A Hard Truth

Dear Reader,

Thanks in advance for reading this post. Here’s some context for your consideration. 

In writing this piece, I’m not looking for answers or solutions from you. I’ve been a teacher or administrator in inner city schools for twenty plus years, and I often don’t know what to do. I’m not expecting you to have answers to my questions, my wondering, or my musings. Although if you do have some ideas, please feel free to share-I could use all the help I can get. 

Instead, my purpose for writing this post, and all future posts is simply to bring awareness to the edu-blogosphere that schools like ours exist, and our students have names, and stories, and hopes, and dreams, and struggles. I love reading about so many amazing educators, doing phenomenal work with outrageously creative and wonderful students, at tremendous schools. AND, I want you to know about our school too; even though not all the stories have a happy ending. Most principals and teachers in inner city schools aren’t on twitter, but there are so many schools like mine in cities across America, serving thousands of students in underrepresented communities. 

The purpose of this post is simply to say we are here, and we are dealing with tough problems, without any clear solutions. And if you think about these stories for even a minute beyond reading the post, or if you share it, or tell someone about it, then my students, my teachers, and our community isn’t invisible in that moment. And I can’t ask for more than that. Thank you for reading.
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I have a 9th grade student; R, who is very difficult in school and at home.

Our building is a square, with all the classrooms around the outside of the square and open in the middle. R can most often be found, running around the outer edges of the building to avoid classes and adults. R is very immature, and very whiny when he’s confronted with his inappropriate behavior. Sadly, he’s not so nice to talk to. He is prone to angry outbursts, and over-the-top temper tantrums. As educators, we don’t often say this, but the truth is-R isn’t a very likable kid. And, in addition to not being particularly likable, and his bad behavior, R can barely read. He’s fourteen years old, and he’s only a slightly better reader than my own six year old, first grade son.

Can you imagine not being able to read? I can’t-not really. I love to read. I’ve always loved to read. Reading keeps me sane, and I make time to read every night, no matter how exhausted I am from the day that was. There are certainly classes I struggled with in school-but reading, well, I can’t remember a time that being a reader wasn’t a part of who I am. But for R-reading hasn’t ever been a part of his life. It’s like the books at the library are all in locked, glass cabinets. He can see in, but he can’t get to them. And if he could ever get to the books; what could he do with them?

This week, R was having a particularly difficult day. He skipped multiple classes, and ran his normal route around the building. As I mentioned, our building is a square, so as long as I position myself along his route, eventually, he’s going to run right into me-and that’s what happened. As I brought him to the office, the cursing began. “Fuck you, bro.” was the main insult that came my way repeatedly. It went on and on, and escalated in volume, to the point that my custodian/basketball coach came into the office to try and calm R down. No luck there either. I left the office, to handle another issue (fun day!), and my PE teacher tried to speak with R. Upon my return to the office, every adult within earshot said in my absence R had threatened to “beat the shit” out of my PE teacher and out of me.

As an aside, just in case you are wondering, people threaten to hit me fairly regularly-I usually hear that threat a couple of times a week. But I’ve only ever been purposefully hit by a student once in twenty-two years, and I’ve been threatened at least a thousand times. That one time getting hit wasn't any fun at all, but my point is, although I hear it all the time, it’s almost always just an empty threat.

As R escalated his behavior, I asked my secretary to call his mother to come in and meet with us. When she arrived, R’s behavior got significantly worse, and he directed equal amounts of ire at his mother as at me. We sat down in my office, and R began by turning his chair away from me. I’ve got a bunch of tools in my toolbox to encourage students to de-escalate their behaviors, so without offering every detail, we got to the point where R was sitting quietly and listening.

I began. “It’s time for a hard truth.

You can’t read.

You’re expected to graduate in May of 2022, and you aren’t going to. You’ll drop out before then because you can’t read.

You can’t get a job, because you can’t read the applications.

You can’t do any tasks that require the most basic reading skills.

You’re going to be living with your mother for the rest of her life, because without being able to read, you have no choices, and no opportunities.

You show up at school, but being here isn’t the same as learning. You can’t read.

You can say ‘fuck you, bro’ as many times as you like and you still can’t read.

You can threaten our PE teacher, and you still can’t read.

You can threaten to hit me, and you still can’t read.

You can run around the building day after day and you still can’t read.

We might be able to help you, but you won’t let us, and you still can’t read.”

