As I sit here today, I am struggling with how to process everything that has happened over the last week or so. The death of George Floyd and the other incidents that have taken place in the past 11 years of my teaching career is a symptom of a major problem. I have never been one to post much on social media other than the obligatory happy birthday, anniversary, family event, etc. I don’t share a lot of my thoughts on things because I don’t feel comfortable doing so on that platform. People tend to react in two opposite directions and I’d rather focus my energy elsewhere. However, I do pay attention and I have seen many messages suggesting that silence, especially from a white male like myself, is being complicit in this problem. I can’t disagree when I read these posts. My own personal way of fighting these injustices has always been to be a music educator and try my hardest to help shape students to make a better world. I feel like these incidents call for more than a 4 sentence post with a quote denouncing racism. This problem is much deeper than that and I do believe we can make progress. To deal with these feelings I am having, I would like to share the experiences I have had over the course of my career in things relating to these issues because that is the only way I know how to not be complicit in being silent.
My own personal way of fighting these injustices has always been to be a music educator and try my hardest to help shape students to make a better world.
Before I started my career as a music educator, I was lucky enough to attend a diverse high school that was high achieving in academics. I shared some of my best conversations with my black roommate/friend in college that helped shape me. But I do not believe where you come from should be the end of the story in what type of educator you can be. We need more diversity in the teaching field to give the students the best possible experiences. Your experiences in school may have been great, terrible, with diversity or without, but we all need to come together as a society to help all students in all areas become better people.
My first teaching assignment was in two different schools in the same district. This district had just shifted to K-6 neighborhood schools. The two schools I was in were quite different. The one school I was in about two thirds of the time, was more of a 50/50 split of white and black students, possibly 60/40 white to black. The other school I would venture to say was more of 70/30 black to white. I would have excellent lessons in one school, my home school, and then take the same plan into the other school and have fights break out. I had a very hard time as a first year teacher approaching two different schools in two different ways. I witnessed a girl on boy fight, a girl on girl fight, being yelled at by a parent, kindergarteners kicking people in the head, being called a “cracker” by a 4th grader, being flicked off by a first grader after saying good morning, and the list goes on. These are only some of the events that happened to me at the school I was teaching a third of my total classes. The violence that occurred in that school outside of my classroom made the news several times. It was hard to witness and I thought about a different career path several times in these first two years. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The worst part of all that was trying to process how there was two completely different learning environments within the same school district.
On top of trying to navigate the trials of being a young teacher, I was an assistant with the high school marching band and had my own run in with a police officer while on duty with the band. I had been monitoring students going to the bathroom located at the top of the stadium to ensure that was the only place they went because there was a rather large gathering of non- band students. While I was doing this, a local township police officer on duty for the game, out of nowhere began shoving other non-band students out of the way while screaming because they were not supposed to be standing up there. I looked at him in a way that questioned what he was doing because he was violently shoving people. He then approached me for not moving. He grabbed me by my jacket and shoved me against the wall. I calmly tried to explain to him I was a teacher on duty with the marching band while wearing a jacket that had “marching band assistant” embroidered on it. He asked for my ID which I gave to him. He said I would receive a citation in the mail for disorderly conduct. I was shaken up because all I did was stand there. I felt that he could have calmly said “Can you please move?” to all of the students and myself and that would have been sufficient in that situation. That never occurred. While walking back down to the band and telling an assistant I didn’t understand what just happened, I was grabbed by my hood on the stairs from behind and then carried by my arms out of the stadium as he yelled “I’ll show you what you did” and told me not to return. Did this happen to me because I was I white male? Absolutely not. Did this happen to me because I looked like a high school student? Yes. My ID that said I was 23 years old wasn’t good enough for him. He thought I was a kid that wasn’t listening. My word that I was a teacher wasn’t a good enough for him nor the jacket with “marching band assistant” on it that I was wearing. I can only imagine what would have happened to me if I was black. I may have been beaten once I was carried out of the stadium and no one was around simply because I stood in a place trying to do my job. After contacting the mayor who was a teacher in the district, I went down to the police station the following Monday to file a complaint only to be pulled aside by a school resource officer in one of the schools in the district. He said to me “Don’t say anything because it’s your word against theirs, it will only cause more trouble for you.” I listened. The mayor did however suspend the officer for a day or two and that was the end of it. Perhaps looking back I should have done more.
I share this story because it represents that fact that some people just can’t be reasoned with if they believe you are something you are not. These are things our youth experience in neighborhoods daily and there is a distrust in people meant to keep them safe. Students should feel safe and comfortable around any type of authority in and out of school. There is no room for this type of behavior even if it only occurs with a couple professionals. Teachers are important in the community and need to help in building that trust with students. Officers in communities need to do the same. Too often it is not happening with certain people in either profession even though the majority of them are good people who want to help the youth. If it’s one person exhibiting this type of behavior, it’s too many people. Fixing this is essential in working towards solving these problems.
Teachers are important in the community and need to help in building that trust with students. Officers in communities need to do the same. Too often it is not happening with certain people in either profession even though the majority of them are good people who want to help the youth.
