"Kids These Days"

Something Dex posted reminded me of this.  I worked as a substitute teacher in a high school as a favor to a friend.  It was a private academy that accepted students who'd been booted out of the public system.  Many students came because it was their last chance to get a high school diploma.  Many had to fight their way out of, and through, very tough circumstances just to get to the building every day.  I had worked previously with 3-to-6-year-olds in a Montessori environment.  This was outside my experience.  One of my first tasks was helping a student spell the word "indict" so he could look it up.

I had the study hall.  My introduction to the room was an immediate reminder of why I hated high school.  The teacher strode in shouting, demanded attention without assessing what may have been in progress, barked my introduction without eye contact, and left.  It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.  I could imagine how it affected the students.  I thought, "Please, don't let me be that guy."

The most important part of the question, "What am I doing here?", is in the asking.  It almost always answers itself.  I was here to help these children get what they struggled to come here for.  So, about 15 minutes before the end of each hour, I went around and asked people if they needed help finding anything or getting ready for the next class.  I was usually met with met with grunts and mumbles, but it served as a reminder of the upcoming class change.  One young man responded to my little routine by saying, "I don't need no help from you, I got all my thing together."

Then he paused, looked up at me, and softened his demeanor by a factor of ten, and added, "But thanks for asking."

It occurred to me that this young man probably never had an old white guy treat him with genuine respect and concern in his life.  The students and I started getting along,

Another young man had a difficult time with reading and concentration.  I brought a Fred Hampton speech to school and sat reading it.  When the kid got distracted and started disrupting the study of the other students, I asked him to explain a passage in the speech to me.  He looked at the speech, looked back at me, looked closer at the speech, looked back at me, took the speech to his chair, and didn't look up again for a long time.

The "rule" that rankled the student the most was "no swearing".  I let one-word offenses go by, and deflected complaints by saying I didn't make the rules.  Then a young woman who had let go an emotional string of obscenity said, "You talk the way you wanna, why can't we?"

Her outburst wasn't mean, or directed at anyone in particular.  She was just pissed, and had a good reason to be.  Deflecting wasn't going to work.  I said, "Here's the thing.  One of the things you come here to learn is how to use correct English.  [groans]  Think of this as immersion practice.  When you're not in school, you can talk anyway you want [harumphs], but practice correct English when your here.  I want you to know how to use English correctly, because if you don't have that option, then you don't have the freedom, and I want you to have all the freedom you can."  It was the longest instruction I ever gave.  After that, whenever someone swore, the others took turns correcting each other, somtimes with exaggerated pomp and enunciation, but they were thinking about what they were saying.  They were thinking about what they were saying.  It was no longer a matter of what the school wanted from them, but what an old white guy wanted for them.

Later, the young man with the Fred Hampton speech came and asked me if could keep the speech to do his paper on.  It was, "Power Wherever There's People".  It wasn't meant to be a grammar lesson.  I said, "Sure, as long as I get to read the paper when you're done."

I picked up a quote while I was there:  "Teach less, share more."  I don't know where it's from, but I put it on the whiteboard, and it stayed.