FIRST PERSON - A REAL EDUCATION: When a Reporter Becomes a Teacher, She Learns Something

FIRST PERSON - A REAL EDUCATION:

When a Reporter Becomes a Teacher, She Learns Something

One sunny July morning in 1999, on a whim, I called the Philadelphia School district and made an appointment with a recruiter. I thought of myself as a reporter, but I was looking for a job. Like many cities suffering from a teacher shortage, Philadelphia still needed 1,200 teachers and was taking almost anyone with a college degree. I had written hundreds of stories about education and always harbored an interest in teaching. Still, I'd never considered actually doing it, until then. "We need you more than you need us," the recruiter said. He gave me a folder of paperwork including a background check for the state police, and there wasn't much more involved.

I had mixed feelings. My colleagues at The Philadelphia Inquirer -- we were finishing a two-year reporting program there -- were heading to staff positions at papers like the Orlando Sentinel and the Raleigh News & Observer. I didn't want to throw away the journalism career I'd worked hard for since my college newspaper days. I'd interned unpaid through college and reported for a year from Chile, primarily for AP/Dow Jones. When I returned, the Inquirer hired me as one of its "two-year correspondents" to cover southern Chester County, Pennsylvania, a beat that included three school districts, twenty-seven townships, and a mushroom industry that employed 10,000 Mexican immigrants. I gravitated to school stories out of interest and a sense that they were important. From my suburban outpost, I made page one occasionally by regionalizing a story on subjects like revolving-door principals or questionable strategies to raise test scores. But I always felt uncertain about my stories about schools, as though I were guessing at what was really happening inside them.

When the two years ended, I interviewed for a staff position on the Inquirer's city education desk, but the beat went to an education reporter with a decade of experience. Meanwhile, my affection for newspapers was waning; there had been a lot of deflating news about corporate ownership and declining circulation. At age twenty-five, I was already questioning if newspaper journalism could be the vehicle for change I wanted it to be. I was eager to make a difference.

So, when I saw the article about the teacher shortage I got excited. If I taught for a year I would be able to see the real issues firsthand. I could have an effect on education in a way I wasn't having with journalism. And I wasn't throwing away my career, I reasoned, because if I wanted to come back to newspapers, I would be an even stronger education reporter. I decided to do it. Six weeks later, I stepped into my story.

My school was Julia de Burgos Bilingual Middle Magnet School, a 100-year-old stone building in The Badlands, the nickname for a heroin-ravaged Puerto Rican neighborhood in North Philadelphia. City test scores ranked it as the worst middle school in the city. At my first teachers' meeting in September, the new principal, Jayne Gibbs, warned us, "We can't fail any special-education students this year because the government is breathing down our neck." As the teachers nodded and murmured, I sheepishly glanced around. I needed to remind myself that I wasn't a reporter sneaking into a meeting. Other teachers were talking openly to me, without that guarded, clipped manner that I was accustomed to. To them, I was Ms. Asquith, a sixth grade bilingual teacher, with a classroom of forty desks, two blackboards, bars over the windows, and a scenic view of the boiler room roof.

My sixth graders ranged in age from ten to fourteen, and were mostly first- or second-generation Puerto Ricans. Half the class spoke little or no English. The first week, the school was still missing another sixth grade teacher so I got two classes. They shuffled in carrying composition notebooks and wearing puffy jackets, tapered jeans, and Timberland boots. They called me "miss," and were shy, obedient, and eager to please. They wanted stickers for their notebooks and to read the Harry Potter books. A couple of boys wore gangster-style skullcaps and looked tough, but beyond appearances, they were not the drug-dealing street-toughs fitting my stereotype.

My journalistic interests were immediately eclipsed by the reality and enormity of teaching. I had Jose, a thirteen-year old boy from the Dominican Republic, who spoke mostly Spanish and had been left back twice already; Darnell, a mentally troubled boy who jumped out of his seat constantly; and Evelyn, a diligent, articulate eleven-year old who aspired to be a doctor. I didn't know how to teach a lesson, let alone how to teach a class with such a range in abilities.

The school didn't help. When I asked the vice principal for a curriculum, I was promised one that never appeared. By the fourth week, I was finally given a set of grammar textbooks and a set of social studies textbooks, but they were too difficult for my English-as-a-second-language students. I had to invent everything myself. When the Philadelphia Daily News ran a story in October reporting that 100 new teachers across the city had quit, complaining of lack of support and supplies, I understood. For the first few months, each day felt like a churning, eight-hour tempest. I invented lame writing assignments -- "What would you do with a million dollars?" -- and read Chicken Soup for the Kid's Soul. Several of the administrators were also new, and just as overburdened by the remaining seven teacher vacancies. Whether and what I taught were secondary concerns to them. So I used my journalism skills, asked a lot of questions of other teachers, and wrote everything down. A significant handful of teachers were so incompetent that it was dangerous. They screamed at the students all day and created a climate of fear, abuse, and violence. But by November, I was finally picking up enough tricks and materials from the good ones to put together a semblance of a daily lesson. I got by with the help of my nicer colleagues, who amazed me with their ingenuity. In my class, instead of the typical reading and writing assignments we read newspaper and magazine articles, and wrote letters to the editor. The Daily News printed a short letter from one of my most easily discouraged students. Seeing his face light up pushed me forward.

At night, after grading and planning, I wrote in a journal all that I was learning in my new world. Details I had never focused on as a journalist fascinated me, such as who kept student attendance and how easy it was to fudge upwards. Schools get higher ratings and award money from the state for high attendance, and as a teacher I saw how attendance could fluctuate depending on what time it's taken, whether suspended students are considered absent, and whether a school counts excused absences in its total.

And from the inside, I could see how some education stories really miss the mark. For example, in late winter the school board announced plans to spend millions of dollars on a new "discipline school," a place for kids with behavior problems. From an outsider's point of view, that might seem like a good idea. Indeed, our school had about thirty or forty students who needed to be removed. They roamed the hallways, picking fights, threatening teachers with scissors, and destroying the learning environment. These students were often victims of abuse themselves and needed help. But they remained in our school year after year. The problem was not a lack of discipline schools. The fact was that the city's existing discipline schools were half empty. The reason: the stacks and stacks of paperwork required by the city and state to transfer a dangerous student into one of the city's discipline schools. It could take up to eight months to put a transfer through, so few teachers bothered. When the Inquirer wrote a long feature story about the proposed new million-dollar discipline school, the article made only brief mention of the fact that the existing discipline schools were not being used, and no mention at all of the many roadblocks involved in moving a student to a discipline school.

The issues I had worried myself with, as a reporter, suddenly seemed quite esoteric and bureaucratic in comparison to what the students and teachers had to deal with. Most of my sources as a reporter had been administrators, union members, and school board members -- instead of students, parents, and teachers. And yet, much of what the school board dealt with was unrelated to what really happened on the ground. For example, the school board fussed for months over prohibiting social promotion, finally deciding that a failing student could not be passed on, regardless of age. Yet our principal is allowed to change grades, and about failing students she told us, "If you retain them we will have to deal with them again." When I turned in two failing report cards they came back to me with the grades raised.

Journalists' assumptions, I was finding out, can be off the mark. An example of this arose when I was given a $1,200 iMac computer for my classroom. As a reporter, I had written a number of stories involving the effort to put technology in the classroom, and just assumed it was a positive goal. I am now less certain. My class's computer collected dust in the back because one, two, even five computers are not that helpful with thirty-three kids. I always believed that increased funding would help schools, but now I saw how existing money was sometimes misspent. The sad truth was that many teachers used the computers to busy the tough-to-control special-education students so that they wouldn't destroy the school. A reporter is not likely to get that story from just talking to a school board member. What the school really needed was not fancy technology but someone to design a curriculum, coordinate the grades, and order appropriate books.

One morning I saw a thirteen-year-old girl crying in the hallway. The security guard was screaming at her, so I offered to walk her back to her classroom. Her name was Angela, she was mentally disabled, one of some seventy students placed in "special education classes" out of about 700 students in the school. When we reached her classroom I understood why she preferred the hallways. Students were fighting and overturning desks and the substitute teacher was shouting, "they're animals." The ceiling was peeling, and exposed nails stuck up from a piece of wood on the floor. Angela was attacked. When I turned to get help, I saw that the security guard was already there and had just been overpowered. This was not an emergency; this was a typical day for special-education students. Yet here was a kind of story that reporters tend not to find -- the routine and systematic abuse of special-ed students.

Later I learned that Angela's group was one of five special-education classes that would not have a teacher all year. They were bounced from room to room each period. One substitute pushed his desk in front of the door and turned on the TV. Occasionally, a substitute wouldn't show up, and the students were left alone in the room. In the spring, at a school in the same neighborhood, a girl in special education was raped during the school day. The overwhelming reaction at my school was "thank god it didn't happen here." But it easily could have. With no teacher or program, Angela and the other special-education students just ran loose in the hallways, starting fires that nearly torched the school, pushing and hospitalizing a teacher, molesting younger students, getting arrested, and shredding the learning environment for the rest of the students. We were dependent on the school district to find real special-education teachers, but it never sent us any. Much of the time of our special-education teacher was spent on completing paperwork that glossed over such problems. Indeed, when our special-ed program was reviewed by federal auditors in May, the school passed.

Seeing this abuse daily made me feel personally frustrated with the media, which -- while investigating the police and other public departments -- tended to treat the schools as a feature beat. In October, the Daily News wrote its "special report" about new teachers quitting. In the spring, there were stories about a rape and a shooting that occurred at two different schools, and in between there were many stories about contract negotiations and administrative matters. Not much about actual education, its successes or failures. And when something was written about the schools, it often carried the intonation that the students were at fault. After a vice principal was shot during a scuffle in a West Philadelphia school, the Daily News followed up with a cover story: why the schools are stuck with so many bad kids. It was illustrated with a shadowy image of a student lurking in the background. The underlying assumption -- that the students were to blame -- reflected a sentiment popular with many in the school board, teachers union, and the administration -- none of whom want to take responsibility for their failings. But what I experienced as a teacher showed me the opposite. The story should have read: why the kids are stuck with so many bad schools. The ongoing failure of our nation's urban school system is a scandal -- it's hurting millions of children, stealing from taxpayers, and creating violence and desperation that has a ripple effect on all corners of society. And it doesn't have to be that way. It's time for the education desk to shed its reputation as a soft beat, for reporters and editors to take a sharper pencil to the schools.

Having once dealt with deadlines, editors, and the pressure for copy, I feel I have some understanding of the complacency that affects the coverage of education. But I can no longer justify it. Too many reporters think that nothing can be done. They allow the protectors of the status quo to use sensitive issues of race and culture and poverty as a shield against their critics. They feed the sense of hopelessness that is encouraged by bad teachers, self-aggrandizing union leaders, and hapless administrators. All those things affected me, too, when I was a reporter. It took a classroom of them to convince me that the kids really do deserve a chance, and that they won't have one until the news organizations act as if they believe it.

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Christina Asquith recently completed a book documenting her year inside Philadelphia's toughest middle school. She lives in New York and can be reached at Clasquith@ aol.com. Students names in this article were changed.

Although I was originally a geologist, I spent two years as a sub in our suburban district. Boy, did I learn a lot!!

I would recommend that ALL reporters who work on education stories do this at least! They would learn a lot!

Thanks for this very interesting story!

Would these be the Philadelphia schools that Ed Rendell is claiming - in his gubernatorial primary campaign TV ads - to have rescued and made most excellent?

Wasn't it the Black Mayor Street who told the NAACP or some other Black organization the other day that "We are running the city"? Wonderful.

Professionals don't have to ask

Leisler, that sounds like good advice, but mrfixit514 has a valid point too.

There have been threads right here on this forum about the problem -- student discipline verses the inability of teachers to impose consequences. And, while sometimes that problem has to do with the inexperience of a teacher in classroom management, and other times it has to do with the fact the teacher is not a great teacher, it also has to do with the fact that teachers, unlike other "professionals" have limited protection in terms of potential professional liability. In schools, for every action, there is an equal and potential quite alarming "reaction" -- often from parents previously nowhere to be found.

This can be a very tough problem. Many here have actually experienced, and suggested, parents being required to sign waivers. In other words, in some private and charter schools, a parent agrees not to sue if a student is disciplined. However, and unfortunately, that does not exist in public schools. Consequently, it has gotten to the point that a teacher can not EVER be alone with one student in a classroom after school or during lunch to provide tutoring or extra help out of fear of what can be alleged -- even though nothing but tutoring happens. It's a very serious problem in schools -- and, IMO, one that professionals in other fields do not encounter to this degree.

