The first four
years of my career were spent in a Title I school in a neighborhood with a
pretty high mobility rate, VERY high poverty rate, and an EXTREMELY high rate
of crazy shenanigans. Now, I’m not
saying the shenanigans happened only because of the circumstances surrounding
us, that’s just where I happened to be when all these things occurred. Now, I use the term “hood” lightly, mostly
because it was in Oklahoma City. And
let’s be honest, Oklahoma City is a pretty tame place. Secondly, the term has a negative
connotation, and I don’t mean it negatively.
I mean it simply as a way to say that I wasn’t teaching in the burbs.
I’m not sure when
I first realized I was teaching in The Hood.
Maybe it was having to call my students to remind them that school was
starting and pronouncing all their names wrong.
Maybe it was the first time we had a lockdown (not a drill, a
lockdown). Maybe it was the first time I
was cussed out by a student. Maybe it
was when I started to give directions in English and Spanish. Regardless, I figured it out real fast. My very first day, one of my students came to
school in an absolute fit, with the crying (yay kindergarten…) and the snottiness and the wailing. She seemed to not understand anything I was
saying, so I figured it would help to buddy her up with another
Spanish-speaking student. Great teacher moment. For an entire week, she spoke no
English. Not one word of English. Then I met her dad, who is a native
English-speaker. Confused, I told him
what was going on. He just laughed and
laughed. She just laughed and
laughed. That stinker spoke PERFECT
English, and had just been pretending not to for an ENTIRE week!!!
Anyways, if you’re
working in a low-income area, this is a book you absolutely HAVE to read, if
you haven’t already!
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