I continued. “If I could go to your elementary school and yell at them for passing you through to us year after year, I would. I can’t imagine what it feels like to sit in classrooms day after day, year after year, and not be able to read. It must be so scary and I know I’ve never felt anything like that.”

I never got into a fight when I was a kid. But I’ve always been able to punch with words. I joke sometimes with my students and staff about words hurting. But I took it a step further than just hurting. I eviscerated a fourteen year old boy. By the time I stopped talking both R and his mother had tears running down their faces. Was I too harsh? I wonder what you, the reader, thinks about my words? Perhaps you speak to students this way also? Or maybe you aren’t in schools where these conversations need to happen? What bothers me is not that I made R cry, or that I had to speak harshly to him. What bothers me is that I’m the first person to have this conversation with him. His mother knows he is a struggling reader, but she hasn’t ever spoken to him in this way. And what about his former teachers and principal? I don’t know. As I mentioned, R isn’t particularly likeable. He’s just the kind of kid that gets passed on, whether he learned or not.

So now what? Honestly, I have no idea. I don’t have anyone on staff who who is reading certified or has any idea how to teach a fourteen year old to read for the first time. My current plan is to pull him out of science class as often as I can, and teach him how to read myself-as best I can. To be clear, I’m not a reading teacher either. But I am a learner, so I’ll do my best. Can we help R? I really don’t know. I don’t ever give up on students, and I’m not starting now. But the mountain ahead of R is pretty damn big.

R is my most disruptive non-reading student, but he isn’t my only one. I have three. R, another 9th grader, and a 17 year old, who is trying to repeat, 9th and 10th grade classes, and take 11th grade classes, while barely being able to read-all at the same time. I’m supposed to know what to do. I’m supposed to have the answers. But I don’t. If you have any suggestions, I’m all ears. Oh, by the way, in addition to these three students who are essentially non-readers, I have another another seventy students across 9th and 10th grades who read between a 2nd and 5th grade reading level. Any suggestions? How similar is this to your experiences?

These are our students and our challenges. As I’ve mentioned, the work is incredibly hard. And when we fail, students end up living in poverty, or in jail, or with the life they have to have instead of the life they choose. Time to get back to work.

Until next week….

Is It Getting Better?

I write mostly about my experiences in our inner city school. I purposefully stay away from the teacher experience for several reasons. First, while I’m still very much a teacher, I’m no longer a classroom teacher. And secondly, it’s next to impossible to write all the contextual pieces that are needed to really understand what it means to teach in our environment. Sometimes what I write is misinterpreted-it’s easy to misinterpret when a reader unknowingly places their often white, middle class values about school, and teaching and learning on my school context. It’s not a stretch to say my school is on a different planet from most edu-blogosphere and edu-twitter users’ schools. So I worry about how my teachers will be perceived if I write about their experiences.

This week, in response to my last post, Matt Mineau asked about the teacher experience at our school, and then again in a google hangout we held a few days ago, he asked, “Is it getting better?” So, as long as you, the reader, agree to direct any of your frustration about teaching and learning at my school, at me, and not at my teachers, I’ll give sharing their experiences a shot.

You know that game, Two Truths and a Lie? It’s the first descriptor that comes to mind in trying to answer Matt’s question of “Is it getting better?” So let’s play the game:

• It’s getting better all the time
• Students are learning
• We’ve never been this good, and we’re still a million miles from where we need to be.

Which are the truths and which is the lie?

Before I answer, let me try and paint a picture of what it is to teach in this environment. Most teachers have classes of 25-32 students. Not terrible, and not great either. Teachers teach five 54 minute periods per day, they have one 54 minute period off, and one 40 minute lunch period. I’ve worked hard to ensure that almost every teacher is only teaching two different courses and not three. Mostly, teachers are broken down into teaching 9th grade only, 9/10, and 11/12. First period starts at 8:00 AM. The doors open for students at 7:30 AM to come in and have a free breakfast. 100% of our students receive free breakfast and lunch. We’re not a neighborhood school, so students come to us from all over the city. There aren’t any school busses for students, so everyone takes public transportation to get to school. We have students who arrive at school with plenty of time to eat and be ready for first period, and we have plenty of students who leave their homes between 6:00 AM and 6:30 AM and the bus drops them off at school between 8:15-8:30. That is absolutely the earliest they can get to school, and they miss most of first period every day. There are seven required graduation tests in the state of Ohio. The tests aren’t terrible. They are assessing learning and application of learning. They are similar in style and scope to the MCAS in Massachusetts and the Regents in New York.

