Kay McSpadden is a high school teacher in York, South Carolina, and also a columnist for the Charlotte Observer.
In this post, she writes about the students she has taught, the difficult lives they lead, the courage they display.
Even as the kids are grappling with hard lives, the legislators in North and South Carolina are wreaking destruction on one of the few stable institutions in the children’s lives: Their school.
She writes about her students:
“In this rural school district where the majority of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, my students often write about how hard their lives are, about their parents who are absent because of work or divorce or restraining orders or death, about how poor health and homelessness and bad choices keep them from a more hopeful future.
They are not self-pitying but matter-of-fact – which is, in itself, heartbreaking.
One girl wrote that for years she worried she was also doomed to divorce because all the adults she knows – from grandparents to aunts and uncles to her parents – have separated.
“Then one day I had an epiphany,” she wrote, putting to use a word she said she had learned in an English class. “I don’t have to be like them. It was liberating, realizing that I can make my own destiny.”
Her pluck and resilience might seem remarkable except that so many of my students echo it – from the girl who was sexually assaulted as a toddler to the teenager who lost a brother to drug use. Despite catching the school bus before 6 a.m. and not getting home until 12 hours later – and despite not always knowing where they will sleep when they do – the students I know show up most days glad to be at school.”
Why do they come back day after day?
“They know that the adults there care about them – from the cooks to the principals, the custodians and the attendance monitor, the teachers and aides and librarians and secretaries and resource officers. All of us keep coming back because we make a difference in the lives of children. No one works long in education who doesn’t believe that.”
Meanwhile, back in the state capitols, the adults are making life worse for the young people:
“The governors and the legislatures of both states have decided that corporations rather than children should be their priority, and their actions prove that – cutting resources for public schools, diverting money to vouchers and charters, forcing schools to eliminate essential staff and programs, devaluing the work teachers do to improve their skills and earn advanced degrees, keeping their wages low, encouraging inexperienced and temporary teachers to rotate in and out of their school districts, evaluating teachers with invalid metrics, emphasizing standardized testing.
I don’t blame anyone for bowing out of the classroom. At some point in the future I may have to do the same.
But for now my students keep me there. Too many of them have already been let down by the adults in their lives, the ones who know them personally as well as the ones in Raleigh and Columbia who make decisions that add to their suffering. I want to be like the other committed adults who work in my school, people who make it a place where every child belongs, where every child matters.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Very eloquent. thanks for sharing this.
Can we all show this to parents at our open house/curriculum night?
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VcjIftvIC3I&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVcjIftvIC3I
Maybe at our next “professional development” day!
Do you have access to the lyrics? If so can you post them?
More than a Number
I am quiet in the classroom.
I don’t always raise my hand.
I don’t always answer questions.
I don’t always understand.
But I always have ideas
when I stare up at the sky.
My sister likes to tease me
for always asking, “Why?”
I am more than a number.
I am more than a grade.
I know the constellations.
Here’s a painting I made.
I read books in my closet.
I will not be a ‘2’.
I am more than a number.
I’m a person just like you.
I speak one language here
and another in my home.
I daydream in both languages
whenever I’m alone.
I’m good at climbing trees
Moms teaching me to sew.
I am full of secrets
a test can never know.
I am more than a number.
Watch me fold this plane.
I snuggle with my beagle.
There’s music in my brain.
Someday I’ll go to Egypt.
I will never be a ‘2’.
I am more than a number.
I’m a person just like you.
If you think I can be measured
by numbers on a screen…
…if my whole school becomes a test
where will I learn to dream?
I love to do hard problems.
I write stories, and I laugh.
My gifts are so much greater
than the data on your graph.
I’m more than a number.
I invent things when I play.
I collect shells and fossils.
Please listen when I say
I will not be a ‘1’–
a ‘2’, a ‘3’, or a ‘4’.
I am me. I’m a mystery.
I’m a child – not a score.
Thanks a bunch!
LOVE THIS!!! I am sending it to all of my teacher friends!
thinking about the young lady who worried that she too would be divorced reminded me of a young lady in the middle school in which I first taught from 1995-98. I taught American History, and I had the students do a family tree. I remember this one young lady who came in with a family tree that was detailed, a total of five generations. As she was displaying it and talking about it, one of the young men in the class asked “but where are the men? There are no men on that tree!” And if one looked, she had only listed descent from women, for all five generations. She responded “that’s because the women in my family usually do not marry.” Her mother, who was a principal of a nearby elementary school, was the child of a single teen-aged mom, and had had her when she herself was only 19.
I immediately thought of the movie Gigi, and wondered if I could find a way of sharing it with her.
I lost track of her a few years ago. She would be 29 now. If I recall correctly, when she was 22 she had a child out of wedlock and decided not to marry the father of her child.
Thanks for sharing, Ken. One of the nice things about living in a community for more than 40 years is that allows me to stay in touch and see some people who I worked with many years ago.
