6 posts tagged “politics”

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:

Sad that I have to read about this from a French media outlet but hey...it's better than the regular news out of Trenton!

This was a very interesting weekend to be in New Orleans. I came to visit one of my college roommates who is doing some pseudo-reputable alternative route teaching program. It just so happens that this weekend is also when various major public housing developments in New Orleans were scheduled to be demolished. People have called this "a hate crime against poor people" and the issue has not only garnered the attention of local activists but Capitol Hill. Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to President Bush asking him to halt the demolition of four public housing developments in New Orleans: St.Bernard, Lafitte, C.J. Peete, and B.W. Cooper. Now some of these names may be unfamiliar to many of you but I know the names of all these "projects" because of them being mentioned in myriad rap songs by New Orleans natives. More specifically, C.J. Peete and B.W. Cooper are known as the infamous Magnolia and Calliope Projects, respectively. They've produced the likes of Master P, C-Murder, Baby, Juvenile, and Soulja Slim. Most of these rappers respect their project affiliation like a national flag. I wouldn't be surprised if each of these aforementioned rappers had the name of their projects tattooed somewhere on their body like so:

In this pic, you can see Juvenile's arms which have "'Nolia Boy" tattooed on them ("'Nolia" being a reference to the Magnolia Projects, of course). His love for his hood runs deep, I'm sure.

However, a question that has come up as I talked to my college roommate and his girlfriend about this issue in New Orleans is whether or not many former residents of these projects even want to return to these notoriously old and dilapidated buildings that make up these insanely violent projects. Although my college roommate will be quick to state that, even post-Katrina with a reduced population, New Orleans is still the murder capital of the Western world (a definite overstatement) the reality is that New Orleans is still highly violent today, though far better than its heyday (?) in 1994 when 421 people were killed and it gained the title of "murder capital." That year the homicide rate was a stomach-churning 86 per 100,000 residents--unmatched by any other city in the U.S. to date. Most of the most dangerous cities in the nations (a la Detroit, Compton, D.C., Baltimore, East St.Louis) have murder rates between 45 and 60 so New Orleans', former rate should be placed in that context. In light of these realities and the equally notorious public educational system in New Orleans many people are saying that it's time to destroy and rebuild. Why would former residents come back to a place like pre-Katrina New Orleans?

In Teacher Corps, class is often talked about over race. The program attempts to regard our work as being with poor kids even though my school is more Black (97%) than poor (95%...as determined by the percentage of students who receive free/reduced price meals). The class issues at play in New Orleans with regards to housing has definitely hit home for me as my neighborhood in Belzoni is the bougie part of town. What most of those in power are hoping to do, at best, is to turn the projects set for demolishing into mixed-income developments. Large swaths of entire neighborhoods may be demolished under the rebuilding plan from early last year and presently people are seeing mixed income developments as the way to go. I worked in a mixed-income housing complex in inner-city Boston while in college and it has its ups and downs (generally speaking). Ups: nicer housing, less crime, more green space. Downs: fewer units, more expensive surrounding businesses, potential loss of sense of community. I feel strange living in a neighborhood as segregated by class as my own. Poor(er) people live on that side of Belzoni. They generally work in service industries at fast food restaurants, in the catfish plant, or don't work at all. My neighborhood is one of professionals. Many teachers live there as well as the superintendent, police chief, and fire chief and various medical personnel, insurance agents, and catfish plant managers. Where is the balance? Should we even be looking for a balance?

I don't have cable at my house in Belzoni so watching TV--especially cable--is a rarity for me indeed. I'm currently at this Mississippi Council for the Social Studies conference in Jackson, however, and my colleague from Humphreys County High is watching TV in the room. With Mississippi and many other states throughout the nation in full-political swing as Election Day approaches, a commercial appeared on TV for Phil Bryant, a candidate for Lieutenant Governor here in Mississippi. Getting me to laugh out loud at a campaign advertisement is a tough job but Bryant was able to do so with no problem. How so?: in the ad, Bryant laid out some of his platform regarding crime--automatic life sentences for second offense crack cocaine and methamphetamine manufacturers and dealers. At the sound of this, I almost fell out of my rolling chair with laughter. AUTOMATIC LIFE!?! I mean, I've heard of being tough on crime and I'm fully cognizant of what state I'm writing this from but gee whiz.

What's scariest about this is that Bryant is all but set to win in a few weeks time and become the 31st Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi where his power and office (especially as President of the Senate) will afford him the opportunity to attempt to actually push through some of these zany policies. Shiver, shiver. Only this list of the former Mississippi Lieutenant Governors and their political parties gives me a glimmer of hope. Go, Dems, go!  

I saw this when I was reading the Clarion-Ledger yesterday and wanted to blog about it. The U.S. House of Representatives' Subcommitte on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection held a hearing on stereotypes and degrading images in the African-American community and called in a variety of "witnesses" from the CEO of Viacom (owner of MTV, BET, and myriad other entertainment media outlets) to Mississippi's own David Banner, a Jackson native and Provine alum who has gone on to become one of the most consistently politically vocal rappers in the mainstream today.

Video of the hearing can be streamed from C-Span.Org and here is a link:

http://www.c-span.org/homepage.asp?Cat=Current_Event&Code=Congress&ShowVidNum=7&Rot_Cat_CD=Congress&Rot_HT=&Rot_WD=&ShowVidDays=365&ShowVidDesc=&ArchiveDays=30

The issue of rap's lyrics and the content of videos is anything but novel though I have never before seen it discussed in this venue. The focus of the hearing was mainly how (if at all) degrading the lyrics and videos of mainstream rap music today are to women. I didn't see or hear about any females on the panel of witnesses, however...especially those whose bodies were displayed across video screens in the room where the hearing occurred like this:

CEO of Viacom, Inc. (Philippe Dauman)

Don't ask why I'm blogging at 1:30 in the morning but....

Here's a review of Michael Moore's new movie "Sicko." It's largely critical of the movie but at the same time it lauds some of its good points. I've been hearing mixed reviews from most people so it doesn't surprise me all that much. An interesting thing that it points out is the fact that, despite campaigning for universal health care, Hillary Clinton receives more health care industry money than any other politician in Washington, D.C. save for one.

I wanted to watch Sicko this weekend but no theater in the area is currently playing it. After searching a bit more it's looking like no movie theater in the state is showing the movie. Is this political due to Moore's previous two documentaries which were anti-Bush and anti-gun culture (two things near and dear to many Mississippians)? Who knows. Kristy thinks not. I dunno....