F$@#*N$ Wit Da Teacha
The video was called "F$@#*N$ wit da teacha" and it revealed the horror my teaching colleague, a native of Nepal, went through each day.
Mr. B is a short man and he always dressed in a classy jacket and shirt each day with pressed trousers. He is really a brilliant man – a wonderful writer in both his native language and in English. The man has a Ph.D in English and teaches at a local community college to earn more money.
But in this video, which is no longer on YouTube display, he was standing near his door, visibly on his last nerve as he tried to clear his room of several stray students who were running in and out of the room. “You must leave. I am trying to teach,” he said to the main student messing with him. The student proceeded to touch the collar of his shirt, taunting him by saying, “I bet you won’t pop your f’in colla.” What this meant, I have no clue.
Mr. B did not react well to being touched by the student. The last footage is of him shouting down the hall for help from an administrator. No help ever came. Several kids cuss and laugh in the background of the video and then it goes blank. Another colleague of mine is the one who found the video. He frequently searched YouTube to see if the kids had posted anything. If you’re interested, check this one out of the hallway in my school, posted by a student a while back. (Yes, this is America and it happens in schools every single day. This is why there are weapons checks.)
Mr. B is a very smart man, but his accent presented a huge language barrier with his students. This made him an easy target. His classes were tormented – not because he didn’t know his subject – but because he was unable to manage the chaos, rudeness and downright meanness shown to him each day. Kids frequently came to me and asked to sit in my class during the hour they had Mr. B – not because they didn’t like him but because they knew a big block of students were not going to let them learn anything. And they knew Mr. B wouldn’t stand up for himself. As harsh as it may sound, in doing so, he wasn’t standing up for his students.
Our school had several foreign teachers who were tormented along similar lines as Mr. B. On Halloween, gangs of students ran the halls egging teachers. Our Kenyan and Ghanian Math teachers were both egged on their heads. Our French teacher, a nice older man from Canada, was egged as well; he never came back after that day.
On any regular school day, Ms. E, a chemistry teacher, would lock herself in the chemical closet during certain class periods because she was so afraid of the kids.
On and on I could go, but the point here is that the failed schools in America do not require more money so much as they require better discipline policies and classroom managers. Those in charge of our school knew these things were going on. They often acted cowardly in their discipline policy because having too many suspensions would rouse too much suspicion from the central office. Those teachers who were taunted and tormented didn’t have to take it; they should have stood firm and held their ground. They knew what they were getting into each day.
Really, it’s a battle. Though clichéd, urban education is a war for our future. Can we really as a country let videos like that one stand?
God bless all those teachers above who I describe – they are all doing very well in other job placements now. But none of them belonged in that school. There is no place for weakness on staffs in failed urban schools. The discipline problems in these environments are just too bad. It’s hard for me these days to go to a family gathering or some sort of classy party and hold forth with normal conversation because all I want to do is tell these stories, which often involve lots of cussing and other vulgarities. This makes for poor small talk because people are uncomfortable when they hear it. “It can’t be true – it can’t be that bad,” they must think.
Mr. B once told me that he would rather be blown up by a bomb in Baghdad because “boom – one time and it’s all over.” Here in the school, he said “You die many times every day.”
This… in America… It’s true.