Not my post, but still awesome.

For Ms. Edwards:

My mother recently sent me a blog posting from the April 25^th Opinion section of the NY Times that was written by a high school English teacher in inner-city Chicago. Initially I was uninterested in reading yet another account of a struggling teacher in a low-performing school. I live this every day, why would I want to read about it?

I chose to plow through the article anyway, however, and as I was reading I was struck by a deep sense of guilt. Mr. Okun, the high school teacher, struggles with the same obstacles that we all face, but in his blog posting he focuses on the reactions and frustrations of his “good” kids to the constant disruptions in the classroom. As he described the looks on several of his students’ faces as another fight breaks out in the room I could not help but think of some of my own students and the looks they give me when we find ourselves in similar situations.

Until I started teaching I thought that there was no worse feeling than knowing I had let me parents down. Now, however, after spending two years in the classroom I know that it is infinitely worse to have to face the five or six students in each of my classes who look at me with despair as I have to stop class yet again to deal with a behavior problem. I feel awful when I know that many of my most intelligent students are being inadvertently punished by the fact that because they are “good” it is easy for me to forget them.

In his posting, Mr. Okun comments on the intelligent students he has in his classes who generally care about school and their education. He quotes one as saying “It’s frustrating because we go so slow. Teachers are distracted by students who are not really trying to do anything. They get more attention than people who are trying to learn.” I have heard these sentiments echoed frequently in my own classroom and I feel ashamed as an educator because I know that these students are right.

Mr. Okun asks the question “How can dedicated students […] receive a proper education amid the havoc created by such a preponderance of ‘troublesome,’ uncaring students?” I have often asked myself this and come up with no better answer than my students simply need to get out of my school. It makes me sad when I tell my homeroom that they only have twenty more days of this school before they go to a real school, but at this point I really believe that the only viable option for many of my students is to get out of schools like mine (Northeast) and get into many of the better city-wide high schools or new charter schools that are opening up.

Although Mr. Okun teaches in Chicago the plight of his students is the same of our students here. He says that many parents are now sending their students to charter schools because they offer better options and with the new initiative by Dr. Alonso I see the same thing happening here in Baltimore. My question is, how long will these charter schools remain the “good” schools here in the city before they are infiltrated with the same populations that are currently wreaking havoc on our schools?