Lessons from the Bronx
Garon, Ilana
Dissent Spring 2010:Dissent, rev.qxd 3/4/2010 11:08 AM Page 27 PARTY OF THE FUTURE Lessons from the Bronx ILANA GARON Edward wasn’t doing his work. I had given the twelfth graders in...
...My attempts to explain that the author was criticizing racist attitudes, as opposed to espousing them herself, went nowhere...
...I was hoping to inspire some revelation about the value of education and perseverance...
...But whether from the sheer force of my enthusiasm for Wordsworth or, more likely, out of the need to fill teacher vacancies in the system, I was accepted to the Teaching Fellows program two days after my twentysecond birthday...
...From seven to ten every morning a metal detector and a scanner are placed at each of the school’s four main entrances, along with a cordon of security guards with walkietalkies...
...He burst out laughing...
...His paper was blank, his pen lay on his desk untouched...
...My demo ran over the allotted five minutes...
...When I was growing up in Virginia, my mother had brought my brothers and me to the local public library every three weeks to get new books...
...Just try—don’t you have anything you want to write about...
...At first we thought it was annoying, but now . . .” he reflected, “I don’t know...
...Miss Garon...
...It would be awhile before I understood what had happened in that tenth grade class, though in retrospect, I see that the kids tried to show it to me all along...
...Don’t you remember me...
...I had given the twelfth graders in my summer school class the following writing assignment: “Have you ever done something that you regretted or that made you feel guilty...
...You just gotta learn to be more strict— otherwise, those little punkass freshmen will be walkin’ all over you...
...We like it...
...The job seemed like a challenge, which was what I was looking for...
...So, has anyone read any good books lately...
...I enjoyed working with kids—all my résumébuilding projects in high school and college had involved tutoring students...
...said one girl...
...The class was fascinated by the issues the book raised...
...For the interview, I had to prepare a demo lesson, so I “taught” my favorite Wordsworth poem, “My Heart Leaps Up...
...I’m still not sure whether they didn’t understand the book or whether they wanted to pretend they didn’t because they thought that would be more entertaining...
...So, I should be meaner...
...I was genuinely befuddled...
...That first summer, my students were incoming and repeating twelfth graders like Edward...
...I sat down redfaced, convinced I had failed...
...Don’t front...
...I got flustered when the interviewers cut me off...
...might have yielded more thoughtful responses and two, even if they were reading volumes at home, no power on earth could have compelled them to give me what they perceived as a sycophantic reply...
...Why are you guys here...
...He gave me the rundown: having passed 28 DISSENT SPRING 2010 Dissent Spring 2010:Dissent, rev.qxd 3/4/2010 11:08 AM Page 29 summer school English with a 65, he was done with high school...
...Do you...
...I thought this skill might prove useful working with highneeds kids, who, I imagined, would have a slew of emotional problems they would want to discuss with me in cozy heartstoheart after class...
...Edward, what’s so funny...
...knowing that, like Wiesel, I was Jewish, they peppered me with questions...
...I applied to the Fellows program to teach high school English...
...Miss Garon,” he said, grinning slyly, “I’m a tough innercity kid...
...Because second period English was too early,” said a football player, knees stretched out three feet in front of him...
...I had ninth and tenth grade classes that either didn’t know or didn’t care that I was new...
...You should do it...
...I didn’t understand at the time that the change was in my view of the students themselves...
...I even had counseling experience from staffing the university’s crisis and suicide hotline...
...One incident still makes me cringe...
...What the hell is wrong with this book...
...They didn’t feel they were being talked down to...
...Later on, when I watched movies like Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers and was SPRING 2010 DISSENT 29...
...I sputtered...
...At Barnard, I had majored in English and psychology...
...Regardless, someone asserted that the book was “racist,” and the rest instantly went along with it...
...That said, their deference to me—in realization of my naïveté, no doubt—was what damned me the following year...
...I would receive a teacher’s salary, and I would get to teach in a tough school where I could “make a difference...
...Scattered giggles came from the back of the classroom...
...Dissent Spring 2010:Dissent, rev.qxd 3/4/2010 11:08 AM Page 27 PARTY OF THE FUTURE Lessons from the Bronx ILANA GARON Edward wasn’t doing his work...
