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Sitting at my desk, I contemplated all the paperwork that had piled up since my school, Mott Hall Bridges Academy, was thrust into the spotlight a few months before. A small public middle school in one of the poorest and most underserved neighborhoods of Brooklyn was an unlikely candidate for an international press sensation. But ever since one of my boys brought attention to Mott Hall through a comment he made on the popular blog Humans of New York, ordinary people around the world had been captivated by what I was trying to do— which was simply to take care of kids everyone else seemed to want to forget.
I had barely started on the stack of performance reviews awaiting my attention when Malik walked in and sat down in one of the chairs across from my desk. The kids in this building know my door is open to them anytime.
“I need to have a talk,” the sixth grader said in such a soft voice I could hardly hear him.
“Talk about what?” I asked.
“About me.”
“What about you?”
“My work.”
“What about it?”
“It’s hard.”
“Okay, which classes are hard for you?”
“Every class. Except PE. It’s too hard. I’m failing. I always fail.”
His problems had begun back in his elementary school when his fourth- grade teachers, who couldn’t tolerate his angry demeanor, let him fall behind.
Malik, with chubby cheeks from baby fat he’d soon lose and sad eyes that he kept downcast, was typical of a kid from a failing elementary school; he was two years older than most of the children in his grade because he’d been held back a couple of times. The first thing people notice about him is that he looks like he’s angry— all the time. His expression makes it seem like he can’t be bothered, like he doesn’t want to hear what you have to say. That couldn’t be further from the truth, but you would never know it unless you speak to him, which his expression keeps people from doing. I always tell my kids, “You need to understand there are teachers in this world who, if they don’t like you, have that power to derail you. Even if you don’t feel like they’re invested, you can’t stop doing your work. Because they will be fine with you failing and repeating the grade.”
I understood how Malik’s demeanor could deflate a whole room and how frustrating that might be for a teacher just trying to get through a curriculum that was necessary to prepare a class to take state exams. But it wasn’t that he didn’t care; he acted like he didn’t care. Some teachers in his elementary school, however, took his negative behavior personally. Instead of supporting him and working with him until he understood the material, they just held him over. That started a trajectory from which it would be very hard for Malik to deviate.
Making kids repeat grades unfortunately is rarely about remediation and more about punishment. So when Malik came to us, not only did he still lack the academic skills he should have had by sixth grade but, as a thirteen- year-old in class with mostly eleven- year- olds, he was also disconnected from his peers. He would become agitated by how loud the other children in his class, who were at a different maturity and energy level, would get.
Don’t mistake me, Malik was not innocent. Soon after he arrived at Mott Hall, he had to call his mother from my office because he was talking back to his teacher and arguing with his peers. He got on the phone and said, “Yeah. So I’m told I need to call you because, like, I was rude. Yeah. Uh- huh. Uh- huh. Yeah, a’ight.” Then he hung up.
“Who were you talking to?” I asked.
“My mother.”
“No, no. I know I told you to call your mother. But I’m going to tell you, don’t ever talk to your mother like that. You can’t ‘a’ight’ her or dismiss her.”
“She ain’t have a problem with it.”
“But I do, and I am a mother. So maybe she doesn’t want to have that type of conversation with you, but I will. Don’t you ever in your life, as long as I’m in your space, talk to your mother like that.”
“A’ight. A’ight.”
“Malik! What did I just say?”
Malik wasn’t a bad kid or even a troublemaker; he was just always in trouble. It was heavy as he sat across from my desk and admitted he “always” failed, not least of all because this wasn’t the first hard conversation he and I had had that week.
Two days earlier, I had let him know he wasn’t going on the big Harvard trip with the rest of the school. In a much- publicized event, people from all over the world had funded the trip once they learned that there was a principal who wanted her underserved students to experience what it was like at one of America’s elite institutions of higher learning. Everyone at Mott Hall was excited beyond words to go, but Malik and a handful of other stu- dents wouldn’t be invited to participate. He wasn’t going because of his defiance toward adults, although he tried to argue, “I can act right on a trip.”
“First,” I told him, “you have to remember that acting right starts in school. If you don’t behave yourself here and respect the adults who love you, then you don’t get the privilege of choosing when it will be convenient for you to do so. I don’t prepare you for trips. I prepare you for life,” I said. “You need to identify how we can help you become the best scholar. Because if you think the only way of surviving life is going on a Harvard trip, then your priorities are not in the right place.”
