This column is written by High School English teacher Jerry Heverly.
I read two books this past year that were so good, and so illustrative of my own work life, that I thought this New Year’s week my give a sufficient rationale for talking about them. Call them the best education books of 2012.
In my attempts to describe to you the working life of a San Leandro High School teacher six hundred words is often insufficient to give you a true picture.
Fortunately these two authors taught in places very much like SLHS and their more detailed stories do a terrific job of bringing the reader into classrooms that mirror my own daily experiences.
{I found both books for around fifteen dollars on www.bookfinder.com.}
Two years ago the actor, Tony Danza, taught a single class at Northeast High School in Philadelphia, which he turned into a TV series called “Teach”.
The series brought cameras into the classroom revealing the look and feel of the place but, of course, couldn’t show anything with much depth. Thankfully Danza followed the series with his book, I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had.
Because the myopic Philly school district would allow Danza only one class there are things the actor could not experience but, by offering himself for numerous extra-curricular activities—including acting as an assistant football coach and producing a first rate musical production—he manages to live the life of a very tired, often discouraged teacher.
My favorite scene is when Tony “volunteers” to chaperone the Winter Formal. There he is introduced to modern high school dancing (i.e. simulated sex). How do you gracefully break up kids who are grinding their pelvises into each other?
To his credit Danza does a masterful job of journalism. He tells dozens of interesting stories related by teachers and students. You really get a feel for the people of Northeast High.
Heather Kirn Lanier is the latest of a legion of Teach for America recruits who have detailed their experiences as a newbie teacher. Her two years in a Baltimore high school, Teaching in the Terrordome, will leave you occasionally bug-eyed.
Teach for America is a sort of internal Peace Corps. They send new graduates into the neediest schools with one summer of a boot-camp-like training regimen. It’s so popular now that it has become a prestigious destination for Ivy League grads.
I want badly to claim that Lanier’s situation is the same as my own but I have to concede there are significant differences.
The building, Southwestern High School (described by one and all as “prisonesque”), is old and devoid of modern technology. Thank you, San Leandro taxpayers; I inhabit a relative palace at FTK.
Most importantly the staff at Southwestern seem thoroughly defeated. They have the same gripes we have, but the depth of their disengagement is well beyond anything you’ll find here.
But the general scheme of Lanier’s working life is very similar to what I face. How do you deal with your own class while mischief-making kids wander the hallways? How do you prove yourself to administrators who have only a scant firsthand experience of your work? How do you withstand the indignities of student insults and vulgarities without losing the optimism you need to keep trying?
What do you do when two drunken strangers wander into your classroom and the emergency call button doesn’t work? (Lanier’s experience, not mine.)
Lanier, like the majority of Teach For America folks, made it through her two-year commitment, and then she quit.
If you would like a good read about the modern urban high school these books will entertain you, and, occasionally, shock you.
Read other columns from the Entirely Secondary archive. The tag line is inspired by education blogger Joe Bower who says that when his students do an experiment, learning is the priority. Getting the correct answer is entirely secondary.
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