60% of entering 9th graders every single year, read and do math below a 5th grade level. At a meeting for my own first grade son this week, I learned that he scored a 168 on the NWEA, MAP Reading Assessment. I have a group of 9th graders scoring between 185-195. That means they are reading at or around a second grade level-as 9th graders. Just take that in again. My first grade son, who is an emerging reader, is just a little behind a to-large group of my 9th grade students.

Most students have lost someone to violence. Most students live in single parent homes. Most students live with their mother or grandmother. I have several amazing fathers engaged in our school-but most students don’t engage academically with their fathers.

Our students come to school hungry. They come to school cold. They arrive angry. Many exhibit the signs of PTSD-and receive no counseling services. A large group need glasses and don’t have them. A percentage of that group needs glasses, don’t have them and have no idea they need glasses. Picture your own high school or middle school. How many students wear glasses and/or have braces? I think I have two students with braces. And dozens of students who cannot see the front of the classroom because they don’t have access to glasses.

If you came to my school and asked one question- “What vegetable do you like to eat?” The most common answer would be-ranch dressing. There’s a supermarket, and it’s a good one, across the street from my school. But there aren’t supermarkets in any of my students’ actual neighborhoods. Think of the implications of that-there is no access to fresh fruits and vegetables for virtually all of my students. Students start eating hot cheetos, doritos, and soda on their way to school. That’s breakfast, lunch and often dinner. Or McDonalds-McDonalds is common for breakfast and dinner too. Students who never eat anything healthy are grumpy. They get tired easily, and they exist in a perpetual state of hangriness. Students have headaches all day. They are dehydrated, malnourished, and perpetually tired. And then they go to class and my teachers have to figure out how to engage them.

This week, my American History teacher was teaching about Federalism. My World History teacher, Nationalism. In Biology, it was Genetics. And in Physical Science it was Force. In Algebra, it was graphing functions. Pop Quiz: How would you teach Federalism to students reading at a 2nd grade level? A fourth grade level? And if that question feels too abstract, how about this one. How would you teach your elementary aged child to drive a car? It’s the same type of question. How do you teach someone with huge gaps in their knowledge and experiences? How do you teach someone Functions who hasn’t yet learned how to divide? How do you teach Genetics to someone who hasn’t learned cause and effect? How do you teach Nationalism to someone who has never left Cleveland, and doesn’t know that Europe isn’t a country? There are lots of difficult jobs out there. I’m not in the competition game-but it’s hard to convince me there is a more difficult job than teaching in the inner city.

How would you teach students who are hungry, and angry, with gaps in their knowledge, PTSD, and reading many years below grade level? The skills most of us have as teachers only work sometimes in this environment. And there’s a whole other set of skills that you don’t know you need, and have to learn to survive, that are vital to teaching and learning in this community.

When I’m hiring teachers, one of my standard lines is, “We teach kids, not content.” Your love of Shakespeare, or moles in Chemistry isn’t useful in this environment. What’s required is relentless and unconditional care for the kids. We have to like them. We have to believe in them more than they believe in themselves. We have to care deeply about them as people, and not how they relate to or don’t relate to Romeo and Juliet. And it’s so hard. There aren’t words to describe how hard it is. Expert teachers in suburban communities can fail as inner city teachers. The standard set of teaching skills are non-transferable in this environment. Our students curse at our teachers out of anger sometimes, but mostly out of fear. Are you ready to be told “Fuck You” on a regular basis? Sometimes fuck you means what it sounds like. But often it means, I’m lost. I don’t get it. I’m scared. I’m angry. I’m hurt. But every time, it still sounds like fuck you in the way we usually hear it. And it hurts every single time. No matter what the students’ intent.

Our students experience school in a constant state of desperation. Please don’t find out I don’t understand. Our students fear so deeply that despite your best efforts as a teacher, you also won’t be able to help them learn. So maybe it’s better not to try. Our students yell at our teachers. Our students hide in plain sight. They put earbuds in, crank up the music and say with every fiber of their being, “I dare you to get me to care. I dare you to try and teach me.” The notion of readiness to learn is non-existent in our classrooms. School is for sure a place students come to be safe. It’s a place to get warm. It’s a place to get food. And it’s absolutely a place to be compliant. But a place to learn? Not really.