...His classmates, looking up from their papers, had already noticed that he was ignoring the assignment...
...What are you up to these days...
...They erupted in laughter...
...He was wearing shiny new wirerimmed glasses, so it took me a moment to recognize him...
...Ironically, the next book I taught, Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir Night—which I worried would seem remote—worked perfectly...
...I attributed this unforeseen success to improvement in my daily instruction...
...Is that bad...
...Like my momma said, because I fucked up...
...Despite these efforts, the school would shoot to the top of the “Impact List”—a ranking of New York City’s worst schools—during the following year, when I taught there full time...
...My decision to teach in the inner city had not been carefully thought out, but if asked, I probably would have echoed the feelings that Edward had attributed to me...
...The school building was—and still is—all cold warera architecture, with no adornment or decoration to define its plain, square pile of faded red bricks...
...In hindsight, I see a couple of things: one, a more openended question, such as, “What kinds of things do you guys like doing when you’re not in school...
...Most were only a few credits shy of graduating...
...Besides, with my college graduation two months away, I had no other plans...
...I tried to clarify: “C’mon guys...
...I remain grateful to those first summer school students who, having been saddled with a young and inexperienced teacher, didn’t use the opportunity to make my life hell...
...I approached his desk...
...In a moment, his influence would cause me to lose my hold over them as well...
...I started over...
...Some were nearly my age, having SPRING 2010 DISSENT 27 Dissent Spring 2010:Dissent, rev.qxd 3/4/2010 11:08 AM Page 28 PARTY OF THE FUTURE missed years of school due to pregnancy, immigration issues, parental illness, or truancy...
...They needed this class badly enough to come to a stifling, graffititagged classroom with undersized, wobbly desks...
...How are you...
...Nah, not meaner . . . just . . . ‘do you,’ Miss...
...You’re smart...
...Can anyone tell me what makes the people sitting here different from the ones who also flunked English but are hanging around on the block...
...This would be the first of many times the students would show me that everything I thought I knew was basically incorrect...
...A month or two after my summer school experience, a handsome young man flagged me down a couple of blocks from the school building...
...I couldn’t fathom an existence in which reading wasn’t central—and now the kids were looking at me as though I were from another planet...
...It has the word ‘nigger’ in it,” they shouted at me...
...When the windows were open, which they had to be in the summer, they let in the smell of rotting garbage...
...In March of 2003, I was riding the subway when I saw an advertisement for New York City Teaching Fellows—stark white lettering on a black background: “How many lives did your last spreadsheet change...
...Call it youthful idealism or liberal white guilt—whatever it was, Edward knew exactly what game I was playing...
...But the book itself was also a novelty for them: a straightforward, totally unsanitized version of events they had only heard about in history class...
...He was considering enrolling in community college...
...Instead of writing, he was making exaggerated yawning and stretching noises...
...The program seemed like a good deal...
...The most crucial component of Fellows training was supervised teaching of summer school classes...
...I said...
...Looking at Edward, a young, black seventeenyearold who would remove his contraband doorag whenever his unfailingly accurate sixth sense told him that the deans were approaching the classroom (and put it back on as soon as they left), I knew I was in trouble...
...We were reading John Knowles’s A Separate Peace, and I kept thinking that if ever there were a book more disconnected from my innercity students’ lives than this tale of overprivileged youngsters at a private prep school, I had yet to see it...
...I asked, on the first day I taught a lesson all on my own...
...Dead ass, this book gave me chills,” one guy said reverently after reading a particularly tense scene aloud...
...It would pay part of my tuition for a master’s in education...
...Miss, you’re always, like, mad happy,” he told me...
...I did mine at “Explorers High School” in the Northeast Bronx...
...Are you going to ‘reach me’ or what...
...We were reading To Kill a Mockingbird, a book I assumed the kids would like partially because I liked it, but also because I thought the book’s condemnation of the Jim Crow South would appeal to their moral sensibilities...
...Come on, Edward...
...He furrowed his brow...
...We’re stupider...
...I asked...
...Now he was living with his mom, working at McDonalds...
...In walking out on a limb and exposing them to something I wasn’t sure they would like, I had gained points...
Vol. 57 • March 2010 • No. 2
