When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong

On Wednesday afternoon I was running errands around Belzoni when I received a phone call from my high school principal. She asked me where I was and despite telling her that I had already left school she asked if I could return to campus. She needed to speak with me. In person. Now. I turned my car around and drove back to school knowing that such a prompt, unexpected request couldn't be the harbinger of good news.

When I got back to my school, I went to my principal's office only to see that she wasn't there. Our guidance counselor was also there waiting to speak with the principal who she said was in the bathroom at the moment (she has a private bathroom connected to her office). Soon my principal emerged and asked for me to step into her office and shut the door. Once inside she seemed hesitant about what she was going to say and did not make eye contact with me for a while. Eventually, she sat down and told me that the school district will not be offering me a contract for employment next year. As she began to explain how the school district came to this decision she initially stated that the decision was based on budget cuts. Soon this somewhat suspect premise gave way to the true reason for my contract not being renewed: too many students were failing my classes. She stated that she knew that I tried to help my students and that much of the blame for their academic predicament should be placed on them but still, the superintendent felt that this is what is best. She thanked me for my work, stated her belief that I will be a remarkable educator and man, and bid me good afternoon.

I knew this day would come. From my first semester of teaching in Humphreys County when I developed my infamous reputation for having a majority percentage of students fail my class I knew that the upper brass of the school and district did not like the situation. Failing students (sometimes) means angry parents. Angry parents means principals get screamed at in their own offices. It also means that (elected) superintendents lose votes. Not cute. It did not help that that school year, my first in Humphreys County, just happened to be the first year of Humphreys County's embarrassing trek to state takeover. Humphreys County was a priority school which meant that we did not meet achievement goals or show expected academic achievement (as determined by standardized tests). We were a Level 1 school "all of a sudden" after consistently being a Level 3 school. Thus, state auditors were in and out of our school building and school district throughout the year evaluating, interviewing, and observing everyone from the superintendent and school board to the janitorial and paraprofessional staff in an attempt to determine exactly what the heck happened. The grades of my students and the pending massive failure rate was a striking blight that the school and district could not afford. Thus, despite the myriad extra credit/make-up work, parent phone calls and conferences, staying at school for extra assistance until six or seven each night, etc. it was a "teacher problem" that prevented my students from academic excellence, in the words of my superintendent last year.

For me there are two ways to look at this situation. First, the bad. For better or worse, in sickness and in health, despite its plethora of vast "worst in the nation" educational/health/social/racial/economic/gender/etc. issues, I love the Delta. I love Humphreys County. I have strongly considered buying not only a house but land here. If things go as planned this will occur and Humphreys County and the Delta will be forever changed before I'm 40. The plans are in the works. I will truly miss my students that I've formed relationships with here over the past two years. I see myself (or various childhood friends and siblings of mine) in many of them. I've tried to guide them along a positive path both educationally and personally through almost daily outside-of-lesson-plan-but-you-need-to-know-this-or-know-about-this "teachable moments." I've talked about my life and upbringing along with those of my friends quite a bit with the hopes of my students learning from the mistakes that we have made. The easy way. As oppose to making the same mistakes themselves and learning the hard way. Over and above all I have tried to get my students to understand the power that each of them possesses as an individual as well as what they communally possess as a collective. Far too often things just HAPPEN to my students. My grandma took me in. That boy got me pregnant. That dude said something to me first. Mr. Amutah failed me. I strongly believe that the students I've worked with here have great, limitless potential though their work ethic, self-esteem, and access to channels of success are severely lacking. I fear that my aims have not been fully accomplished yet and thus leaving now is painfully disappointing in some sense.

Still, there's the good that comes from this. I feel that, if nothing else, I have made it known to my administrators that I would not bend to their personal and political whims. Playing with students' grades is playing with students' futures. It's the same thing that my former principal and other administrators in my hometown school district are being sued, fired, and blackballed over. Students (and parents) need to understand that they put in what they get out of life and that not everything will be handed to them without attention or effort as easily as EBT cards or "crazy checks." Secondly, I have proven to myself that I can teach. I can even teach in an environment with scarce resources at times (copy paper? dry erase marker? LIGHTS???). Thus, I know that my experiences in Belzoni have prepared for a long-term career in education that can only become easier and more acceptable with time. Finally, I hope that I have challenged my students intellectually and personally more than they have perhaps ever been challenged before. I've posed questions to them that they may have never thought about (i.e. do you support segregation? Why or why not?). I've given them access to people they may have never been able to meet (i.e. a Skype-brokered interview with my mother when talking about push and pull factors imapcting immigration). I have shown them that at 23--or 20 or 16 or 13--they, like me, can be both "mad smart" and "straight ghetto."

As for the next steps for me, I'll still be teaching next year in either Mississippi (preferably north Mississippi) or in the Arkansas Delta. I'll leave you with these words from the Harvard Black Men's Forum shirt I still wear often: