Inda Schaenen is an eighth grade English language arts teacher at Normandy Middle School in Ferguson, Missouri. She writes in Education Week about how students were affected by the death of Michael Brown and how she as a teacher was affected.
School started nine days after the shooting.
“Even before the shooting and the dramatic aftermath broadcast around the world, our district was accustomed to being and bearing bad news. Normandy is a poor, predominantly African-American community beset by challenges in housing, employment, and access to social, emotional, and physical health care.
“In January 2013, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education stripped the Normandy school system of its accreditation. The district consequently lost close to 25 percent of its students (and related education funding) to a transfer program that was upheld by the Missouri Supreme Court. Then, on July 1 of this year, the state board of education officially took over the Normandy district; meanwhile, the transfer program’s fate continues to play out in the state courts….
“I was assigned to teach 8th grade language arts; I now work in circumstances that daily, even hourly, challenge the most seasoned of the seasoned veterans. Middle school teaching is a new experience for me, and my learning curve is beyond steep; it’s a cliff. In rock-climbing terms, I am “crack climbing”-locating available seams, trying any grip, using all of who I am to gain purchase during my ascent. I am working 18 hours a day.”
The tragedy is the background and often in the foreground of school.
She writes:
“Will I be able to make what happens in my classroom so compelling that these children will feel it’s worth their time to come in and take a seat alongside the 32 others in my classroom?
“Now, factor in the shooting, followed by the protests, the looting, the hyper-militarized reaction to the protests and looting, and the local reaction to the reaction. Many of our students showed up at school traumatized; teachers, too. The granddaughter of one of my colleagues was related to Michael Brown. Another staff member was his great-aunt. In many ways, north St. Louis County is one community….
“Since Aug. 9, there is the unspoken but ever-present awareness, especially among the boys, that life can end in a flash, even for the kids-like Michael Brown-who manage to navigate the system and graduate…..
“Over and over, I assure my students that I will not leave. That I am here for them. That principals and teachers are working together to figure out how to get our school right, or at least more right…..
Are we as a society willing to address the needs of these children, these communities? The answer seems to be no. We want them to have higher scores, and the state will punish their teachers if they don’t get higher scores. But we refuse to address or acknowledge the conditions in which they live, or our obligation to change them.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’ve been a middle school teacher for 25 years. I’ve seen my school get better and worse and back again. Wrap around services would be great though we have had few to none. The key in my experience is a core, hate to use that word. It starts with everything you said you are doing in your classroom. If the only thing you care about is the test scores you minimize your connections with your students. Then there is a synergy to the knowledge that your colleagues are connecting to the kids in their classrooms too. You are part of something greater than yourself yet a part as important and respected as every other. This cohesion within the staff can permeate the classroom. You can tell when students say “oh we don’t do that here” or students express appreciation for what the teachers are trying to do. I had worked really hard to counsel two boys not to solve their issue by fighting. On the way back from lunch they got into a fight and I happened to be nearby and had to break it up. On the way back to class another student who was my biggest pain in the neck saw how upset this made me and put his arm around my waist. I put my hand on his shoulder until we got to class. It probably lasted only 20 seconds and 50 feet down the hall. It did not make him the perfect student, but we were able to look at each other in class and understand each other. We were both doing the best we could.
You sound like the kind of teacher your kids need. They are fortunate. I have also found the most difficult thing about teaching is not what happens in class. A difficult as that can be at times you are in it and making it happen in the moment. The real burden that I never anticipated is those times when there is a lack of support. Nothing beyond the classroom walls that is of any help. Also actions by the administration that make your work more difficult. From big things like packing classrooms to save money when there is already a surplus to monitoring how many copies you make! The thing is in spite of all this we try to give our students what they need.
This teacher acknowledges what the “reformers” refuse to acknowledge: the trauma that is the outgrowth of living in an oppressed and impoverished community. Remember the ad about drugs that used an egg being fried? “This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?” The same can be said for the brain “on trauma.” The mantra “no excuses” holds no water.
Click to access braindevtrauma.pdf
Interesting–as I’ve noted before–that trauma was noted & attention was paid in Sandy Hook (by the governor, no less–those students were excused from state tests that year)–but not in communities like Ferguson or Chicago or New Orleans or other urban areas.
I see Christine’s statement below, and it’s been said before, and bears repetition…constant repetition, until legislators listen and act accordingly.
These are two very different situations.
The Sandy Hook school was invaded and the unthinkable happened in what the country views is a safe environment.
Agreed that the Michael Brown incident’s impact on the community’s children is also news, but it isn’t reported on the national landscape to the same degree most likely because a school of little kids wasn’t shot up in the process. When a death or severe injury happens to an adult in any community, it does not always make national news despite how many children are connected to the deceased or injured.
However, community violence is such a common issue in these areas. When you are surrounded by violence, it becomes part of your everyday life. People forget that children growing up in at-risk communities and their families live in a culture of fear every day.