So that’s the context. See why it’s hard to write about it?

Back to two truths and a lie. Did you figure out which were true and which was the lie?

Truth #1

We’ve never been this good, and we’re still a million miles from where we need to be

We’re talking about student learning more than we ever have before. We used to have conversations about safety, and discipline, and law and order, and discipline, and bad parenting, and discipline, and then we’d talk more about discipline. Now, it’s mostly about student learning. We are the best version of ourselves that we’ve ever been. For years, I had as many long-term subs as I did certified teachers. So it was a roll of the dice when walking into a classroom if you would see students engaged in any kind of meaningful task or not. We have chromebooks for everyone now. Teachers are using google classroom, nearpod, and other tools to engage students in the content. We have tools, we have structures, and we have systems in place to have the highest level of engagement we’ve ever experienced.

Truth #2
It’s getting better all the time

We have the best set of teachers our students have ever had. Every year, we add something new and positive to our academic program. My teachers are immersed in the difficult learning of incorporating literacy skills across the curriculum. It’s hard work. And most of them are killing it. Remember before I listed some of the topics students were covering last week? Federalism, Nationalism, Genetics, and Force. Now add to those already difficult topics, teachers incorporating instructional tools and strategies so students can specifically grow their very low literacy skills. High school teachers don’t think of themselves as reading teachers. And our teachers don’t either. But they’ve taken on the challenge of incorporating literacy everywhere possible. My PE teacher has students reading articles and using graphic organizers as part of the learning in her class. We’ve never approached anything like that before and it’s vital to support our students in the manner in which they need and deserve.

The Lie

Students are Learning
Students are compliant. Students are engaged in tasks and activities. Students are doing more relevant work than ever before. But I can’t yet prove that they are learning. Is every class in every high school about learning? I wish the answer was yes, but it’s not. It’s my seventh year as the principal of our school, and I can’t say definitively that all students are learning. Does that make me a bad principal? Maybe. Does it mean I have terrible teachers? It could. But I would challenge anyone reading this to come to our school and do it differently and better. It’s so damn hard.

Back to Federalism, Nationalism, Genetics, and Force. There are so many better ways to teach those topics than what we are using. PBL, Design Thinking, Genius Hour, and on and on and on. But our students have no idea what learning looks like. For them, school has always been an exercise in compliance. Not only do we have to teach students to read, but we have to teach them to learn. For most of us, if we decided to run a marathon, we’d have to train for it. I’d die if I had to run a marathon tomorrow. If we want to play in a band, we have to learn the instrument and practice, and then practice some more. But everyone just assumes that students know how to learn, just because they showed up at school. Our students don’t know how. And the absence of knowing how to learn, means the absence and evidence of actual learning.

Currently, I’m teaching my teachers to differentiate content, process, or product in their classrooms. They don’t know how to differentiate? They do, at your schools. What they don’t know how to do is teach Federalism, Nationalism, Genetics, Force and Graphing Functions to the couple of students who are at or above grade level, to the 10 students who are a 5th-8th grade level, and to the 15-20 students who are well below a 5th grade level, all at the same time-while also teaching literacy skills, and trying to teach students to be learners. Do you know how to do that? If you do, please come help. I’m teaching every day. And my teachers are learning it. Slowly. And they are incorporating it into their classes while learning it themselves-and that’s not easy to do.

Learning is the last mountain to climb. Are we getting better? Yes. Is it enough? No. It’s not close. If you have any thoughts on how to do this differently, or better, please come on over. We all want to do better for our students. And our students need us to be better at a faster rate than we can possibly improve in reality. Their lives at actually at stake. And so we press on.

Until next week...