One of them had been picked out a traditional district high school and placed in the k-12 innovative district school where I worked. He had a confrontation with a teacher over a hat that he was wearing. It was against that school’s rules to wear hats. We didn’t care whether youngsters wore hats at our school. (Teachers, parents & students together made the rules)
He was a very tough,angry, alienated youngster. He entered a class I taught where students worked on and often solved real consumer problems that people sent us. In one early case that he worked on involving a problem with a car dealership, he suggested that we write down the problem, wrap it around a brick and throw it through the car dealership’s window. Not a good idea 🙂 Others had better ideas and we were able to solve the problem.
That young man was in a newspaper article about the class. He came to me a few weeks later and told me he thought he might be in the newspaper, and might have his picture in the paper. But he never thought it would be for something good.
He graduated and worked with Prince, a musician. A few years later he started a music recording studio. He discovered many young people were like him….they loved music but were doing very poorly in traditional schools.
So he founded a High School for Recording Arts.
http://www.hsra.org/
Students there have won a variety of awards, including one national award, for their work. They have been on CNN.
A variety of groups including Verizon Wireless and State Farm insurance have hired them to produce you-tube videos.
Virtually all of the HSRA students have been pushed or kicked out of traditional district high schools. Many are students with “special needs” who have found a home where they can contribute, as well as learn.
Joe, your tale about the young man and about hats reminds me of another young man. He was 18 and living on his own as a senior, and needed Government to graduate. His name was Jamaal. We got to discussing Tinker v DesMoines, and the idea that wearing black arm bands did not disrupt the learning environment, so that student free expression rights were protected. For the first and only time that year Jamaal spoke up. He noted that we too had a rule about not wearing hats except for religious or health reasons. He asked, what if he wanted to wear a black cap as a political protest of the treatment of imprisoned Black Panthers – would that be protecte? I told him that I did not know, but if he planned to explore it, I would give him the number of the local ACLU affiliate, because he was likely to need legal representation.
He smiled, I think delighted that he was able to raise a question that was relevant to him for which I did not have the answer. He never did challenge the authority on that.
And that points to something else. I have pushed for and received permission in my current and former high schools to allow students to use their smart phones for academic purposes in my class. The most common reason is when the student asks a question somewhat related to but outside the sphere of intended instruction. I will see if any other student knows the answer. If none does, even if I know the answer (and often I do not) I will suggest the student look up the answer. That teaches them that they are empowered to control their own learning. When they report back, I ask what source they used, why, and how they know it is reliable, so that also becomes a teachable moment.
For what it is worth, I know over my previous 17 years of teaching that at least 3 dozen of my former students have gone into K-12 teaching. One went to TFA in Baltimore and moved on after her two years. Most of the rest are still in the classroom, some having already received awards for the teaching – I was in a group of teacher being honored at the National Society of High School Teachers, and the woman ahead of me turned around. I had taught her as an 8th grader (in a class that produced 4 teachers out of less than 30 in the class) – she had just completed her fourth year of teaching and was already being honored by her students.
Great examples of you making a difference. A number of my former students also have gone into education – some, like David, who I mentioned earlier – were quite challenging. One of them, also like David, an African American male, was a teacher, principal and now is an assistant supt in Colorado.
At 12 or 13, He had been kicked out a private school where he was on scholarship, and came to the urban public school where I worked. He was a handful, great athlete but quite challenging. We (and I do mean we, not just me) were able to help him build on his talents and understand that athletic talents would not be enough if he wanted to be successful. Among other things, we worked with the University of Mn, which had some successful student athletes who talked with him. They emphasized the value of doing at least ok in school, and not instigating problems (which he had been doing) if he wanted a scholarship.
He did set some state records in track, and was a great basketball and football player. He was recruited and played football at Nebraska (which at the time was in the top 5 in the country). Sadly he was badly hurt so he did not play in the pros. He talked many times. He decided to become an educator. He has been a public school educator for more than 20 years. We remain in contact.
S.C., thank you for this stirring essay. Yes, REAL TEACHERS truly believe (& live it every day of their lives) that it is ALL ABOUT the KIDS.
BTW, did anyone see David Guggenheim’s (is supposed to be his apology to the teaching profession for “Waiting for Superman”) documentary,”Teach” that was on CBS for 2 hours last Friday? What did you all think about it? (Yes, I noiiced who was sponsoring it & that segment about the Idaho Math Teacher who uses Khan!)
Did anyone go to the website that was shown repeatedly (of course, I failed to write it down & have since forgotten it!)?
I watched the second hour. It ended with thanks to Bill and Melinda for funding the production. My take: this was a two hour infomercial for Khan Academy and a desperate plea for test prep newbies to replace veteran teachers.
They stressed many times how we don’t get paid much but we do it for the kids….underlying message if you want a decent salary and some benefits including due process rights then you are greedy and selfish and do not care about children, so you need not apply and those left are dead wood.
They even interviewed one student and pumped her over and over about Khan videos. They asked her if she would give up tickets to One Direction, Lady Gaga, etc and each time she said she would watch Sal Kahn videos over concert tickets.
I teach middle school and I know preteen/ teen girls pretty well. They would NEVER EVER give up One Direction tickets for Khan videos….sorry Sal. 😦
Two hour propaganda created and promoted by a bloviating billionaire buffoon and his minions.
I agree with your take on it, Linda! Guggenheim STILL needs to apologize to us!