The children of Normandy, Ferguson and other communities like these should be on the radar constantly for the brutal lifestyle conditions that so many face on a daily basis, not just when a kid gets gunned down while surrendering to the police. In an effort to effect change, we should be aware of this kind of struggle every day.
I’m sure everyone remembers the photograph of the children of Sandy Hook being led out of their school, eyes closed, each holding the shoulders of the child in front of them, led by a teacher and protected by a police officer, shielded in this way from the horror around them.
Who shielded the children of Ferguson from the view of Michael Brown’s body as it lay on West Florissant Ave. for more than four hours? How many of Inda’s students saw that horror? Certainly no police officer protected them. Instead, police forces rained down tear gas and rubber bullets in the aftermath.
God bless the teachers, students, and community of Ferguson. I cannot even begin to imagine the difficulty of putting a community back together after something like that, and I so admire those who are doing so.
Inda, I read your story through tears and mounting rage. What you are doing matters. Your students will be better for having been in your classes.
After the Newtown school tragedy, there was a focus on supporting the return to classes for the teachers and children. Rightly so. This is the first time I have seen anything in print about the return to classes for the children of Ferguson. Have I missed extensive coverage about the nation wrapping its arms around the children and the teachers of this community as they struggle through these enormously difficult challenges?
Some lives matter less than others, it appears.
So eloquently stated. This country has a way of hiding problems by finding scapegoats, like teachers. Yet the wound is so, so deep and getting deeper each and every day. If social issues can be addressed first before test scores, it would make such a difference to these students future.
The ones in power, who hold the $tring$, who create impossible hurdles, who punish, who threat, who deduct….who endorse charters and vouchers at public school expense — what do we do about it? Vote for the lesser evil. Vote independent if possible.
People are crying out loud, all over the nation. We are unheard.
Foundations and non-profits open up and what do they do? Spread anti-union, anti-teacher, pro-charter, pro-voucher propaganda, and basically pay themselves from the donations collected from the billionaires.
NOTHING is getting done anywhere, except monies are changing hands into the wrong pockets.
I don’t know the answer for Ferguson except to keep showing up daily. The teachers, the parents, the kids. Keep showing up. Even under the worst circumstances, be present to learn. “Be there” for each other. Come together in positivity.
Hopefully, as more of us awaken to what has been ongoing, we can and will change things.
Normandy Middle School is in Normandy, Missouri, not Ferguson. I attended it when it was Normandy Junior High, graduated from Normandy High, a school which gave me my ethics, my world view, my multiple successful careers in education, journalism and the music business, and I produce the Normandy alumni newspaper, an 11 x 17 glossy 28-page publication, for the thriving Normandy High School Alumni Association. What this expert and dedicated Middle School teacher writes in right on the nose. The measurement of school district by standardized test scores is a dead end. Normandy students will never attain those scores; no school district in any deprived, struggling community has managed it anywhere. The test scores will not get these children successful adult lives, either. The approach must be to grab the kids early, like 3-1/2, identify as soon as possible each child’s talents, abilities and interests, and educate to that. It will give them successful adult lives. I KNOW! That’s what Normandy did when I was there in the 1950s and it gave me, a very mixed up and frightened kid, a golden life. It gave EVERYONE at Normandy at golden life. What makes me so angry about what the State of Missouri has done to Normandy is I have never seen a glimmer of evidence the people in charge understand the reality of what the schools are wrestling with. They seem to know the prevailing education mantras but seem to know next to nothing about growing up in communities with a disintegrating with fractured families, blended families, home foreclosures, inability to find jobs, terrible crime, terrible self-images and overworked teachers (teachers brought into Normandy this year already are saying they are exhausted and October isn’t even here yet!). And the feeling you are the wrong color (I hate that the most). What also makes me angry is that, though I live in Chicago and have for half a century, I am forever flying back to Normandy to report and write stories for the Alumni Courier, and take photos, and I’ve even flown in just to be at a Normandy press conference. I wouldn’t be doing any of this (and paying for it) out of the goodness of my heart but in fact Normandy students, Normandy educators and Normandy parents are doing and achieving wonderful things. When I bring visitors to the high school campus they marvel at its beauty and impeccable maintenance, how nice the kids look and how personable and how articulate they are, the energized teachers and the sense of exciting things going on. I was there one Saturday morning with a choir car wash going on, a job fair for adults, football practice, a fashion show rehearsal I believe and breakfast was being served (the Normandy HIgh cafeteria is legendary for its great dining). And if I wasn’t telling that story, guess no one would be–that’s the part that makes me angry– with one notable exception. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has done a remarkable job in that regard and deserves the many honors I am sure it eventually will receive if those in charge are sure to enter every contest possible.
Well stated Donna, and I would encourage India, to authorize more of what she witnessed and described (see below) collaborative and personal work perhaps making graphic novels, composing original raps, more elaborate plays, proposals for a memorial, or to a local TV station on a program that would focus on their voices–anything that works to connect with your students to help them process grief and anger and help them move toward hope. By now you have probably learned all the tricks of the trade in rationalizing this as ELA learning for administrative bean counters.