The Cycle of Care, Empathy, and Engagement

There are no students at my school who enter 9th grade, stay four years, attend classes, excel, engage, and graduate as planned four years later. Not one. Not ever. The journey is filled with starts and stops, failures and more failures, fear, self-sabotage, and self-doubt. Generally, students come to us in 9th grade and hopefully they enter only two to three years below grade level in reading and math. Hopefully. Most enter 9th grade reading and doing math below a 5th grade level. But that’s not the bad part. They’ve been passed along in elementary school, learning from their experiences that good kids move on to the next grade, bad kids move on to the next grade, struggling students move on, and those who excel move on. Success is measured by compliance, not learning. So students enter 9th grade knowing, from all their lived experiences that showing up at school is what is needed to advance to the next grade; compliance, not learning is king. Add to this equation a healthy dose of inner city issues-be it poverty, trauma, loss, or violence, or maybe all at the same time. Then add a just a dash of puberty and the teenage sense of invincibility that comes with it, and we have ourselves the educational molotov cocktail entering our school doors on the first day of 9th grade. One hundred of those educational cocktails enter our doors in August.
Then the work begins. I use the term work, but it’s really a war. We fight daily for the hearts and minds of our students. We fight daily to plant the seeds, then to cultivate, and grow hopes and dreams for a positive and most importantly, a named future. We fight daily to shift from compliance to learning. We fight daily to teach skills. We fight daily to teach students to view themselves as learners. We fight daily to make our small school the eye of the storm so the violence of the neighborhood and the despair in the community can knock at our doors, but it cannot get inside. We fight daily to care about students, empathize with students, and teach students the tools to engage on their own as graduates with self-efficacy and agency.
I think of this fight as a cycle of Care, Empathy, and Engagement. Sometimes one leads to the other, and sometimes they are concurrent. Here’s a profile of three young men at different stages in this cycle.

D, T, and A

D enrolled at Design Lab in August of 2013. I don’t remember how many years below grade level he was when he arrived, but I know for sure he wasn’t close to reading or thinking, or problem solving on a 9th grade level.

T enrolled in August of 2014. Soon after his arrival, we lost our 9th grade history teacher and 9th grade English teacher for the year, and I couldn’t find certified replacements for months. T spent most of 9th grade taught by substitute teachers.

A enrolled in August of 2017. He came to our school because his sister graduated last year, and his mother believes we can get him to the finish line. A is on grade level as a reader. But he’s in and out of the juvenile detention center and he keeps on violating his parole.

D began stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down at our school soon after he arrived, but it took me awhile to figure it out. He played and laughed all the time, and by the end of first semester of 9th grade, he had failed every class. In February of 2014, as D continued to fail every course, I was able to purchase chromebooks for every student. We went from having six desktops in most classrooms, to a computer in everyone’s hands. I lacked systems and structures to manage the chromebooks and students started stealing them soon after I put them into use in classrooms. D continued to come to school every day, although he learned nothing.
Sometime in the spring, I figured out that D was the primary chromebook thief. I confronted him, scared him, and tricked him into admitting his crime by pretending I had more information than I really did. He had at least a dozen chromebooks at his home, and another bunch at a friend’s house. But he had sold many to a store that bought stolen goods from anyone willing to sell. He had sold enough computers to ensure a felony theft charge would follow him for the rest of his life. What to do? He had broken my trust. He had stolen from our school. And I intended to expel him and have him arrested to show the rest of my school what happened to computer thieves.

T spent most of 9th grade actually running through our hallways. His teachers couldn’t handle him, and he had a partner in crime who encouraged every bad behavior you can imagine, and many you can’t. T was either quiet in class or outrageously disruptive. When quiet, he spent most of his time, with his hood up to hide his headphones. He could tune out whatever the teacher was saying by listening to music. Depending on the course, he either failed quietly, or loudly. But he failed them all. He alternated between invisible with some teachers, and angrily cursing and yelling at others. T lives in a neighborhood where he must be in a gang to survive. There is no choice, and he started skipping school more than he attended school. Every time he returned we talked privately. I challenged him to either drop out or engage in school. I told him his circumstances outside of school could control, and ultimately end his life, or he could take charge of his own life and make something better. He never fully engaged; but he never left either. T has been coming to school, and trying to be a ghost for years.

In the first week of school this year, A cursed at a teacher. The teacher asked him a question, about whatever the learning was intended to be, and A’s very clear answer was “Fuck You.” When A got to me, I told him that how he talks to people matters, and our conversation degenerated from there pretty quickly. Within seconds, we were nose to nose, and A hadn’t threatened me yet, but he was ready to hit me. We were inches apart, and I whispered to him, “If you hit me, you might knock me down, but you will end up leaving this building in handcuffs. How do you win this?” I could see A thinking it through. He cursed at me to save face, and took a step back and sat down.

