Dear
Matt,
I
imagine that you are a hard-working high school teacher. You give and give and give tirelessly
to your students and school community.
You may work in a hard to staff school where the majority of the
school’s population lives in poverty and many students don’t understand the
value of education. It’s almost as if they fight against learning. Student behaviors are at times out of
control, and student and staff safety are often compromised. Like most educators, you’re overworked
and underpaid. As a former high
school teacher at a school with similar characteristics, not quite the same but
similar, I feel you.
However, I completely disagree with what you’ve written in Dear Steph Curry, Now That You Are MVP Please Don't Come Visit My High School. There are so many things wrong with
this article that I don’t know where to begin. I’m not even going to address how you dismissed Stephen
Curry’s whole life and his ability to relate to the students that you
teach. I’m just going to focus on
how you judged the students who live in poverty.
First,
there are many things that students who live in poverty can’t afford, and now
according to you, they can’t afford to dream. Why are you so
excited to join arms with society in telling kids that there’s something else
out there that’s not for them? You wrote, “They are already very
good at dreaming about being rich and famous, what we need them to do is get a
little more realistic about what is in their control. We need less of an
emphasis on sports and
celebrity in high school, because it is hurting these kids too much as it
is.” If I had to rank the number
of things in my students’ lives that were “hurting these kids too much as it
is,” I wouldn’t place having a dream, let alone a dream about being rich or
famous, as what was most hurting them.
Maybe not having a dream was an issue, but having a dream wasn’t
one. That a dream should be
realistic is an oxymoron anyway. I
digress. If I were you, I’d aim
for the system that creates generational poverty for some and generational
wealth for others as one focus, or two, the system that perpetuates racist
practices. These would be my top
contenders as “hurting these kids too much.”
Now, I do agree with one point. There are many students living in
poverty who don’t understand the connection between making it to the NBA and
doing what it takes to get there (this isn’t just a problem for kids living in
poverty, btw). However, it’s at
that point that you as the educator should educate and not take it as an
opportunity “to
shatter their dreams.” Rather than
tell them what they are not going to become, help them figure out what it takes
to get there. Use their dream to
build them up, not tear them down. At least they have a dream; that’s a start! Get rid of your deficit lens, and focus on what they already bring to
the table. For
example, if a kid dreams of being in the NBA, help the student write out a plan
on what he is going to do to get there.
Ask him what he thinks it takes to be a Stephen Curry or a LeBron
James. Maybe if the child sees
that you’re invested in what he wants, maybe that could matriculate into
something else. Regardless, in three
to four years, whether you’ve killed the kid’s dream or not, he will definitely
know if the NBA is in the future.
Now I skimmed some other parts of your blog, and I take
issue with not only the post to “Steph,” but also with you referring to your
students as “ghetto.” First of all, in your “About” section
under “Who runs this place anyway?” you wrote, “… where no matter how many
strategies I employ, the kids are still GHETTO in all caps bold italic.” I threw up a little in my mouth when I
read this. Are you trying to
educate the “ghetto” out of your students? Through pedagogy? I (don’t) hate to be a dream killer, but
that’s definitely not going to happen.
Calling your students ghetto is wrong, first and foremost. Your students
aren’t poor, and they aren’t ghetto.
They are kids who live in poverty and are the victims of years of
systems that were designed to keep them exactly where they are. The way your students are raised and
the communities from which they come mean something to them. These are a part of their identities. Why can’t you see where they come from
as an asset instead of a deficit?
To survive living in impoverished communities takes a lot of strength
and ingenuity, among other skills, that are often not valued by educators.
And lastly before I take my seat, on another one of your
blog entries, Why Tamir Rice
Couldn’t Have Afforded College Had He Not Been Murdered By The Police First, you wrote:
A
couple years ago I wrote about a student of mine with a 4.2 GPA who didn’t end
up going to college. Her parents needed her financial support in their
household, and they were also “allowing” her to raise her siblings.
So Matt, who’s the real perpetrator of
false realities, you or Stephen Curry?