“The other day, I watched a group of my students-all boys, unprompted-wordlessly re-enact the shooting from beginning to end, using a fistful of my newly sharpened pencils as the cigarillos Michael allegedly stole before he was gunned down. My students were highly engaged in a standards-based, collaborative group activity that turned into the kind of play that processes pain.”
This era of insanity by NCLB, CCSS, RttT, union busting, charterization of public schools, G.E.R.M, Smarter Balace, PARCC, MOOCS, Pearson, Gates, over the top data trolling, all the Edcation deforms coming from the FEDs and just outright repression via govt. pushed by $$$$$ is getting us nowhere except sure makes moolah for the yahoos. I am sickened with sadness for this country.
I’ve researched and written a lot on this topic, talked with many leading educators, we have conclude this country will become two countries, haves and have nots, and never the twain shall meet. It was envisioned long ago in Doris Lessing’s brilliant novel
“The Fifth Child.” I think particularly impoverished inner city communities are being
abandoned as an investment which never gives back. I don’t want to believe it but more and more the evidence is right in front of it. I teach in a school where every child of every race, every religion and ever social and economic status, is valued as much as every other child. This is how education in our nation needs to be to insure the continuation of the democracy. But all the signs are that is not where we are headed. I don’t want to believe it but it is hard not to believe.
I saw an interview with a former mayor of Ferguson in which he said it was urgent to re-open the schools. Why? To get kids to a safe haven, where counselors would be on hand? To be with grown-ups, in addition to their parents, who know and can care for them because they are professionals, trained in child development and psychology, who can allow them to begin to understand what has happened in their streets?
No, said this official, so they can get homework and not be out on the streets.
In these situations, teachers are expected to provide an antidote and a structure to process the failings of the larger society. And there is the assumption that teachers can handle this alone. But you can’t trust teachers to teach – for that they need a script.
I grew up in the Normandy-Ferguson area and my father was a motorman on the Ferguson streetcar line so I was in that little town a lot. Getting the kids back in school was a priority to keep them safe, to give them order in their lives, to focus them on being back with their friends and their teachers, to getting nutritious dining and, yes, to give them homework so after school they had work they were responsible for completing. As for teachers being prepared to do what they had to do, believe me, they would not need a script. Anyone teaching in Ferguson, and in Normandy, is well-versed in all the challenges their students, the students’ families and they face. Also, both Ferguson and Normandy have always abounded in support and help from their religious institutions, which work together on behalf of the community. I left for Chicago 51 years ago, recruited by the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools to start a journalism program (I wasn’t look for a job, had not even thought of teaching, but I was the person they wanted) but I am back in Normandy and Ferguson frequently as I produce Normandy High’s alumni newspaper, a 28-page 11 x 17 glossy full color publication. Normandy has a vigorous alumni association geared mainly to providing college scholarships for outstanding students. And Normandy DOES have outstanding students. Even amid all the social, economic, health, family and other problems the District faces, there are flowers blooming. The schools look great, the students look great, the teachers are committed and no matter what happens no one is giving up.
Wayne Brasler, that is an inspiring story
If you’d like to see the Normandy alumni newspaper, including an eye-opening history edition, send me an address and I will put some in the mail. The idea behind the publication when the founders of the Normandy High School Alumni Association started it 12 years ago was to bring the black and white eras of the school and community together in generating college scholarships for Normandy High students, but beyond that to foster friendship, understanding and coming together to work for the future. I didn’t expect much to happen but in short order the Superintendent wrote me a eloquent letter saying the publication had done what had not succeeded before, knocking down the walls between the eras and giving everyone a sense of both heritage and obligation. Producing the publication changed my life, returning me to Normandy and Ferguson and St. Louis regularly after a half-century in Chicago and finding, in time, I was part of the family again. It has been the most important miracle I have experienced in my life and I have experienced quite a few.
Wayne –
I didn’t mean to imply that the teachers of Normandy and Ferguson need a script. What I mean to say is that the “reformers” in public education think teachers don’t know how to do their jobs, so they are making decisions in which teachers lose their sense of agency.
And it was the former mayor who said he wanted the kids in school so they could get homework. (Of course, he also said he thought many problems would be resolved if people put signs on their lawn saying “I love Ferguson”.)
It’s obvious to me, and anyone who reads this blog, that all of you are doing an extraordinary job for the kids. I only wish you had more support, and like teachers everywhere, an acknowledgement of how vital you are to the lives of the children in your care.
Everytime I am home in Normandy–51 years in Chicago and Normandy is still home–and in Ferguson I get stressed over what everyone at home is dealing with–children, teenagers, parents, teachers, law enforcers, business people. Things have gone terribly wrong. On the other hand, the community initiatives, dedicated educators, devoted parents, business people trying their best, strong faith base and exciting plans for the future are heartening. And these communities still have great hearts.