"us" and "them"

I admit guilt.

My previous teaching positions were in a densely populated state where, rather than having the typical setup of cities, suburbs, and outlying rural areas, everything just seemed to run together. Additionally, every dinky little town had its own school district. Some even had K-6 or K-8 districts that fed into a high school that was its own district. There were still some large urban districts, but those were "over there" and much of the state assistance went to "those people" "over there." I did my job and while the school population where I taught was very racially and economically diverse and had many of the same problems as the urban schools, it still wasn't one.

Having attended private school in my younger years and then an urban magnet program for middle and high school, the idea of families being afforded more "choice" in their education sounded pretty good to me, because I didn't know any better. I should have taken my parents up on their threat to throw me in public school earlier, because I probably would have saved them years of therapy. But I digress.

I'm realizing exactly how much I shut myself off from "them" "over there" because I never bothered to visit any schools in those urban areas.

In another state I visited one of "those" schools and really got to know some of the students. That school has since closed, the city is pretty much bankrupt, and I'm sure that school has since been reopened as a charter school. But the kids I knew, who are now adults, were real kids who worked hard, and their teachers were real teachers, who cared about the students and did the best they could for them.

My point is that there's a lot of talk about school choice and about families being able to choose a school and be "rescued" from their neighborhood school. But when school systems take kids out, or drive them out, or give in too much to the push for "choice,"  there is no mention of the students who are left. No thought given to the kids who are left without a school, and no special care taken to incorporate them into a new school community if their school does close.

I've even been guilty of saying "well yeah, we're an urban district, but we aren't THAT bad." Forgetting entirely about the teachers who work incredibly hard, who received the same training as those teachers in the sparkly zip codes but aren't getting the same results due to factors beyond their control. Maybe trading one set of problems for another--plenty of kids in sparkly zip codes don't respect their teachers because their parents make five times as much money, while plenty of kids in poorer schools have been torn down so much that it is difficult for them to respect anyone or anything.

Now that I'm committed thoroughly to the fight for public education in my city, and across the nation I have a message to yell into my megaphone that I wish I had learned earlier, because now I feel like a jerk, and I apologize.

THERE IS NO "THEM" ANYMORE. There's just us.

I don't fight corrupt education "reform" just for the sake of my own children's school experience. That would be terrifically short-sighted. I fight for their friends, especially the one whose parents aren't able to fight. I don't attend meeting upon meeting just because I like to complain. I don't like to complain--I like people to do what they're supposed to do and not to take advice from idiots and then I don't have to complain.

I am truly sorry for not having understood this all in my early years of teaching and adulthood in general. By all accounts it wasn't even this bad before 2010 or so, even though the NCLB years were pretty bad too.

As penance, I will continue to care about other people's children.