I brought D’s family in to my office to tell them he was being expelled. As I remember it, two uncles and his mother came to the meeting. One uncle said nothing-he just sat there filled with rage; either at me or D, it wasn’t clear. The other uncle talked about D as being the hope of the family. He was to be the first to graduate from high school. He was to be one of the only men to stay out of jail. He was the one who would make it; how could he have done this? And his mother sat quietly, seething. I hadn’t told them what my plan was, and before I could, D’s mother, in a voice filled with loss and anger said, “Kick him out of your school. Have him arrested. I’m done with him.” And then she stormed out, slamming the door behind her. I sent them away, without making a decision, and told them to come back the next day.
I didn’t expel him, and I didn’t call the police. I decided that what D needed most was care. If he were to fail, let him fail knowing that he did it to himself. Let him fail knowing that someone was there by his side, and his failure was his, and his alone. And maybe he wouldn’t fail. The uncles came back, and this time, I had my custodian, and my basketball coach/assistant custodian, with me. I told D he wasn’t expelled and I wouldn’t be calling the police. I told him he couldn’t transfer to another school, no matter what, and if he tried to, I would call the police about the chromebooks. And I told D he owed me a debt. He needed to volunteer to work at the end of each school day and during school vacations, including summer break to work off the monetary debt. But the debt could not, and would not be fully paid until he graduated from high school.

T was shot last year in a gang-related incident. I still don’t know the whole story, nor do I want to. But some people came to his house and shot at the windows. Subsequently, T ended up shot in the foot. I never heard the full story, but he stayed out of school for months. The cover story was he couldn’t walk, and that was partially true, but the real story was he and his mother feared that leaving his house would result in his death. So he stayed home. I tried to convince him to withdraw from school, so he could be in an online program, to have some chance of doing something school related in his absence. But his mother told me that withdrawing from our school meant he would never graduate. He was staying. No matter what.

I’ve suspended A over and over again in the first semester. He is so angry. His mother refuses to come in most days; she says he’s too difficult. He’s either in class for the entire period or kicked out within seconds of arrival. There’s rarely an in between. He’s failed every course in the first semester, and our testing to check for readiness or lack thereof for the state graduation tests, tells us he’s learned absolutely nothing in the first semester. His behavior before Winter Break got progressively worse, to the point where I called his probation officer four days in a row. Although I didn’t know it until we returned from break, A’s behavior in school, resulted in him spending a week in lock up at the Juvenile Detention Center over winter break. He blames me for his time in lock up.

D’s mother never stepped foot in our school again. He worked summers and vacations, and even when we told him he had worked enough, he asked to come back for more. The story isn’t a happy one after I let him stay. He gave up, over and over again, and someone always had to pick him back up again. First it was my custodian who became his mentor, and caregiver and taught him what hard work looked and felt like, and what it meant to take pride in a job well done. Then my assistant custodian/basketball coach took up the mantle and became his caregiver-teaching him resilience, toughness and to never give up. Later my Campus Coordinator taught D the content he needed to pass the last two state exams standing in his way. Her care and willingness to make time to teach D, when she clearly had no time to give, allowed him to cross the finish line. And I, I did what I do. I was the eye of the storm, offering care when none was warranted. I cared by being angry for D, and occasionally angry with D. I cared by offering him a glimpse of what the future could hold. I empathized when he wanted to give up, picked him up when he fell, pushed him when he needed it, and cheered as often as possible.
On December 21, 2017, he graduated. And as I shook his hand, and hugged him on that stage, I whispered in his ear, that his debt is fully paid. After graduation, I stood with his family, and his mother, who I hadn’t seen since that day in my office, told me with tears in her eyes, that D is planning to attend college. We didn’t discuss our last conversation, held years before.
In two weeks, I’ll be speaking to 8th graders who are making high school choices for next year. D will speaking by my side. He’s agreed to share his story with the potential class of 2022. He’s also coming in next week so my Campus Coordinator can help him with his college applications. He wants to attend the University of Akron in the fall.

T sat with my Campus Coordinator earlier this week. He’s 19 years old now, and there’s no chance for him to graduate in May. He’s accepted a job at a factory, and he’s right on the edge of dropping out. But he doesn’t want to. My Campus Coordinator worked out an academic game plan, where, if he does everything, and works incredibly hard, he could graduate in August. I came in to speak with him, and he looked me in my eyes and told me he wants to graduate. I believe him. Can he do it? I don’t know. But for the first time since he arrived, I know that he wants to graduate as much as we want him to graduate. And that’s a start. He’s been shot, missed a ton of school, and has a job he doesn’t want. But he needs to do engage in school. He needs to put in the time. I’m incredibly hopeful I have the opportunity to give him the diploma will have earned in early August.