That's not to let all teachers off the hook, but to let you understand limitations to a teacher's authority certainly exist -- and some students are the first ones to tell you so.

My initial question would be "What journalism schools did the curent crop of reporters/editors come from?" Because, conservatism is on the way IN, IN A BIG WAY, and at some point, nobody will care what the current crop feels or what their view of the world is.

The journalism schools will have to adapt or risk their very survival. CONSERVATIVISM IS FOR ADULTS. LIBERALS ARE SO ELEMENTARY IN THEIR THINKING WITH IDEAS THAT ARE NOT WELL THOUGHT OUT - just check out Southpark sometime on the comedy channel. Liberals and others take a beating on Southpark. One of the characters - the principal of the school, looks like Janet Reno. Southpark creators hate liberals! LOL

I think they are going to do a movie about Dubya. They had the tv show but it was too expensive - I actually enjoyed watching "That's My Bush". Of course, that was before 9-11. Lots of stuff isn't funny any more.

The mainscream media operates an Alice in Wonderland operation. They ran the Catholic scandal into the ground, tried to convince me that the Palestinians were freedom fighters and now if I eat potato chips, I will get cancer.

I am sure whatever career path you chose instead, you were a success because you ended up here which is the greatest think tank on the internet. I learn from other posters every day and I am a more self confident person in my daily life because of all the well thought out discussions I jump into here. At this point, I help neighbors and my mom, calling upon my background as a paralegal. I am going to count this towards my 4000 hours of volunteering per the POTUS. Helping cut through red tape for people bombarded with denials, overcharges and fine print is one of my favorite preoccupations.

That's why I am for Jeb Bush. He's a new kind of leader and that's a large part of his attraction around the state. If he could, he'd personally do something for every Floridian.

Nice Post Summer. Christina Asquith sounds like a caring person and a good educator. Her previous occupation as a reporter, in my eyes, is as underhanded an occupation as a carnival worker cheating kids at the ring toss booth.

The disservice done to this country by a complacent press corps has come full circle with Ms Asquith. But nowhere in her essay does she address the necessity of a reporter to tell a true and complete story. Her previous occupation gave her more power to address the real problems that she only discovered after she enrolled in her new occupation as a hands-on educator.

This is a bit harsh, but I feel she helped create her school environment. She stated in her essay that the teachers reacted differently to her once she was one of them. And it didn't ring any bells?

People fear the press not because of the exporsure they can give, but for the slant they give to a story.
This is my slant on this one.

So many of these problems start with the homelife. I used to volunteer 1 day a week at my kid's private school in reading enrichment and the great classics series. 99% of these kids were so well behaved it was a pure joy. 1 or 2 of them were pains in the neck, and they were very disruptive. A simple word with the teacher usually took care of it. I knew the parents from the PTO and they were real pieces of work too. The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree in most cases.

I lived in the city of Philadelphia at the time - and there was NO way my kid's were going to the public schools - and they were fairly decent in our neighborhood. Friends of ours who teach in Philadelphia echo this author's problem's. Late arrival of school books, no up to date materials, even paper and drawing materials and copying materials are rationed out like it was war time. And forget discipline. One teacher I know who taught (no more) second grade, was challenged by her 7 yr old student," go ahead and call my mother, bitch, we ain't got a phone." I don't think more money is going to solve this type of problem. It is interesting to note how well the Catholic schools are able to educate their students on a much less student-dollar ratio.

I should add to my previous post, that when we left Philadelphia and moved to the suburbs, we enrolled our 2 youngest in the public schools in our township. They have received a first rate education - 1 is on scholarship to college and will graduate next month !!! The youngest is doing well too - he's in 10th. Now I ask you, what is the difference between 2 school districts about 6 miles apart??

I'm glad you enjoyed this article, Joe. I appreciate your comments.

I think what this author meant is that once she was hired as a teacher, she was immediately accepted by other teachers as one of them -- a teacher. She was not a reporter in their eyes now.

However, I believe: Although she had been hired as a teacher, she was still a reporter in her own eyes -- as most teachers do not attempt to write about their experiences as she did.

But, I understand your point -- that in some respects, she contributed to the problem of the school. And, I feel she would agree with you, too ("lame" is how she describes her assignments for the students). Thanks for your post. :)

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