I

Briana: You know, I'm struggling more as a teacher this year than I think I did my first year. You know?
 
Marv: And why do you think that is?
 
Briana: Um, I think there's a lot of reasons. I think one big reason is that the students are bringing something…the students are bringing an attitude about school and learning to school, that is different from what I'm used to. And I think it's a much more antagonistic attitude, and it’s a much more, like, 'Make me believe that this is important.’ You know? As opposed to, ‘I’m gonna come in believing it’s important, and then, you could undo that through your action or inaction.’
 
For them I feel like I'm really starting at a deficit, in terms of, I need to get buy-in and ownership, but I'm coming from a lot further away to get there. I think that’s one piece. I think the racial component is huge, and it’s kind of this thing that we talk about and talk around, but I think it’s definitely an issue…
 
Marv: Yep.
 
Briana: I think, on both sides, I think me being white, I mean, I had such an interesting experience today. I'm having my students actually write neighborhood pieces. They're doing a photojournalism piece on neighborhoods, and I was modeling for them how to do a graphic organizer to organize their essay. And I was like, okay, let’s name a place. And one of the students was like, 'the gas station.’ And we have this gas station on 63^rd that’s been causing a lot of problems.
 
Because lots of gang-bangers are hanging out there, the kids have been going their after school, and they’re kind of fraternizing with the gang-bangers, there’ve been shootings around there, and it’s just not a good scene for them.

So I said, okay: ‘Let's talk about, how does the gas station look, smell, sound, feel,' right? 'So it’s on 63^rd. It’s on a busy street, right near the alley. You can hear the L station. It’s got a lot of kids who are going in and out of there, and, you know they’re buying candy, so you can hear the kids talking, you can hear the chatter, you can hear people start to get into fights with each other.'
 
And one of the students was like; 'Damn, you've been there?'
 
Marv: Yeah.
 
Briana: And I responded to her. I was like, ‘You know, I have eyes. I’m observant about what’s going on.' And then she said; 'Oh. I thought you just went in your car after school, and then, whoop! Right home.'  You know? And what she was expressing to me was this really intense notion, of, my school is a bubble, of which I am part of. But that I have no kind of awareness or understanding of their lives, outside of these walls. And the reality is, on some level, that’s very true. But wow, what an alienating concept.
 
Marv: We're doing an interesting thing with the UTEP students, which we’ve never done before, which is a little risky, and we’ve already recognized some mistakes on the way we structured it. We asked people to partner up with someone who's different from them—either in race, in gender, in ethnicity—and to have each person in the group take the other to a place they would not normally go. One of the students framed it better than we did: it was a question of access. A place that would not be as easily-accessible for the other person.
 
It’s created some interesting dynamics; just the conversations that have taken place within the pairs. There’s one African-American who—and this happened sooner than I expected—was talking about how he doesn't believe that whites can teach black kids. And doesn’t trust black people, I mean, white people, and only deals on an as-needed basis. For the white partner, this has been a real stunner, because this is a very affable person, so that it’s kind of a Jekyl-and-Hyde switch.
 
But I think one of the things that the black UTEP-er is reflecting is the same stuff that your student is reflecting. That there’s no way you could connect with one of your students’ lives. That you don't inhabit the same universe that they do. And to a certain extent, that’s absolutely true.
 
Briana: Yeah.
 
Marv: And you have to recognize that that’s a reality and acknowledge it. But that doesn’t mean that everything about them is inaccessible to you…
 
Briana: Or vice-versa.
 
Marv: Yeah, exactly. There are other people who feel, other whites, in a group, who feel that they deserve a pass because they've been involved in various activities in the black communities; they’ve been involved in voter registration campaigns, they’ve been involved in freedom schools, and so on, and how do you… what I'm struggling with is, how to acknowledge the value of what they've done, at the same time that I bring home the point that nobody gets a pass. I think there was a point at which I was sort of, naive enough to assume that, because I've done my time in Mississippi, and had a lot of experiences in the black community—and maybe also because I was Jewish—that I deserved a pass. And I don't need to underscore how naive that is.
           
