In mid-January this year I got a call that got me very excited. A leader at our local community music and art school had found and called me. She needed someone to jump in to a Drama teacher position that had been suddenly vacated. Was I able? Was I interested? My answer, an emphatic yes to both questions.
My recent experience teaching at Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto had been marvelous. The students at Eastside more than made up for their lack of theatrical experience with their enthusiasm, engagement, group spirit and can-do attitude. Every class and every rehearsal was an adventure where we all were learning so much and having such fun together.
So this was my rosy vision that informed my unquestioning Yes! The teaching I was stepping into mid-year was part of an experimental pilot program. Four associated charter high schools with about 100 in each grade level participated. I liked the picture that was painted for me, with each entering freshman (admitted by lottery, as there was more demand than they could take on) being assigned one adult who would mentor them throughout their high school experience.
The fact that most of these young people were the first "college bound" members of their families only increased my motivation. Yes, I was told that one of the reasons the Drama teacher had quit had to do with discipline problems and a perceived lack of support from the administration. Looking back, I can see that I was more than a little cocky, charging in with cape and tights to "turn things around."
As I search for meaningful employment, I see a lot of educators are calling themselves "curriculum design experts" these days. In my experience, coming up with curricula that work for a specific group is an ongoing process that, more than anything, requires acute observation and lots of hands-on, non-theoretical experience. And by "curricula that work" I mean teaching and learning that not only increase skills and knowledge in a given field, but also encourage confidence in and love of learning itself.
The well-intentioned folks who had initiated this arts pilot program had unintentionally set the students and their art and drama teachers up for failure. This was the set-up:
• starting out, the students had been told that Art & Drama were electives
• teachers rotated among four schools, two weeks at each, so that students had either Art or Drama for two weeks every two months
• regardless of their preferences (choosing Art OR Drama), students were placed where administrators found space, thus NOT an elective
• Art & Drama teachers had virtually no contact with the rest of the faculty and were "flying blind" as to what these freshmen were doing in the weeks the arts teachers weren't there
• teachers taught for three hours straight one group in the morning, and then switched groups with the other teacher of the same discipline and then taught the 2nd group of 25 for another three hours straight in the afternoon
and finally,
• because the campus was made up of portables set up on the back field of an existing (large) public high school (at the campus where I taught), there were no toilets or running water available without walking five minutes to the other campus
When a class isn't working, never blame the students. No matter that the two classes I inherited were full of disaffected, disinterested and pissed off kids. They hadn't started off the year at their new school like that. They had, it turns out, cycled through a parade of teachers before me.
What young people need, especially 9th graders starting out at a "high-expectations" school, is to feel secure and respected for who they are. By the time I met them in mid-January, the damage had been done. Half of the students did not want to be there at all. They had no idea what "drama" had to do with the rest of their lives. And being expected to participate and be active for six hours a day for two weeks, led by a seemingly random teacher, well, it was just not going to happen.
What truly doomed my wholehearted attempts to "turn it around" were my attempts to be consequential about enforcing the "school rules" that say
1) when one speaks, others are silent and
2) no using or looking at laptops or smartphones during class unless instructed.
I'm a patient man. I never lost my composure. But not only did it take us 50 minutes to take roll in the morning because of non-stop chatter, much of our activity time was taken up with my confiscating their precious cell phones and reminding them about the supposed rules. [I say "supposed" because after two full days of doing my best to follow through, I learned from some other adults that the rest of the faculty had long since given up trying to enforce either rule!]
I got dehydrated. I lost my voice. These I can deal with. But to see the half of the group who I could see did want to participate and were ready to jump in get taunted and utterly distracted by those whose only fun was in making my work impossible, this is what broke my heart. I believe that being in a negative environment for six hours a day for two weeks truly does more harm to young people than any good a teacher may be able to elicit.
I loved these kids at first sight. I could see their bright eyes and energetic bodies, their voices rich with their own lively (and at times profane) vernacular. These young people could get so much out of Drama. But there I was and there were the kids, in a poisoned pool without water, in a trailer in the middle of nowhere. It was with the heaviest heart I've had in a long, long time that I stepped down after only two days.
Their faces, their voices, their names return to me all the time. I wish them well. They deserve much better than I could give them.
Adios, Carlos.