A came to school yesterday incredibly angry. He started cursing at me immediately and was dressed to promote antagonism and anger. He came to school to fight, not with another student, but certainly with me, and his every action screamed “I dare you to engage with me. I dare you to connect with me. I dare you to get me to try.” I brought him to our Planning Center, the place students go to decompress, or when they need to be taken out of class. He looked at me with such anger and hatred in his eyes, and said, “I ain’t doing anything you ask.” I told him he had a choice. He could pull his pants up, take out his head phones, and leave his phone, his headphones, his hoodies, his do-rag, and a bunch of other items with our Planning Center teacher, or if he intended to keep them all on, he could walk out of the building. There was no in between. He yelled at me, cursed at me, and told me in no uncertain terms how awful I am. My Planning Center teacher stood up and raised her voice in a way that she never does. “How dare you!” she said. “How dare you let this man, care more about you than you care about yourself!” A ignored her words, and said to me, “I’m going to class, and I’ll wear what I want to wear and say what I want to say to whoever, whenever.” I told him if he walked into any class, with any of the items I had demanded he remove, I would physically remove him from the building. “And when you put your hands on me, I will beat you down.” He said. “You may beat me down,” I said, “and then you will go back to jail. It’s your move.” We waited, silently, in a tension-filled office. Slowly, and quietly, without looking at me, A handed all of the items I required to our Planning Center teacher, and I walked away without another word.
A stayed and spoke with her for another thirty minutes or so. While I know what was said, it’s not for public consumption. And then A, went to class. And he had what might have been his best day of learning all year.

D’s story is one that appears to end happily. So far. He’s graduated, but there’s still more to do, and his story isn’t over. T is poised at the precipice. On one side is a diploma with choices for a better future. On the other side, he’s a drop-out at nineteen, living a life he hates. And A’s story is still in the first chapter. Of all three young men, he has the most academic potential. If he can learn to be a positive young man, he could absolutely succeed at a four year college. He can be anything and anyone he wants. But can he stay out of jail? I don’t know. Can he pass any high school class? He can for sure. Will he choose to? I just don’t know.

There aren’t any students in our school for whom the road is easy. We care. We empathize, and we get them to engage. And sometimes it works, and other times it doesn’t. Either way, the cycle continues.

Until next week...

Disconnected Connections

I’ve never been so connected through social media, and it’s never been this lonely. I hear about the echo chamber that twitter is for many users, and that simply isn’t my experience. Although I’m connected, I haven’t been able to engage with any of the tweets I’ve read for many months. I want to use what I’m reading to grow my practice, and I want to apply the ideas I get from the chats I participate in, but there’s a chasm between what I read, and what I’m actually able to do at our school. 

I last posted on this blog on November 7, 2015. I’ve thought about writing again hundreds of times, but I never do, because it feels impossible to share the context of everything that happens at our school. But the reality is, I need the edu-twitter-verse wisdom to help me move forward. The work is simply too hard to do it entirely on my own and I want to find ways to connect again.

I’m a huge fan of the movie, The Princess Bride. You know the scene when Fezzik and Inigo give the Man in Black the miracle pill and he wakes up. Inigo needs to explain what’s happening to Wesley, so he says, “Let me explain. No, there is too much, let me sum up. So, here’s my version of that:

• This is my seventh year as principal of Design Lab Early College High School, an inner city high school in Cleveland 
• I spent the first six years: 
• Making the school safe. We still have occasional problems, as any high school, and any inner city high school certainly does, but I no longer have to sneak into my house to hide other people’s blood on my clothing from my wife. (#truth) 
• Finding and hiring and creating positions to bring in teachers who care about kids and have the skills to teach them. 
• One year, I went an entire school year, 180 days, without a single school day when all my teachers came to work
• I’ve had cohorts of students who only had long-term subs for years at a time 
• I filled an engineering position this year, after years of searching for someone who could do the job 
• Creating a culture where relationships matter with both students and teachers 
• Creating a culture where the role of the principal isn’t simply to punish students in support of teachers. 
• Building a community of care 
• This one remains a daily battle. Care and inner city high school aren’t words that traditionally go together. But we’re making it happen. 
• Creating a college-going-culture, and having a plan for after high school culture 
• This one is a daily battle also. We can get students into college, but getting them to stay in college is a mountain we have not climbed 
• Creating an environment where we are the eye of the storm in our students’ lives 
• 100% of our students receive free and reduced lunch. They come to us dealing with all the issues extreme poverty brings to the table that you know, and so many more than you haven’t even imagined. 
• Bringing making, design, and real-world problem solving into our school. 
• We now have an x-block program, which brings community partners into our school to work with students. Read about it here. 