You've seen the ‘nice white lady’ video? Are you familiar with that?
 
Briana: No.
 
Marv: I should play it for you right now. It's on YouTube. Did you see Freedom Writers? The movie? It’s a movie about the teacher in California.
 
Briana: No, I haven’t seen that.
 
Marv: Well, you don’t need to have seen the movie to appreciate the video. It’s just a two-and-a-half minute parody. The teacher comes into this classroom where all the gang-bangers are hanging out. They’re playing with their guns and their knives. And she’s confronted by this very angry young black woman, who says, ‘White lady, you don’t know me!’ and goes on a rant like that. And the white teacher, who's got pearls on, holds out a notebook, and says, 'Write it down.'


In the next scene, you see everybody writing in their notebooks. Tears are streaming down their faces. There's a guy who's sitting with his gun in one hand, and a pen in the other, and he puts his gun away. It’s painfully hilarious, you know.
 
Briana: I actually had, I had an incident at school where a coworker, African-American male coworker was joking around, said something, and then I responded back, and then he responded with 'Alright, whatever, Dangerous Minds.’ Right? Very much playing into that. And I was like, ‘Excuse me’? You know? But very much playing that, white woman comes in and saves the day in education, with a room full of minority students, coming from a different social class, different, whatever.

II

Briana: It was towards the end of the year, and the little kids from Wadsworth were playing outside, and the guy rolled up on the bicycle and was talking to the kids. And as he was rolling away, took out a gun, and started shooting across the playground. And there was kind of this joke, that one of the kids made, earlier this year, that brought back this story to me. It was; ‘Ah, we don't have drive-bys anymore. They're all bike-bys now.’
 
Marv: Yeah, I remember a conversation I had with some kids at NKO, in the early years. Who were, sort of, didn't quite know what to make of this, but they were complaining that they were having trouble doing homework. This is classic. Because they, while they were doing their homework, they could hear gunshots in the neighborhood, and that it was very distracting and scary. On the one hand, I knew that it was a reality in the kids’ lives. On the other hand, I didn't know how much they were playing me.
 
Briana: And what an awkward tension. Because who are you to be like, ‘Are you playing me? Are these gunshots really a big deal to you?’
 
But I think actually this is one of the larger tensions at my school, is this, like, how much empathy do we have for the kids? How do we see them as the individual human beings, and how do we not get taken by them? And I think that part of the racial breakdown of the school, is this feeling of, the white teachers get predominantly taken. Right?  And the black teachers are very much ‘tough love.’ Which makes it a pretty complicated working environment. Because neither of those approaches, on its own, is gonna work. But how do you navigate that?
 
Marv: Well, do the tough love proponents not acknowledge the reality of what's going on outside, either? Or is it just, blow it off?
 
Briana: I think that’s more… It’s like, man it up, blow it off. It's funny, I heard two teachers joking during our crisis planning, you know, where they’re like, 'If there’s gunshots outside of the school, this is what we do.’ Right? And during the crisis planning, two teachers were joking, being like—two male teachers, black male teachers—were like, 'Alright, class, if there's gunshots outside of the school; finish your assignment, get your work done, and THEN you can come to me. But I don't care if there's gunshots outside. I don’t care if you’re vomiting everywhere!’ And they're joking, but they're not, really. Because their whole piece is, ‘I don't care what you’re going through. I don’t care what’s going on. You need to do this for me.’
 
Marv: Here's, I, here's where it gets complicated. More stories come to mind. So early on, after, we came to Chicago in 1995. So this must’ve been a couple years afterwards. Of all places, in Evanston there was a raft of gang killings right in the high school neighborhood. And one of my friends who was teaching there had this very distressed story about the fact that, on the day of one of these gang killings, the next day, they sent everybody home. The kids, the kids were desperate to talk about it, they needed some place to process it. And I don’t remember whether this was an administrative mandate, or whether this was something that most of the teachers just decided on their own; that this was going to be a distraction from work. And, that they weren’t going to take class time to address this. It’s a decision that reinforces—and I think this was a point that you were making—the distance between, you know, the realities in which the kids live, and what school presents as reality.
 

