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- Mar 13, 2004
This is a long read, but it gives an indepth look at the inner workings of Coolidge HS (Washington DC) from the students, teachers, and classroom environment.The students are being uncooperative, the school is lacking things like A/C (which doesn't help matters at all), and the teachers are being put inclassrooms where TEACHING is increasingly difficult. It said 11-12 teachers are absent every week from teaching at Coolidge. It's a great read, and I hopeyou all at least check out the photo gallery. There are some excellent pictures from a teacher who has a fat lip and stitches above his eye (due to analtercation with a student), to a kid smoking a joint in the stairwell of the school, to a teacher breaking up an altercation between two students. I'velinked up the photo gallery, and some insight from two of the teachers. If you don't read the whole article, read what these two teachers said....
Lessonsin Reality (whole article)
Coolidge PhotoGallery
Here's part of the article focusing on the incident where the teacher got beat up (his picture is in the gallery/link above)
Lessonsin Reality (whole article)
Coolidge PhotoGallery
Here's part of the article focusing on the incident where the teacher got beat up (his picture is in the gallery/link above)
Willis passes out markers, and six boys stand at the board. They argue about which problem is the hardest. The door is closed, but a steady stream of students in the hall wander past and peer through the window.
Later that week, two girls dart into class to borrow an MP3 player. Willis blocks one. She falls and gets up cursing. "In all my 28 years, I've never had to stand there and listen to some of the things she said," and from a 14-year-old child no less, Willis says. " 'Who the (expletive) do you think you are? I'll slap your%$+@.' I said, 'Young lady, go to class. If you have a complaint, you can go to the office.' She said, 'You can't tell me what the (expletive) to do.' "
Willis signaled for a nearby security officer. "I'm like, 'Are you not going take them to the office and get them suspended immediately? Will you please take them to the office and get them away from my class.' " After a few minutes of profanity, the girls leave, threatening to bring someone back to deal with him.
Later they return and throw a bottle of tropical punch on him.
By the next week, Willis is oozing frustration. It's one distraction after another. A student in the hall pulls at the side door. Someone else drums sticks on it. He is angry at the traffic in the halls. "I've never been part of something so disorganized," he rails.
In class, Willis reviews for a test but has to stop frequently to reprimand students. "I'm not asking you -- I'm telling you -- to move to that blue chair right now," he tells one.
They argue, and Willis orders the boy to the office.
Later, the boy returns. "Ain't nobody in the main office," he says. Willis makes him leave again, and again the student walks out, cursing.
Willis waves another student away from the door.
Suddenly, someone yanks the door open, and there's a loud pop. The kids jump up yelling and scramble to the back. The smell of rotten eggs fills the classroom.
Willis opens a window to air out the room from the stink bomb. Calm down, he orders his students. The day before, Cox's history class was hit.
Two boys appear outside the door. One has been kicked out of Cox's class for being disruptive. The other is a student of Willis's. They peer through the window and laugh. They bang on the door. Willis shoves the metal door open, and it hits his student. A knot swells on the student's forehead, and blood runs down past his eye.
A deep sense of inevitability descends on the afternoon.
"Why you hit me? Why you hit me?" the boy screams. "Look what the (expletive) you did to my head." The bell rings. Students file out. The boy continues yelling and cursing. He is stomping up and down. A crowd gathers, egging him on. You can't let him do that (expletive)! Steal him, so n ! kids yell.
The two boys push into Willis's class. Other students follow. The one who is bleeding turns over desks. He knocks over a computer. He tears apart the bulletin board that told them to respect themselves and their school.
All around, kids shout for vengeance.
Willis rushes out and down the stairs. The two boys follow him. The crowd follows them, 20 kids or more, running and jumping down the steps. Everyone is hollering. The last of the crowd gets to the first floor and rounds the corner.
Suddenly, kids are running back against the crowd. As he flees, one boy yells: "He put that *****
to sleep!" His voice echoes. Bodies blur in a rush. Seconds later, the hallways clear, the yelling grows distant and a surreal scene comes into focus.
On the floor, a few yards from the main office, Fredrick Willis lay crumpled. He is not moving.
Seemingly far off, someone starts to yell. "Get the (expletive) to class."
Comments from another teacher, and "highlights" of her classroom management....
Kathiresan , 22, had finished at the University of Georgia and was about to apply to medical school when she decided to take a few years to teach. "I didn't really know what I was getting myself into when I chose D.C.," she says.
Of the 27 students in one class, 17 had D's or F's mid-semester.
Last month in second period, Kathiresan yells at a student to hand over his phone. A girl asks loudly "somebody got some tape?" She wants to tape a mock ransom note to her own back. Kathiresan raises her hand and waits for students to quiet down.
They don't.
"You ain't tell me if you got tape or not," the girl yells out.
"Just a minute," says Kathiresan. "Let me control my class."
She counts down five, four, three, two, one. The chatter continues.
She counts down again. The chatter continues
She counts down again. The chatter continues.
Kathiresan tries to engage the class around the work. She has two students draw a bicycle on the board. "What would happen if you didn't have brakes?"
"He would go so fast he'd hit an old lady," one girl laughs. The class bursts into mini-eruptions.
Kathiresan counts down from five. She counts down again. She counts down again.
"What would happen if I take the wheels off the bike?" she asks.
"He would get [expletive] by another car," a girl calls out.
"The only people allowed to talk are those who raise their hands," Kathiresan says. "Take out paper for a quiz," she threatens. The class groans.
"Then you better let me review," says Kathiresan. The class continues talking. That's it. Kathiresan makes them take the quiz, five differences between plants and animals. No talking, she tells her class repeatedly.
"What's the date?" one girl yells out.
"You have a zero," the teacher tells her.
"NO!" the girl shrieks.
Other kids make fart sounds.
"When you are done with your two Ven diagrams, put your head on the table so I know you're done," Kathiresan says.
"She ain't even give us the review," complains one boy. "I don't know nothing. All I got is my name. That's why I hate school."
Kathiresan collects the papers. "Now, what I would like to do is throw these away and start over tomorrow," she says.
She'll try to review again if the class can accomplish 10 seconds of silence. She gets to eight and someone coughs. She gets to seven and they laugh. She counts to five and kids start to argue. A half-dozen tries but the class refuses to be silent. She reviews what she can.