As my first year of teaching drew to a close during the second week of June, I inevitably began to think about everything that had happened over the course of year. Good, bad and everything in between, there are definitely things that I hope to change in my classroom and there are also things on a school level that I hope will change before the beginning of my second year. After talking about the numerous issues that surround the topic of school reform in this class, I began to think about the place that the teacher-student relationship has in all of this, even the school-student relationship. We can talk about reform efforts like vouchers, charter schools and small class sizes until we are blue in the face, but I wonder if any of that really matters if the personal support is not there. After reading Whatever it Takes by Paul Tough, my mind travelled back to that second week in June when I also happened to read an incredibly emotional yet eye-opening article about one young woman in particular who overcame extreme adversity to fulfill her dreams, but not without the help of her school. Let me just preface what I am about to reflect on by saying that, while not a structured aspect of school reform, the type of behavior reflected in this article as well as what I saw to be the most important aspect of Geoffrey Canada's work as chronicled in Whatever it Takes are in my opinion directly related to our students and what it would take to "reform" our schools.
The article, linked here, tells the story of a homeless teenager. Abandoned by her parents, she was taken in by one of the school's custodians and given the opportunity to finish out her last year at her high school. The school community banded together to help her- she had somewhere to live, food to eat, a job as a custodian when she was not in school. And, you can read for yourself everything in between. In the face of all of the challenges that met this young lady as she was homeless and struggling to complete high school, she eventually completed her studies as a straight-A student. In the end, she wound up getting accepted to Harvard. While this may seem like "fluff" in terms of the topics of school reform that we have been discussing, what struck me while reading the article was how similar this young lady is to some of my students in terms of the challenges that she faces on a daily basis. She was born into a family that did not give her the opportunity to be successful, but that is really what she wanted.
I thought about how the principles of what her school did for her relate to Canada's quest to change Harlem. While a story like this young lady's is not something you see everyday, it is clear that her adversity is not unlike the adversity of others. The only difference was the support that she was given. In the case of the Harlem Children's Zone, Canada sought to put students on a different trajectory than the one they were born to follow. He established programs that allowed students and parents to make the changes necessary to be successful both inside and outside of school. Now, this may be the humanitarian in me, but I firmly believe that this aspect of school reform, building a community that supports students and parents 100%, is just as important as the conversations about vouchers and charters. I honestly do not think that we can ever successfully reform schools if the personal aspect of schools that Canada painstakingly etched into the HCZ and that the school community in the article showed is not an integral part of reform. In truth, we should all have that "Whatever it Takes" mentality and know that it actually takes so much more.
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I read this article back when it came out also. It had me in tears how someone with such a rough home-life could have the determination to make it, to do better for herself. The support she received from the community and from the school were remarkable. They did not give up on her, and with their confidence, she didn't give up on herself either. I believe it takes such a network of people for our students to be successful - families, teachers, administrators, friends, co-workers, or whoever it may be. It is hard to do it alone, no matter the situation. Yet, just one person, the custodian, a parent, or a teacher even can make all of the difference. We need to remember that when we look at all of the kids in our classroom. Every one of them needs you for one thing or another, and you just might be the support they need to keep going strong.
A particular sentence that you wrote strikes a big chord with me: "In the case of the Harlem Children's Zone, Canada sought to put students on a different trajectory than the one they were born to follow." It is so unfortunate that by virtue of the conditions that our students are born into, their life chances are significantly altered, and the vast majority of the time it is for the worse. Our students are literally BORN into conditions that are mutually incompatible with proper development and schooling. I believe that a school can do everything it wants, but at the end of the day we are all products of our environment. While his model is extremely difficult to replicate and implement, I believe that Canada hit the nail on the head with his community-based approach. I simply do not think that large-scale school reform CAN take place in areas like Baltimore and Harlem until the community gets involved. In the case of the HCZ, the communities are built around schools. The philosophy, to my mind, is that all within a community must recognize that they are stakeholders in the education of the students within their communities.
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