Saturday, Oct. 09, 2004
Scary Epiphany, posted at 1:47 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com This is an e-mail I received from a parent today:Greetings Mr. (Epiph): Thank you for your communication. After reading it I do realize that (girl) is at a failing low point at this time - she tells me everyday "I am going to fail this English class mom" I say to her try hard and believe in yourself always! I help her much and we communicate each day. Do me a favor> encourage her if you can that it will be alright if you work hard. Hearing this from you will help (she is scared) because I know she can do this, look in her records she's good. Tell me, the last report turned in will this go toward the progress grade or report card grade? Oh yes, I will be buying the novels from you - just say when to her for me. To me when we met you seem so easy going. I hope she will realize this soon. Continue the e-mails I like knowing all that goes. Thank you again for your attention.
I hate to say it, but I just love that she is scared of me. Not because I'm a power-hungry ass, but because I hope these 9th graders are scared a bit into doing work well at the beginning of the year. Not enough of them are scared. When I was in school, I did work partly because I was too scared not to. If I missed a day of school, I was worried about what I'd missed and immediately asked the teacher when I walked in the door. Dorky, maybe, but some of these kids will not realize they need to be scared until they fail my class. Of course you hope for intrinsic motivation. When that fails, though, as it often does for 14-year olds, you just go for the fear factor.
Not that it's my goal to scare the kids or anything. I try to be tough, and it's becoming easier and easier to do it the older I get and the more I see the potential in these kids and the more I see myself as a gatekeeper or a bridge to higher level courses. Gatekeeper or a bridge. There's a big difference there. I feel like I'm both, though. They have to get through the gate to get to the bridge, and the gate is the desire to work hard.
I keep an e-mail list for parents, and sent out the first one a couple of nights ago. Parents have been sending me nice replies all during the last two days.
By the way, it's striking the difference between the amount of kids in the advanced classes and the kids in the "normal" classes who have parents with e-mail addresses. Most of the parents of advanced kids do, most of the parents of "normal" kids do not. This could very well be the subject of a study on the affect of poverty on education, or access to technology on education. An academic would find this fascinating. I just find it depressing. Even when it seems like education can bring some sort of equality to us, social reproduction just comes and rears its ugly head, in small, subtle ways that really sting.