This blog contains comments from EDUCATORS who find themselves on the front lines of a war that has been waged against public education across this nation since the landmark decision in 1954 of Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka. Herein are the thoughts of Educators who serve young people across America today. While the daily challenges to increase student achievement have been discussed in circles across this nation, few of those voices include those who are the true soldiers in this battle to educate young people.
The experiences of students, present and past, and their reactions to those experiences, can serve as a mini-lesson for those adults who are responsible for raising children. We are particularly concerned with those students who are being raised in one of the many poor and segregated urban centers across this nation. This blog serves as an authentic assessment of the educational and social experiences of urban teens and further discusses where our young people are in relation to what is expected of them. This blog will enable the reader to visit the urban classroom to gain insight into....THE CHRONICLES OF AN URBAN EDUCATOR...
There are No Niggas Here
It's true. Well-prepared, disciplined, thoughtful Teachers often deviate from their lesson plans when opportunities arise to teach to the heart of their students. Adolescents attending high schools bring with them more than their intellectual strengths and weaknesses. Teenagers arrive in the classroom immersed in a world that often results in a variety of behaviors that are distractions to the learning environment necessary for them to have a chance at academic success.
As an English teacher, it is vitally important that my students understand the power of language. I listen to my students more than they know. What is deeply disheartening are the actual sounds coming out of many of their mouths. I have taught in urban high schools every year for the past twelve years and the word “Nigga” is used more than any other word in the often under-developed vocabularies of my students. The first five or six times I hear it, I emphatically assert that, “the N word may not be used ever in this classroom!” Without exception, students continue to catch themselves and their peers using the word.
As a historian, I often utilize my knowledge of the history of African Americans in the United States in an attempt to help my students embrace the responsibility they have to themselves and their family and community. I also relied on that same knowledge to demand that my students understand my mantra that, “There are no Niggers here!” The lesson started with me leading a classroom discussion about the definition and various interpretations about the word “Sanctuary.” I asked students to consider what it meant to be without sanctuary.
I then opened to the inside cover of the text, Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. The image seemed to make all of my students sit-up. I walked up and down the aisles turning page after page and, in some cases, forcing students to look at those who were unwillingly referred to as “Niggers.” I purposefully made them uncomfortable and explained to them that it was the same discomfort I experienced each and every time they referred to each other using that term.
I went on to explain that each of us is responsible for every word we speak and write and that we must do so responsibly; all of the time. And once my students understood the moral of the lesson, I was able to implement the lesson plan I had actually written for that day.
Does America really know what it means to be a Teacher?
Was the visual lesson effective in reducing the amount of counter productive language used during class periods over the past three weeks of school?
ReplyDeleteTruly a "teachable moment!" I've been thinking a lot about what we talked about during our last conversation. When teaching children about their cultural obligation and responsibilities, how do we address the obscureness, if you will, of African American culture? Even I get confused trying to draw the line between the culture of poverty and African American culture because we've been living in poverty for so long...I hate to ask, but what is African American culture? What should they cling to and identify with? The spirit of resilience? What does it mean to be African American in America?
ReplyDeleteI too am fed up with the use of "nigga" by my students and continue to retort, "You cannot use the "n" word in my classroom. However, today when going over the requirements for the assessment of "Beowulf" one of my students enraged me so much, I found myself "preaching" as well as teaching. Their assessment for the epic "Beowulf" is to create their own epic using the elements of an epic poem and epic hero. The student mentioned above asked if his group could call their epic "Captain Save A Nigga"? "Really?" was the first thought in my mind, but as I proceeded closer to where he was sitting I became infuriated. I explained to him how none of the slaves would ever associated one of their heroes with that word and from there went on about this generation's use of that word, and how if they had just a small taste of what African Americans have gone through he would never use it again. The problem with this generation however is they are too far removed from the experiences of the African American struggle, yet too ignorant to see how that struggle is still at their front doors.
ReplyDeletepowerful lesson sis, and excellent blog. Food for thought for me to sit with and wrestle with.
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