South Shore Journal - The South Shore Journal - An electronic publication ISSN 1933-8163

A novice student teacher, upon entering the program with typical middle-class stereotypes, might first see urban kids as being both incapable and rebellious.  Then he learns that they are not incapable, that this view is based on a racist-classist paradigm—that these kids have as much raw intelligence as anybody else’s kids.  That still leaves him thinking that they are rebellious.  On this point, he may be right.

My job, as a teacher dedicated to creative maladjustment,  is not to squash their rebelliousness, but to join them in their rebellion and show them how to turn that rebellion into a weapon that disempowers their oppressors, rather than themselves—to turn their rebellion from self-destructive to constructive.  “You’re already subversives,” I might say to them. “I just want to make you better subversives.

Thus, the STEP program endeavors to train the student teacher to do just that.  Subverting the systems of oppression, the cycle of failure, and the dominant paradigm is one of the finest human traditions.  Students in the STEP program will learn from the examples of subversives who have gone before them, like King, Mandela, and A. Phillip Randolph.  They will learn to think critically, gather information, and to take control of the dynamics of power.

The designers of the STEP program assert that for both teacher and student, the key to a successful life is to remove the limiting shackles of dominant ideology.  For the teacher, this ideology states that minority and poor children are not as worthwhile as those with resources, so his efforts should be to prepare students for subordinate positions in society.  Students who adopt that ideology either settle for such subordinate positions or opt out of the system entirely.  This serves to maintain the status quo.

The opting-out which students often practice is referred to by Herbert Kohl as “not-learning.”  This is the willful decision on the part of the child to resist learning what the teacher has to offer.  The child has consciously decided that the subject matter or the instructor is, in some way, a challenge to “her or his personal and family loyalties, integrity, and identity” (Kohl  p. 6).  The reasons for this can vary widely for different people and situations.  But essentially, either the student does not believe that the teacher respects and values who she really is, or else the student finds the material inconsistent with her image of herself or her community.

The majority of failing schools in America are in urban areas.  Many people use this fact as evidence of the deficiency of urban students and their families.  But according to Kohl, successful teaching “requires understanding student failure as system failure, especially when it encompasses the majority of students in a class, school, or school system” (p. 144).  By Kohl’s perspective, if large numbers of children are failing, it is because they are being subjected to a curriculum or style of teaching that does not fit the reality of who they are, that fails to build on their strengths and intelligence.  The STEP curriculum begins with understanding the community and the child as an individual.

Showing the child that her culture, identity, and talents are respected is the first step in building trust and establishing an educational direction.  But before it can be expected that a child will throw herself into a course of study, another quality is necessary.  She must believe that her efforts will bear fruit.  She must have hope.

Hope goes hand-in-hand with optimism and ambition.  It is the students’ conviction that they can succeed, that they can make a difference, that their efforts will be rewarded.  According to Kohl, “hope can be sold, it can be taught or at least spread, it can survive in the strangest and most unlikely places” (p. 43).  It is the counter to the cynicism that paralyzes, the disenchantment that surrenders or turns bitter.  It is the ray of sunlight that wipes away the urban nightmare.

If, as Kohl says, “you look for strengths and filter the world through the prism of hope, you will see and encourage the unexpected flowering of child life in the most unlikely places” (p. 44).  Hope is what allows one to rise above one’s circumstances.  But cynicism is tenacious, and hardscrabble kids cannot be duped into hope with Pollyanna sentiments or patriotic platitudes.  They must be given evidence that makes sense to them.  They understand that money is thrown at rappers and athletes who look like them, but evidence of other types of rewards is absent.

This is where the graduate of STEP has an advantage over other teachers, for he can give students real knowledge of why there don’t appear to be opportunities for them.  He can show them the system that has been established to maintain power with the groups who have colonized the world.  The STEP teacher can combine this knowledge with activities that allow students to exercise their power inside and outside of the classroom, giving them a sense of their own unimagined potential.  These students will learn how others before them have dealt with similar situations, how collective action can leverage the resources of many.  These students will learn to leverage this power into real-world changes for their community and increased opportunities for themselves.  They will learn to challenge the status quo.