III

Marv: The kids know what's going on out there, and, there's a powerful message being conveyed. It's particularly on my mind right now because I saw that Waiting for Superman movie, which…
 
Briana: I wanted to talk to you about that, yeah. Go on.
 
Marv: Which, what is powerful in the movie is the portrait of these marvelous kids who are getting screwed by the system.And, their whole life, I mean, the way dramatic structure of the movie has been designed, is, that everybody's awaiting their fate through the lottery ball. If the lottery’s gonna send their kid to charter school and keep them from their dysfunctional high school, then their lives are saved.

And you see the majority of these kids that they follow in this story don't get in. And you see them kind of slinking off at the end. And the Whittier parents represent something very different. That, if you allow yourself to be a passive victim of the system, and your life is over when your lottery number doesn’t come up, that’s a horrible message. Those parents are taking matters in their own hands.
 
Briana: So that’s a really interesting point. Because I think sometimes, it’s the parents who are taking their kids to charter schools, that are seen as the advocates. They’re the ones who, you know, really fight for education, really fight for their children’s education. And the way that you’re portraying it—which, now that I consider it, is quite accurate—is, ultimately, these are the parents that are saying, ‘Yes, that I’m going to take this one step, to enter the lottery, but that I’m still going to let the lottery determine what happens.’ As opposed to saying, ‘No. This is my neighborhood school. This is incredibly messed up, and I’m going to organize around it—like the Whittier parents are, to try to get a library—I’m going to organize around it to create substantive change.’
 
I think on some level, it’s this kind of, if you get the lottery, it’s such an easy fix. Even though it’s not. Sonja and I keep talking about this; how kind of shocked we are by some of the stuff that we’re seeing.
 
Marv: But you would probably be more shocked if you went to Hyde Park Academy. And saw what the other alternative is for most of these kids.
 
Briana: Yeah, I’m sure, and I certainly know what the other area schools were…
 
Marv: But that’s a very weak justification.
 
Briana: Well, but also, look at, I mean, we talk about the statistics in terms of graduation rates and stuff. That’s not; my school is not doing any better. They make it seem like they’re doing better, by the way in which the data is collected. I mean, ‘data-driven,’ right?
 
Marv: Somewhere between 17 and 20 percent of the charter schools do better than their equivalent public school. And the rest do either as badly, or worse. And then they ignore the point entirely and go on to portray these glorious charter schools, which are being propped up by a huge amount of private money.
 
I'm tired of talking about charter schools. Focusing on charter schools is a way of ignoring the much deeper problems that exist in the system of funding, and the general problems of poverty that aren't being addressed outside the school.
 
Briana: So if the conversation isn't one about charter schools, which I entirely understand your perspective on why it shouldn’t be about charter schools, what should it be about?


Marv: Well, the first thing I mentioned is school funding, and inequities in school funding, and sort of general under-funding of schools. It needs to be about teaching and learning. It needs to be about what goes on in the classroom. So much of these reform conversations are structural and organizational questions. As if we shuffle the pieces somehow, we’re going to get a better result. And they may have some marginal impact, but the real impact is at the classroom level. Which means that you have to deal with teacher quality, and teacher preparation issues. So those are the kinds of things that really require more attention.
 
One of my educational disappointments with Barack is that, I knew not to expect too much, but one of the things that I thought could be expected, because it was such a central part of his education platform, was a large infusion of funding for early childhood education. And it really hasn't happened. And I think the early child piece is a critical piece. I mean everybody, if you’re looking for sort of research-based education reform, there’s lots of data about the effect of good early childhood education.
 
Briana: And Illinois does not fund even full-day kindergarten. Which is somewhat amazing.