Myth of the Bulletproof Vest

I am nearing the end of my fifth year as a teacher; I spent my first year at a suburban / rural middle school, and then the last four at an urban high school. When I made the transition, I heard the same reaction from so many friends and colleagues, almost always phrased with the same perceived humor, all thinking that they are the first ever to think of the jab:

"Hm... I suppose you'll be buying a bullet proof vest then, huh?"

I will freely admit it: This comment seemed an appropriate one and an applicable one to me at the time, before I began working here. As time has worn on and I have become experienced here in this setting, though, the same comment has come to mean something very different to me, a symbol of the frustrating prejudice and misinformation that my students deal with on a daily basis.

I truly love my school and my students. These young men and women are far more tolerant of those around them than their counterparts at the suburban setting at which I was previously. They are resilient, knowing that they will encounter frustrations and obstacles, and that they are best served moving past them at full force rather than perserverating upon them. The students that graduate are independent and self-reliant. As they relate to the educational process, these students are equally receptive and capable as their counterparts elsewhere.

My school is a safe, supportive place. Violence is not the norm, as the conventional wisdom seems to suggest. Certainly, there are incidents, offenders who get into a fight or are caught with a minor weapon; they are the vast, vast minority, however - the tiny, miniscule portion-of-a-percent of the population... and yet, sadly, they get the vast majority of the attention and press coverage. The result is that people see a school populated with young men and women from the city, they hear of a fight or a confiscated knife, and they allow their mind to extrapolate a "haven of scum and villainry" akin to Star Wars' Tatooine Cantina. Because the stories lack the enthralling excitement of conflict, they take no note of our students' achievements and victories. They do not share in what our students create, build, explore, and perform.

Indeed, we do have troubles. Certainly, as with any commonly held falsehood, there is a kernel or aspect of truth from which the lie has spawned. But that truth, in a way, is yet one more reason to praise our students. They come from backgrounds, areas, and circumstances that, far too often, are rife with obstacles, distractions, and hazards. Violence, gangs, drug use, and other elements are daily components of their life *outside* the school... many are fortunate to benefit from parents or family that struggle with them to keep those aspects from intruding on their lives, but a significant portion of the students are not so fortunate and must face these things alone.

A couple of years ago, I had a student whom needed to work from home for a short time at the end of her senior year, and therefore had her work brought to her by a homebound teacher. I would like to share with you what that homebound teacher shared with me. Each day, she would visit this student's home to drop off work and answer any questions, and while the student greeted her warmly and appreciatively, the mother was cold and unaccommodating. Day after day, she would work with an enthusiastic young woman, as her mother hovered angrily around. Only on one day did the routine temporarily break, when the mother was too stoned to be cold, and indeed made her only offer of hospitality to the teacher: a joint. She noted that the only food in the house was cold cereal, which the mother bought for many children and from which she expected them all to feed themselves all meals; the homebound teacher realized that hunger often proved a distration to the student, and one day brought a pizza, which the student very gratefully partook of, but only after taking a few moments to share a piece with each of her siblings and several neighbors. After a few weeks, as the year drew to a close (the student would need summer school yet to graduate), one of the last visits gave witness to a verbal fight, as the mother suddenly exploded at the daughter, saying "I can't believe you are wasting your time with all this! You're working on homework night after night when you should be out trying to get you a man. If you don't find yourself a man and get yourself pregnant, you won't have any way to be supported."

This, friends, is the world in which so many of our students daily operate. All this, and IN SPITE of it all, they are in school each day, trying. They come to school to leave all these elements behind... and then the outside world inflicts them intellectually upon them anyway.

This is why, when people hear I teach here, and they reply "do you wear a bulletproof vest?", I can't help but feel sad, both for my students and for the speaker. I feel bad for my students because they are being stereotyped, pigeonholed, and limited even after all they do to overcome the troubles around them. I feel bad for the speaker because I pesonally know hundreds of talented, fun, promising young men and women that they are likely never to have the honor or pleasure of meeting.