A new start

After over a decade in the Chicago school system, I started teaching in an inner-city school -- Spanish to kids who didn't think they had ANY reason to learn Spanish.
I was in a school scheduled to close in two years-- and I had no idea what that meant when I started. All those years, and that last final kick in the teeth, managed to break something in me, to make it impossible to do something I loved.
This blog is a way of sorting out that experience, coning to grips with, what is going on in CPS and urban systems all over the country (and maybe the world, in terms of education) and pulling together political/personal/emotional insights, so that maybe they can help me and others.
What is a "failing" school? How can the wealthiest, most technologically advanced country in the world fail so many of its young people? How can a system survive which uses up its workers? Why. after a life of surviving spectacular dangers and risks, was I not able to get through, when clearly many teachers do find a way to work a whole career? Where was my purported defender, the union?
I still sub, as the title says, as an unembedded teacher, in high schools all over the north half and sometimes the south half of the city. Like the liminal persona that the anthropologist finds to be a confidante or informant, I feel like I've developed a sixth sense, being able 'read' a school, its students, and its workers, in the first ten minutes I am there.
And I still have no skin, no way to shield myself from the love/hate moments I experience.
Perhaps you will recognize something.
Last week I taught in a big school, in a business class, where all the kids could use computers. I spent maybe 15 minutes with students, encouraging one to go ahead and start the project that was due today. The student stared at me for a few minutes, trying to decide whether to ignore me, challenge me, or accept advice. Is she serious? Does she think I'm going to do what SHE tells me? A teacher observing asked me, You're a real teacher, aren't you, not just a sub?
Yes, I said, and told her my story. I don't know how to say what that felt like, just to be recognized, yes, I'm a real teacher. Yes, I'm being paid half a salary because no principal hired me when my school closed. I was in a "failing" school, you see, with "failing" teachers who didn't jump ship before it sank, still teaching "failing" students, the ones who stayed, stubbornly insisting that they still wanted to graduate, when their housing was torn down (Robert Taylor Homes) and they had to travel hours to get to school, and the classes they needed were cancelled, and their friends were "dropouted"* and the principal tried to throw out some, for complaining too loudly about the raw deal they got.
Theirs wasn't the only story, of course. There were teachers who'd given up, who learned how to get through the day to get a check, without disturbing themselves or the students. That's another story. For another day.

* Under NCLB every school is supposed to make Adequate Yearly Progress by raising attendance, graduation rate and test scores a certain percentage. One way of raising these percentages is by getting rid of students who are problems. Although each child is legally entitles to an education, the school can haul in a kid and his/her parent, and explain, they have this may absences, this may failing grades -- and this many suspensions or disciplinary actions. If they don't "voluntarily" drop out, the school can make the student's life unpleasant, with more discipline, etc. Even if the kid is one with behavior problems, this often arises from frustration with their own learning, or lack of it. These are often the kids whoneed the most help. They drop out, the schools scores go up. See also, the movie, "Pump Up the Volume".