So what’s left to do?

• Learning. The learning at our school isn’t nearly good enough. It took me six full years to get to the point where all that’s left to do at our school, is the work that I should have been able to start the first day, of my first year. Improving student learning is all that’s left to do. And I’m not sure I know what to do. 

Here’s the reality of where we are: 

• Between 50%-60% of my incoming 9th grade students read and do math below a 5th grade level when they arrive at our school. I don’t know whether to repeat that statement, put it in bold font, or create an audio recording of me yelling it. Most of those arriving 9th graders are not close to a 5th grade level yet and they have a thousand strategies to use to pretend they know how to do school and to avoid learning. 
• Imagine barely being able to read as a high school student 
• Imagine believing you can graduate because you’ve been passed on so many times already, and not understanding that if you can’t pass the graduation tests, you can’t graduate. 
• Most of my teachers have classes of 25 to 32 students. In those classes are students reading at a second or third grade level, a fourth and fifth grade level, at grade level, and above grade level. It’s an incredible instructional challenge for my team. 

Winter break is coming to an end and my teachers return to school on Monday. Students will return on Tuesday. I think I’m going to try to write about my efforts to grow instructional practices and increase student learning over the rest of this year and into next. My intent is to try and write one post per week. Hopefully, I’m up for the challenge. I’ve spent the last two days diving into our student winter data. And here’s our current reality. Simply put, the students in the middle-those just below or close to grade level are learning. We have tangible evidence to show they are improving. But the students who are extremely far behind, those far below grade level just aren’t learning. And the students who enter our school above grade level-they aren’t learning enough either. My teachers know how to teach to the middle. Differentiating for those so far behind, and those who are ahead is incredibly difficult. It’s not impossible-but it sure is hard. It isn’t that no one is learning. Part of the problem is that students are learning-but not nearly enough. Somehow, I have to figure out how to help teachers grow students more than one year within a year. We have some learning occurring, but a student who enters our school reading at a third grade level (3rd grade!) who improves a year, is reading at a 4th grade level at the end of 9th grade, a 5th grade level at the end of 10th grade, a 6th grade level at the end of 11th grade, and a 7th grade level at the end of the 12th grade. And despite that students’ progress, she isn’t graduating from high school, and she isn’t ready for the world after high school. Additionally, I don’t value teaching to the test. I value design, and making, and real-world problem solving. I’ve spent the last six years bringing these elements into our school in meaningful ways. But it sure is difficult to make problem solving and problem finding the focus when students have such low skills.

I’ve spent my career in schools like mine. But this is the first time I can’t say that all the problems that come with inner city education stand in the way of getting to the learning. I’ve done a good job of addressing everything that gets in the way of learning. Now I’m left with students who don’t know how to learn, teachers with the best intentions, who don’t know how to teach such a huge range of learners, and a lack of learning systems to meet students where they are and take them where they need to go.

It was incredibly daunting to take on the opportunity to lead Design Lab almost seven years ago. It felt like a monumental task ahead when I began. Today, we’re the best we’ve ever been; but we’re not close to being good enough. And as this very-needed vacation comes to an end, the task ahead feels more daunting than it ever has. There aren’t too many people to turn to for advice in this work. There are a million tweets about engagement and assessment and mastery and design, and phenomenal project after phenomenal project that students are doing at schools across the country. And I want to find connections, but the grand canyon exists between what you are tweeting about, and what I am doing.

Does anyone want to chat about how to get high schoolers excited about reading when they can’t find themselves in any books, and they really should be reading books at a second and third grade level? What a challenge.

Does anyone want to talk about teaching students who have been taught only to comply and complete worksheets how to ask why, and what if, and I wonder?

Or about how to teach teachers to differentiate for these enormous range of students in their classes without asking them to create a different lesson plan for each student?

I don’t expect any answers, but I sure would like to connect. I miss the connections in the edu-blogosphere. Sometimes just the dialogue helps.

Until next week....