I’m on the train heading home after teaching night classes (gee, I guess many of my entries start out with, “I’m on the train...” – hmmmmmmn… maybe I spend too much time on trains?) and I’m thinking about my night students. What I do for these learners is a very different kind of teaching than I used to do at Mount Saint Joseph’s Academy (or anywhere else for that matter), and my motley collections of “sweathogs” are a completely different animal than the spoiled rich girls at the Mount. Believe it or not, in many ways it is an improvement, though on the whole they are a less attractive bunch.
One of my students is a shinny bald-headed guy of unknown but certainly mixed ethnicity. He is in his mid thirties and just got out of prison, not jail. His eyes point in different directions and I imagine many painful reasons for this deformity. The effect of this is such that it is difficult to look at him when addressing him without self consciously shifting your focus from one eye to the other. This characteristic reminds me of the bug-eyed moor fish I used to have, or Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars. He is really smart, however, and is able to bring the entire weight of his 5th grade education to bear on a problem. He showed me his tattoo during break time one night, a tattoo that he got while in prison, done with a jury-rigged tattoo gun made from the cannibalized motor from a cassette tape recorder and a finely sharpened paperclip for a needle. Having tattoos myself, I can imagine how painful this must have been, and out of curiosity I asked him what was used for ink. His answer is deadpan, as if self-evident: carbon paper. All things considered, it is a pretty decent tattoo, done by a 22 year-old “artist” doing a 48-year sentence for a home invasion somewhere in Georgia.
There is another guy, who is much younger, maybe 19 – 21 years old, who is mandated to participate in…something, and that’s what we are: something. He is very quiet (eerily so), very thoughtful and he is always very early for classes. I wondered why until one night he opened up to me and told me that he is a schizophrenic, has lived in a residential treatment program for the past 10 years or so and is only allowed out on these two nights each week. He tells me that he is embarrassed about his condition, but that the medications are much better now. He always goes to McDonalds before class, at break time and after class, before the van comes to pick him up. It is a treat for him and I can only imagine how horrible the food he is used to must be. Recently, he has been able to take the train “home” once or twice. He is one of my best students and I suspect that he will be successful.
Of course half of my students are female. One is this crazy (much crazier than the schizophrenic is) 19 year-old Puerto Rican girl, who dropped out of school in the 6th grade when she got pregnant. She is very violent and by far the scariest of my students. She reminds me of one of the characters from Stephen King’s The Stand, the one who shot at Nick and Tom Cullen when she did not get what she wanted and ended up joining up with the Satan-like antagonist in Las Vegas. She has a 30-second attention span that you can actually see and almost hear switching with an audible “click.” Fortunately for her child, she has never had custody as I suspect that she is a danger not only to others but to herself as well. I think she meant well when she signed up for classes, but she is unable to sit still long enough to solve a single problem and often forgets what she was saying before finishing her sentences.
One of my students is a quiet African man (actually from Africa) who sees this opportunity as a privilege. He is always dressed up and takes meticulous notes. He covers every square centimeter of space on each page of his notebook with writing before turning to the next page or blank side – this makes all his work look like one big cheat sheet. I have seen this before and know that it is common among students from very poor countries where you might only be able to obtain one notebook for an entire scholastic career. He seems delighted by each bit of knowledge that he acquires and practically dances in his seat after getting a difficult concept. He reminds me of the innocent, loveable character that Eddie Murphy played in Coming to America - maybe it's just his accent.
There are many others in this class and there are other classes going on down the hall. I have the usual bunch of gang members and welfare moms, in addition to those mentioned above, all mostly needing to learn how to learn. My task is to create a small academic success for them each night, before the discussion degenerates to name-calling or where to get the best bag of weed, as it always seems to. This is the advanced class.
The Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, History Channel, etc. are providing the only real education that many (most?) underclass urban young people get these days. This leads to some pretty wild interpretations as to what is real and what is true. I often here conversations between students talking about the science we study that start: “No man, that’s bullshit because this one time, on CSI Miami, the niggah got busted by leaving his DNA…” or “They said on the History Channel that Egyptians used to eat Romans…” I am grateful that these networks do what they do, but I spend a lot of time acting as a lifeguard for the pool of bizarrely mixed ideas and half truths that surface between Toyota commercials.
I often wonder about how I must appear to them: a mixture of Harold Ramis from Stripes and Mr. Kotter. They seem to think that I am some kind of hippie, a notion that I try unsuccessfully to dispel – maybe I am? I think they struggle to believe that I care – this is hard for them to believe as many of them have never been cared for – I do care, but I have learned the spiritual price that I inevitably pay if I care more about their success than they do.
We try to work on algebra, but are constantly revisiting basic numeration and calculation. We spend enormous amounts of time converting the spoken language (A.A.V.E. – African American Vernacular English) to the written language (E.A.E - Edited American English) in order to produce… essays. Both are valid languages with their own distinct rules of syntax and grammar, but that is the problem: they are two different languages. One is the language of power - of the oppressor - and the other is the language of the powerless people, who have been rendered complicit in their own oppression, by the need to attain a bogus credential that, if attained, will ensure that they will occupy the very lowest rung of the economic ladder, barely able to maintain the incredibly conspicuous consumption that our collective culture mandates upon them, in order to be worthy of a modicum of self esteem in the eyes of their own peers. My job is to enable this. It is quite twisted.
My students fascinate me and I am fascinated by this “morbid” fascination. I try to understand it – is it altruistic? Is it based on some form of pity? Or is it because I realize that I would be one of them had things in my life gone only slightly different? Would I have done as well as they? They are survivors in an incredibly savage social system. I guess I admire them, they are full of life, burning with a brightness of unsustainable intensity. I want to understand their dreams and their expectations, and the chasm that I suspect lies between the two. They will die young I suspect – statistics would seem to bear this out. So why bother? They come and try as best as they are able, something that only hard won experience has allowed me to see and recognize. For this alone they should be served – welcome back.
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