My year of terror and abuse teaching at a NYC high school

The New York Post ^ | 1/17/2016 | Maureen Callahan

[Gigantor]

In 2008, Ed Boland, a well-off New Yorker who had spent 20 years as an executive at a nonprofit, had a midlife epiphany: He should leave his white-glove world, the galas at the Waldorf and drinks at the Yale Club, and go work with the city’s neediest children.

“The Battle for Room 314: My Year of Hope and Despair in a New York City High School” (Grand Central Publishing) is Boland’s memoir of his brief, harrowing tenure as a public-schoolteacher, and it’s riveting.

There’s nothing dry or academic here. It’s tragedy and farce, an economic and societal indictment of a system that seems broken beyond repair.

[Bernard]

Here's something buried in the story: he was thrilled to be hired. He went home to his then-boyfriend (now husband) and celebrated

Certainly sounds like this person lives in a very insulated bubble, and looks for a combat medal for living the real world for a while.

I didn't read the entire article; when I got to the part of the $110 textbooks, the rest didn't make any difference. What a waste of money for those books.

[Nevadan]

Conclusion says it all: “Boland ends his book with familiar suggestions for ­reform: Invest more money, recruit better teachers, retool the unions, end poverty. But there’s no public policy for fixing a broken kid from a broken home, or turning fear into resilience, or saving kids who can’t, or won’t, be saved.”

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

I am reminded of the girl who desegregated Little Rock’s Central High back in 1957.
Forty years later she returned to the school and received a shock.
She realized she had put HER LIFE on the line, so black kids could go to white schools, place their heads on the desk and refuse to learn.
Her actual words were... “I went through HELL for this?”

[DaveA37]

He has to be one of the dumbest demmodummies ever to think he could go into such an atmosphere and not get “mugged”. Is he now ready to drop his official demodummie membership card?

[NorthMountain]

Looks like more o’ them wonderful New York values.

[struggle]

Lol, I taught three years in Jackson, Mississippi and had pretty good control by my third year. It was the horrible administration that chased me and half the teaching force away.

[driftdiver]

No he’s ready to double down.

[Tax-chick]

Two weeks in and Boland was crying in the bathroom.

Girls' bathroom, or boys'?

[A_perfect_lady]

My first year teaching in L.A. was kind of like that. I mean, my students were Hispanic, not black, so it wasn't quite as awful. And I was at a middle school, so most of the kids were not big enough to loom over me (although a few were.)

His biggest mistake was really just not hanging in there for three more years and learning how to deal. It helps once you've been there for a while and the kids know you, and you find your niche. But I'm happy that the book isn't just a diatribe about the administration and the budget, because yes, a weak principal will make it harder, and I have long since learned to only ask for help in disciplinary matters if I have a kid who is so feral that he should be on meds...

BUT... most of the problem is the culture these kids grow up in, and the absolute lack of consequences for anything.

[Steely Tom]

There was a billionaire’s son who did this back in the eighties. He ended up dead, after inviting some of his students to his penthouse, which they robbed while he lay dying.

I don’t remember his name, and can’t figure out be which means to Google him.

[ReaganGeneration2]

Everyone should read that conclusion before reading the book. His entire experience will likely be clouded by that progressive ideology.

Although, in reading the article and looking for a Christian answer, I am dumbfounded. Just pray for them.

[rstrahan]

There is a simple answer, but the ‘no child left behind’ bunch doesn’t like it. Leave the ones who disrupt, who don’t want to learn BEHIND! Kick their asses out. It doesn’t matter if their homes are broken, living in a shelter, whatever. Schools are to learn. Period.

[Chode]

with all the money wasted, you'd think they could open one school in each of the boroughs for kids that actually WANT to learn, and let the rest eat each other alive

[A_perfect_lady]

Or if nothing else, take that little handful who actually want to learn (because they are the minority in a group like that. Out of 32 kids, there’ll be about 6 who are intent.) Take that handful out of each class and make an Honors class. I did that in my inner-city middle school and those kids accomplished wonderful things. We made a little bubble in the middle of the crazy.

[Tax-chick]

Invest more money,

In what ... more $125 textbooks to be trashed?

recruit better teachers,

Better than himself? Was he not a good teacher?

retool the unions,

In what way could unions be "retooled" that would make them helpful?

end poverty.

How?

[fella]

Jonathan Levin 1997?

[fella]

In my father’s day, 1920s, and in my day 1950s-1960s this nation had the best education system world. A system now copied by a number of advancing nations around the world.

[I want the USA back]

The school system is not broken and money won’t fix it. The kids are already ruined when they get there.
It won’t be fixed because liberals want it that way.

[Lizavetta]

This guy?