Tomorrow is the last day of school for students here in Philly. It's been a whirlwind of a year. Even more has happened over the two years that I've been here in Philadelphia serving my time under Teach for America. But now, sadly and happily, it's all over.
This week, I passed out my kids' report cards and unexpectedly received the results from the PSSA's, Pennsylvania's state-mandated standardized tests. PSSA results usually come back in July, which really means late August, so needless to say, it was a surprise to everyone when they came in the mail last Friday. For me, it was anxiety-inducing. This year was a complete turnaround from the chaos of last year. There was not a student in my class that I didn't like, and the level of respect I got from them at times was so immense it gave me chills.
Believe it or not, some of my kids actually looked up to me. For others, I'm their favorite teacher. I don't know about any of you, but that is just straight weird to me. Not to say I'm not happy or flattered, because I am, but me? I'm not even a quarter-century deep on this planet. Whenever I heard one of them say it, I thought about some of my favorite teachers. Mrs. Wynn, my 2nd grade teacher that put up with a lot of mess from me and was patient in dealing with all the issues I brought to school. Mrs. Myers, the Spanish teacher that I would still visit when I went home if it weren't for the fact that our breaks are all at the same time. I'm that person to some of these kids. It's humbling and intimidating.
But at the end of the day, I love each and every one of them. Sadly, most of em prolly won't come to school tomorrow (cuz that's how things work in the hood), but I'm not too upset about it. If they all showed up, I'd probably cry before they left. Teaching has undoubtedly been the most difficult but most rewarding endeavor to which I have ever committed myself. It's the happiest decision I've ever made and it'll be the saddest and most heartbreaking one to make if and when I decide to pursue something else. It's changed my life in ways that would have scared me two years ago (and still leave me kinda shook today).
I wouldn't have traded this experience for anything else in this world. Here on the corner of 66th and Elmwood, Monday through Friday, I met the faces of some of our nation's most vulnerable citizens. I listened to their stories, made them laugh, made them cry, made them care and not care, and they did the same to me. I pushed them when they were ready to give up and, unbeknownst to them, they were the reason why I spent many Fridays in my classroom and not at happy hour, or why I refused to take days off (until June, lol). Knowing how cruel and ignorant so many of us "educated" people are, I worked to prove that, yes, my kids are bad as hell, but they also want to learn, and if you know what you're doing, they'll behave for you too.
I did it because too many of them have people around them saying the wrong things. Discouraging them to point of accepting failure as the rule and success as an anomaly. I played with them, but I didn't play. There's nothing funny about failure, especially when you don't have the safety net of race or class to hold you up. Every rung of that ladder counts and every slip makes the ascent that much harder.
One of my girls would often say, in jest, "It's real out here, Mr. Garr." Sadly, at her age, she is much more acquainted with the reality of her condition than I was at 11 or 12. But I don't want to paint a bleak picture, because their lives are only foreign to people like me; to themselves, they're normal. Yes, they know that waking up to gunshots is not typical, but they also know it's not uncommon. And, strangely enough, they know that school isn't the end-all, be-all of life that we often make it to be. They are much more aware of the difference between aptitude and propensity.
When I got back the PSSA results, I was eager to see how my students performed. By the time we took the tests in April, I felt comfortable saying that my students, a class of so-called behavior problems and unmotivated kids, would pass the exams with scores of Proficient or Advanced in Math (I didn't teach Reading). Still, I was nervous. I am very hard on my kids, even more so during tests; I follow rules past what is necessary: I read questions, but don't explain what they mean; I don't accept blank responses or "I don't know,"; and if your answer is wrong, I'm not gonna say anything to you to hint that you should change it. It's your test, you gotta take it. For some, it would mean that I was opening them up to possibly making a lot of simple errors that our students often make, but I'd rather do that than over-help and inflate a grade. I wanted each one of my students to look at their scores and know that it was they who earned it and that it came from their brains.
When my Lead Teacher handed me my roster, I looked over the list at the names. They either had "BB" for "Below Basic," "B" for "Basic," "P" for "Proficient," or "A" for "Advanced." It was a long road to this point. I'd begun the year with a class that was given to me explicitly as a group of students the Administration had basically written off. They were chronic underperformers and/or behavior problems. Over the course of the year, I had been told that I "don't teach," and spent much of the second trimester dealing with an administration that nitpicked almost everything I did. Meanwhile, my kids were growing, and nobody noticed until outsiders visited our school and made special note of the things they saw in my room. Nonetheless, I never let this on to my students, except to push them to prove their own ability even as I was proving my own.
Only four of my students did not pass the state exam. Of those four, one was ESOL and had to take his test with the ESOL teacher. I'm blaming her for his grade, he should've passed or been very close to passing and had he taken his test with me, I guarantee he would've gotten a score equal to what he knew. Another student had only been in my class for a couple months unfortunately. Another has had difficulty in math her whole life and finally scored Basic. Out of all my students, I was probably proudest of her. She worked her behind off all year, struggling through addition and subtraction, to struggling through multiplication and division, where she still has difficulty, but she earned that Basic. She earned the hell out of it and I'm proud.
Still, one of my kids got Below Basic, and sadly, I know it was my fault. There's no explaining that but to say that I failed him in a number of ways, and it's that that is pushing me as I prepare for next year. Yes, the rest of my students scored Proficient or Advanced, but I really could have helped that one student much more than I actually did.
The second student who shares the title of whom I'm most proud scored Proficient on her Math PSSA too. She was durn-near Advanced and telling her almost made me choke up. She's a kid that many people in the building wrote off and continue to write off. She's a nut, and she knows it, but she has a gold mine of potential. She's definitely had it rough in the past year, and I was probably hardest on her than any of my other students, but at the end of the day, she knew where my heart was and why I did it, and she respected me for it. At times, I knew that she wasn't working for herself, but she was working for me, and I appreciated it. It made me want to work for her after she'd given up. It made me stick up for her when other teachers spoke down to her and she accepted it in laughter. And it's why I worry about how fragile that potential is if, like a mine, it all implodes onto itself. She was my blessing and I was her merchant of hope.
I let her know I was proud of her. I emphasized her potential and that she was past due for a heavy dose of maturity this summer if she was gonna capitalize off it next year. And with the direction things are going for me personally and professionally, that sentiment was meant as much for me as it was for her.
If I told them how much they've affected me, they'd probably look at me like I was crazy. I know I would if I were them, and it's more the reason why I look up to my kids. Their some of the most remarkable, unflappable, unfuckwitable people I will ever have the privilege of knowing and I'm proud to say that I was their teacher. If they're smarter because of me, I'm only a better teacher because of them.
*Cue the Seinfeld monologue.*
