EDU Prosetry

There is a man I know, quite well because I use to date him, who is an excellent poster child of how schools fail students. He grew up in Atlanta and is a product of the public school system. He is arguable one of the smartest people I know, and often I find myself thinking or telling him that he would be the perfect teacher. He knows the system and how it fails students. The system failed him. He did not graduate from high school.

When he took the SAT a few years ago, with only a ninth grade education, he received a score good enough to gain him acceptance into VERY good institutions of higher learning. However, by that time he had already been incarcerated for living the life of a hustler. I wonder had he completed high school what kind of life he could have today.

As we sit to have conversations about books he read, ideas and theories he has, news, or just the everyday struggles caused by living as a black man in poverty, I find myself wondering how the school failed him. I gave him a call after class to uncover some of these truths. He viewed school as “pointless and a waste of time because it was too easy.” He stated that he just lost interest in the material because it was too easy; he did not find it challenging so he stopped doing the work. As a result he got behind in his assignments. One day he had a talk with his school consular who told him he was too far behind and would never catch up so he should just go and get his GED.

How could someone say that to a child? How could he not demand anything but the best from every student? Why is it that neither the consolers nor any of his teachers stopped to look for the real reasons behind his attitudes toward school? How can I work to assure that this does not happen to any of the students I will teach?

When I was in the second grade I remember being placed in the group known as the Blue Birds. The Blue Birds group was the reading group comprised of the students who were a little behind in their reading. We read thinner books with words that all the students in the Red Bird group knew. I remember being embarrassed during reading time because all of my friends were part of the Red Bird group and I was not. It was at that point I begin to think that I was not as smart as my friends.

Throughout my grade 2-12 years, and still today, I judged my success in comparison to that Red Bird group. I was determined to not remain in the group with all the blue birds. My best friend, Nikki, was a member of the Red Bird group. She does not know this, in fact only recently did I become aware of it, but I have always tried to stay one step ahead of her because I did not want to fall back behind.

Tracking, for the most part is detrimental to students. Had I not developed the desire within myself to excel, I question if I would have become the first person in my family to obtain a college degree. I understand that there needs to be a time set aside to assist students who may be struggling to catch up, but I wonder how this can occur without sacrificing the self esteem of students along the way.