Now that he had come into my office to explain the source of his attitude and anger, I knew it was genuine. He wasn’t trying to ingratiate himself, because Malik and all the kids at Mott Hall knew me better than that. My expectations are high and I never waver from them. He wasn’t going on the trip, which hadn’t been an easy decision for me. I didn’t enter education to punish children.
In the last few days, though, something in Malik had clicked, a nebulous connection between attitude, trust, and opportunity. He was in my office to finally talk about what was keeping him from succeeding in school. This was a moment of great achievement, at least in my school.
By all accounts— economic, social, academic— the State of education in America for children of color living in disadvantaged communities is extremely poor, while the con- sequences for them if they don’t make it in school are severe. Many issues contribute to the devastating difference between education for white children and education for those of color, including poverty, inequitable distribution of resources, and lower parental involvement and education levels. But the punitive way the system deals with children of color can’t be underestimated.
The so- called school- to-prison pipeline starts early. According to the latest numbers available from the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection, black students, who represented 18 percent of preschoolers between 2011 and 2012, made up 48 percent of preschool students who received more than one suspension. Compare that to white students, comprising 43 percent of all preschool students, who made up only 23 percent of the suspensions— in other words, children of color are suspended at twice the rate of white children in preschool. That’s just the start. Nationwide, black students— whose teachers on the whole have less experience and are paid less than those in majority- white schools— are suspended or expelled at three times the rate of white ones.
Integration has proven in study after study to offer the best outcomes in terms of bringing up test scores for children of color. But after the initial commitment to desegregation through court orders and thirty- five years of enforcement of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, around 1989, schools began reverting to levels of seg- regation not seen since the sixties. There are a number of reasons that this is so, including the fact that many federal agencies no longer take an active role in enforcement of integration. The proportion of black students in schools with a majority of white students, 23.2 percent, was lower in 2011 that it was in 1968.
Today’s answer to the problems of students who aren’t learning has been to create higher standards under the rubric Common Core, a blanket measure against which all schools nationwide— impoverished or wealthy— are judged. The other solution is to offer school choice, by way of charter schools, where public money goes to schools that don’t have to follow public school guidelines. There are all kinds of charters, but the innovation that most of them feature focuses on high test scores as the only measure of success.
In that context, Mott Hall is a different kind of place. First of all, we’re not a charter school (which I’ll explain in more detail later). My goal for my students, who are primarily economically disadvantaged and of color, is twofold. First, in the short time that I have them, I want them to be what they are— children—and second, I want to give them the skills to be confident as students when they leave. I want them to play, learn, build resiliency, take risks, become compassionate— all without worry about failure. I’m hard on the adults in this building, because there are no second chances with our children. Once they leave us, few people will ever pour into them the love and belief in their abilities that we do. Those are high stakes.
Disheartening circumstances in no way reduce my expectations for excellence from my students. We have many inspirational sayings at our school, but one of my favorites is the name we’ve given to our kids: Brownsville Brilliance. This title turns the perceptions about them and their community on their heads. When I ask the scholars what the word brilliance makes them think of, they answer “intelligence,” “radiance,” and “diamonds.” Yes, and what are diamonds but precious gems created when a large amount of pressure and force is exerted, just as it is on my scholars in life. In this way, we speak into existence how we find the positive in a place that has been discarded.
I, and the rest of the staff at Mott Hall Bridges Academy, who have committed to working with the most challenging communities, understand that, just as it takes a long time for carbon to become a diamond, change for our students is not an event, it is a process.
So when Malik, a boy who has to be defiant to survive on the streets of Brownsville, was able to make himself vulnerable enough to admit to me he was having trouble, yes, that was a big achievement.
I came around my desk and sat down next to Malik. “One, I want to thank you for coming into my office and admitting you’re struggling. That is half the battle,” I said. “What are you doing next week for spring break?”
“Nothing.”
“You can come to school. I’ll be here anyway, and I will sit with you and go through your work. Bring your books, so I can see exactly where you are struggling. You become angry and give attitude because you don’t understand. Yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“Then you need to promise me something. Use your words and let the adults know how we can help you. Got it?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then we’re going to get through this together.”