After my first two years of teaching I was furloughed to half time and moved to a lottery school in the district where families apply to have the students go and the names are basically are drawn out of the hat. The mere fact that there was an application process created a school where many families with more involved parents were attending. Again, another inequity within one school district. I taught all of the instrumental classes there and built the numbers of students participating in instrumental music. I would eventually be moved back to full time after doing this. I created many memorable relationships with students in this school and in the marching band. This is not to say it was not without its problems and growing pains as a teacher. I would say it was a much better experience because I became focused on creating a family atmosphere in the instrumental groups and trying to help individual students when they needed it. One example of this is a black student I never taught in my classroom, but was in the marching band that reached out to me for private lesson help on his instrument. He was driven to be great and go into music. We met after school weekly or monthly depending on our schedules so I could help him. We built a strong relationship. I’ll get back to this a little later. Another instance where this took place was when a black student in my orchestra class was jumped after getting off the bus and beaten. She did not return to school full time after that. Our orchestra class sent her a card letting her know she was still a part of our family in orchestra even if she wasn’t there. She did come and play the concert even though she hadn’t rehearsed with us in a month. That was much a better experience for the students than sounding better without her because she hadn’t been rehearsing with us. These are experiences that I did not create. They were situations that were put in front of me where the students and I collaborated together to help make it better. The students were teaching me more than I was teaching them on how to meet their needs. Education needs to be about these experiences more so than the results. The results take care of themselves because the students work harder when they gain these types of experiences.
The district was once again in financial trouble 4 years later due to many factors. I was put back on a possible furlough list and I was forced to job search. This devastated me. I did not want to leave because I finally felt like I had built strong relationships with the students and my colleagues after fighting through many rough times. Many young great teachers don’t make it through those first shocking years. I had. I was lucky because my parents who are educators were there for me to fall back on to let me know I was on the right path. Future and current young teachers need to find those people to fall back on for support. We as a society need to provide them with support. The fact that I had to leave this school district due to finances is an inequity that is at the root of our problems. We all need to put our efforts back into helping these schools and worrying less about praising schools that have great test scores.
After job searching I landed in what I think is fair to say a wealthier school district. It certainly has benefitted me in many ways but it wasn’t something I was seeking. I have been at this district for 5 years and have formed new relationships with students that are just as meaningful, while still managing to help a few students from my old school district. That student I helped after school that I mentioned before is one. I have worked to support him to the best of my ability. I try to go see his college concerts when I can and offer him any help that he asks for, even if that includes a ride somewhere. I helped this student not because he was a black male and I felt he needed an older white male to guide him, but because he wanted to be great. Students who have that drive deserve to be given extra help with whatever they need regardless of circumstance. This may be the only student I have that kind of deep relationship with in my career, where he feels like family to me.
Fighting through tough times in the classroom, in an underfunded school district, by showing up every day with a clean slate to have meaningful experiences with students is one way we fight social injustice to try and fix this problem. Building relationships with students and not assuming they are bad people because they made a poor decision is another way we can fight racial inequality. Unfortunately, some youth are even blamed for making poor decisions they didn’t even commit because of how they look. That needs to stop. Not lowering expectations or giving up on students in low income households and feeling bad for them, but instead offering our help is how we fight these injustices. Teachers are one of the many parts of this puzzle that are needed to fix this systemic problem. Society has focused recently on the incidents involving the police, but schools can feel like warzones as well. We as a society need to help these schools with everyone’s support or the cycle will just keep repeating itself.
Society has focused recently on the incidents involving the police, but schools can feel like warzones as well.
Some experiences teachers need can’t be given in the college classroom or taught out of a book or read on a website. Only having student teachers in the wealthiest districts because colleges don’t want to scare them in one of those “bad schools” can’t help solve these problems. This attitude needs to change. I can count on one hand how many black male teachers I have worked with and this is a problem. But why would those black students want to become teachers in the future if their experience is that of being in an environment that is not properly supported and uprooted every 4-5 years because of poor test scores? We need more teachers that can relate to students and help them become stronger people. We need to give these current students better experiences in school to achieve that. I may not be one of those teachers for every student to relate to as a white male, but all of us need to try every day to help students even if we haven’t had the same experiences that these students live with every day. I as a white male need to try to understand these experiences they live and build trust with students.
I don’t fight these issues by posting things or protesting on the streets. That is not to say I don’t believe those are valid ways of making a difference. I think that is very important in this process. I am writing this because I believe they are many great future educators out there that can fight these issues the same way I try to, by going to work as a teacher every day. You can make even more of a difference than all of the teachers trying to right now with your experiences by seeking out this profession and building a better future. It’s not always pleasant and you will not connect with and help every student. Seeing the successes of students you do help, even if it’s just a handful over the course of your career, makes every second worth it because they will make the world a better place.
I am writing this because I believe they are many great future educators out there that can fight these issues the same way I try to, by going to work as a teacher every day.
It’s time to stop pretending there isn’t inequity in schools and rating them as if they are all on equal footing. House values and taxes that fund our schools are often determined by the school district and that districts ratings/scores. It is a systemic form of racism that creates these falsehoods in people’s minds that certain places and the people who live there are better than others. It needs to end. Great teachers and leaders can be the start of changing that. If you are thinking about being a teacher, you can be part of that change. The focus needs to be put back on student experiences and shaping them as people. I have made many mistakes over my career in how I’ve handled situations. I am not a perfect teacher or person, but one mistake I refuse to make is not caring about the students. I will continue to try and help the students and families in the best way I feel I can. That is by believing in them and caring about them even if the students or myself aren’t always perfect. We can all try to do the same.