If a child with a
4.2 GPA at your school can’t attend college due to poverty who’s preaching false hope? If I knew having a 4.2 GPA still wasn’t
enough to get me into college, I probably wouldn’t “run
home and finish that essay” either.
So basically, you are wrong.
Doing what’s right in school in order to get to college isn’t the “one
thing they could do about their future that is in their control.” It’s more
complex than that.
You
see, Matthew (I hope you don’t mind if I call you Matthew), you have probably
done some amazing things for students. And I don’t want to judge your entire
existence as an educator based on your blog entries. But I must say, if you ever win Teacher of the Year, please
don’t come visit my high school.
You and I read very different articles...
ReplyDeletePeter, you're right. I also read Matt's "About" section and at least 2 of his other posts. I wanted to get a better understanding of where he stood as an educator and not solely judge him based on that one post. But when I read some of the other stuff, red flags started going off and I included my response to his other writings in my one post.
DeleteMatt's response to my letter:
ReplyDelete"Ronda,
A fellow blogger, right on. Clearly you are more of the opinion that our kids need to dream more about being professional athletes and celebrities. That’s cool, I guess that is where you and I differ, because that is really the only thing this post is about.
Also, though a good way to attract clicks is by repeating titles from what other authors wrote, you have to be careful. In your case, switching Steph Curry to me doesn’t make any sense because our society doesn’t put any importance on me or education. If I ever win teacher of the year (which is an imagined scenario as opposed to the actuality of Steph Curry’s MVP honors), no one would invite me to their high school anyway. I’m a teacher, and no one cares about teachers, didn’t you read that part? It was at the end. What high school principal on earth tells their students “Hey guys, we have a special speaker for you in the gym today–a teacher!” So don’t worry, I won’t be going to your high school, even though you are not even a teacher and therefore don’t even have a high school.
Most of your angst seems to revolve around my use of the term “ghetto” to describe my students. I get it, and you are not the only one who has gotten mad about calling such precious children “ghetto.” This is what ghetto means: I have students who carry weapons, who call the gay kids faggots, who laugh when we read about the Holocaust, who call the fat kids fat, who sexually harass every single girl or woman that walks by, and who end up in jail before they even graduate because some of these kids are very, very dangerous. Not all of them mind you, not even close, but I don’t live in a world where I have the luxury to pretend these are all teddy bears stuffed with cotton candy. I also come from the exact same neighborhood where I teach and teach at the same exact high school I went to, so don’t worry about me not understanding about the generational poverty and characteristics of these kids because these kids ARE ME. You don’t know me and you can dance around the semantics, but we don’t say “[We] are kids who live in poverty and are the victims of years of systems that were designed to keep [us] exactly where [we] are.” WE CALL IT BEING POOR AND GHETTO. Hell, I liked my upbringing, and I wasn’t as poor as most of my friends, but I also have many students a lot less poor than I was. I was lightweight poor. I use the term “ghetto” lovingly, and I also use it to trap people into stereotyping me with imagined righteous anger.
Bringing up the girl with the 4.2 for this argument is a bit tangential. The whole point of her story was to highlight the institutional shackles you seem so worried about. Even when kids get 4.2s it doesn’t mean they always get to college. Talking about me being wrong and preaching false hope is simply incorrect. Maybe you think I should shut down my aspirations of raising GPAs and have them dream more about the NBA, but I have to remind you that you yourself probably wouldn’t want your tax dollars paying teachers to go this route. Plus, I don’t even believe in getting all these kids into college anyway. I know more than most that most of them won’t go to college and I am a big proponent of vocational ed and finding other ways these kids can be successful based in reality, not celebrity dreams.
Lastly, you messed it up at the end there when you used the same cute little rhetorical move I made. You called me Matthew and then asked “I hope you don’t mind if I call you Matthew” just like I did in my article with Steph. That would have been a nice touch except that you used my entire name. The whole point of asking someone if they don’t mind if you call them something else is if you are using a nickname or shortening their long-ass name. That’s why I asked Steph because his name is actually Stephen. You should probably edit that, then it will work better."