worked with a teacher in an elementary school classroom in the South Bronx. Because Hilary found her fellowship experience to be unsettling, she has not specifically identified in her journal the name of the school, and the students' names have been changed as well. January 3 Fifteen minutes into my first day in a first grade classroom in the South Bronx and I'm already swamped-with hands raised, small fingers pulling at my sleeve, first grade voices calling, "Teacher! Teacher! Come help me!" I rush to help Daniel get settled, remind Christina how to write her name, break up an argument over a pencil that has erupted into punches, and coax Janelle out of her favorite hiding place in the coat closet. These children don't even know my name. They could care less who I am. All they know is that I'm an extra set of adult hands in this classroom of twenty-seven students, so they flock toward me, journals and phonics workbooks in tow, begging for my attention. I've never felt like my presence is so needed. Before I arrived, my cooperating teacher spoke of trying to create an "island" of positive, academic energy for her students within this school of 1,500 kindergarten-through-fourth-grade students, which overall has a pretty negative, nonacademic and bleak environment. Today I witnessed firsthand both the energy and the despair. I heard her greet each student with a cheerful "good morning" and a "Ready to Learn" song. I also heard the yelling, saw the hitting, recognized the looks of anger and defiance. How do six-year-olds acquire anger and defiance? January 7 Words and Fists: I yelled for the first time today. I swore I would never yell at students, and I can't believe that after a few days in this school I've become one of "them": those teachers that always horrified me by their authoritarian demand for superficial deference. Daniel and Eva, out of their seats as usual, got into an argument during math class, which escalated into a push, then fists and feet. I stepped between them, screamed "STOP!" at the top of my lungs and told them why we use our words and not our hands. The whole room fell silent. They had never seen me yell and didn't think I ever would. I want so much to get across to these kids on a level of mutual respect, to rationally discuss with them why they shouldn't hit. I keep wondering what is wrong with this messed up system that yelling is the only way to get through to some of these students. Did they come to school like that? Did the school socialize them this way? Where did we go wrong, and how do we fix this? I have never seen so much hitting occur among a group of children as I have among the students in room 212. Students constantly push and hit one another for infractions such as bumping into one another, not sharing, making a mean comment or giving a rude look. When such an incident occurs, students are firmly told: We do not hit at this school! If someone does something we don't like, what do we do? We say "Stop! I don't like that," the second time we move away, and if they still don't listen we tell a teacher. When you're outside of school whatever your parents say goes, but when you're in school there is absolutely no hitting! January 10 School Culture: I ask Janelle to join the group and listen so that she can learn during reading group. She doesn't respond, and so, according to the culture of this school, I'm expected to scream and intimidate her into compliance. A system in which adults constantly scream at students is the polar opposite of the healthy learning environment-a classroom of mutual respect-that I have always tried to create. Of course Janelle does not want to sit on the rug and read a story with us. Our scripted reading program is mind numbing. Moreover, when working with my reading group I spend at least 60 percent of my time on classroom management-reading is only an afterthought. So the question I'm struggling with is this: How do I keep the emphasis on academic success while dealing with so many behavioral challenges? I keep thinking back to a study, which Smith education professor Al Rudnitsky always mentions, that found that good classroom managers have fewer problems in the first place because children are interested and engaged. But I feel like I can't even get to that point because I'm so busy getting kids to stop hitting each other that I have no time to teach. Something is fundamentally wrong with this picture, and my frustration comes from recognizing the problem and not knowing how to fix it. January 14 Sense of Place: "Where's your car, Ms. Hobbs?" Eva asks me, pointing to the parking lot through the bars on the cafeteria window. "I didn't drive here. I took the subway," I explain. "Subway?" she asks quizzically. "The underground train." "What's that?" she wonders aloud. What a small world this child must live in if her mother doesn't own a car, she walks past the subway entrance everyday and doesn't even know it exists. How can she dream of going to college if she's never seen one? How can she dream of a better life if she's only witnessed other environments on the television screen? How can a student be motivated to learn if he or she doesn't have any higher goal to aspire to? Has Eva ever seen grass? Has she ever seen -- really seen -- the night sky? January 18 Reflections on Leaving: Over the past three weeks I learned that no matter how much prior classroom experience I've had, no matter how many books I've read, no matter how much theory I've crammed into my head, I just couldn't have been prepared for this experience. I wasn't prepared for such unsupportive and antagonistic administrators. I wasn't prepared for the yelling, for the "children should be seen and not heard" attitude that permeates this building. I learned that these students are so bright and so motivated to learn; however, they just need special attention. The system is failing many of these children by not giving them the support that they need to flourish. I learned that it's difficult to create a classroom culture that celebrates and nurtures critical and creative thinking when students are silenced within the broader school community. Take lunch time, for example: I spent my mornings working hard to get my reading group to listen to one another create and share their own opinions, ideas and decoding strategies. At lunch today the assistant principal reprimanded the teacher for pulling aside a student to talk about why she was having a hard day: "I don't want you giving any extra attention. That one needs to learn to sit and wait with the rest of the class." This incident exemplified [the administration's] focus on student behavior rather than student ideas. The educational focus and the school culture are fundamentally at odds with one another: one aspires to nurture students' voices, the other to silence them. Counteracting this school culture is exhausting. ....................................................................................... Hilary Hobbs is working on her elementary teaching certification. After she graduates in May, she says she will tentatively be looking for a job in experiential education.

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