The Sad Truth

My students are getting screwed. And it's sad.

Throughout my short time with Teach for America, I have began to understand a little thing called the achievement gap. It states that there is a definite gap between the generally white, middle- and upper-class students and their peers who are generally black or hispanic and live in lower-income areas. They do attach a racial sticker to it.

In my class, however, it has nothing to do with race, it has to do with money. VGM is white and cannot spell "teacher"; PW is black and doesn't understand what a noun is; and BF is Mexican and cannot physically write down the exact words that are coming out of her mouth when writing an essay. Yet all of them are poor and go to a poor school in a poor area.

I bring this up because today in church, a six-year-old brought up the heartbreaking reality that life sucks for my kids. We were waiting to begin, so I asked him how his week went and what he learned in school. He said that science was fun, but it's not the kind of science that interests him; he prefers the pre-historic era (and yes, a six-year-old said that exact phrase). He then proceeded to tell me about his favorite sea monsters using the actual scientific names of the animals, names I had never heard.

An excerpt of our conversation:

Me: "Did they ever come on land to fight the T-Rex?"

CS: "No, they can't come onto land. The only species of sea monster that can come on land is the dacheosaur."

Me: "Oh, wow, I didn't know that. Where did you learn that?"

CS: "I read it in a book this week. I can read better than a 10th grader, my dad said so. He teaches 10th grade and he says that I can read better than most of them."

My immediate thought was that his dad was just giving him confidence and sugaring him up. I then realized that three of my 8th graders (13-14 years old) read on a kindergarten level.

It's pretty f-ed up that this kid, a six-year-old, is reading 300-page books and enjoying it and understanding it while my students struggle through a simple 5-page short story. It's not a racial issue, it's a money issue. It's also a culture issue, but that discussion would take years to understand and properly communicate. In any way, though, these kids are still getting screwed and an entire society needs to change in order to effect the type of change that these kids need in order to be something in life.

It just sucks.