lesson of freedom
Jordon’s Story
Background of the Case:
It was fall 2000, and I was completing my student-teaching internship in a school on the border of Georgia and South Carolina. I had been teaching tenth-grade American History for two months. I struggled with classroom management the entire semester, mostly because I was a new teacher. It had also been suggested that because my CT was the football coach, with a really intimidating physical stature, the administration had filled his classes with the students they considered the “most difficult” in the school.
My Cooperating Teacher (CT) was a very nice man and never critiqued what I taught; however, he never really gave me feedback either. In fact, he would always leave the room when I was teaching. Before my arrival at the school, my CT allowed the students to choose their own seats. Mid-way through the semester, I had an entirely segregated classroom; the white students would sit on one side of the room, and the African American students would sit on the other side.
Similar to many of the new social studies teachers I observe now, I often relied on class lectures, fearing that I would not sufficiently cover the material if I tried to implement different types of activities into my instruction. The school operated on a block schedule, and some days students took notes for almost one hour. Students would start out taking notes and quietly listening to my lecture, but midway through they would start talking to their friends. The chatter would begin to get louder and louder. My idea on how to handle this "misbehavior"…stop talking and wait until the students settled down.
On one particular day, the class took a little longer to quiet down. A student on one side of the room told the group on the other side to shut up so we could continue the class. Someone in the second group yelled, “Who are you telling to shut up!” Then the first student replied, “You all that are talking.” Which inspired the second half of the room to start responding all at once. It reminded me of a ping-pong match where complaints and insults were volleyed back-and-forth. It had escalated quickly, and I had no idea which student was making which comment. Finally, a white student, Todd, stood up and said, “If you don’t stop talking, I’ll come over there and make you boy.” Even at the time, I understood the racial implications when a white person in the south referred to an African American as “boy”; he was using racist language and threatening his classmate. Yet before I could intervene, another student, an African American male whom I’ll call Jordon, stood up and yelled, “I know your ass is not talking to me.” When I was finally able to calm the class down, I referred Todd and Jordon to the disciplinary administrator.
Two weeks later, after we had all forgotten about the incidence, someone called over the intercom requesting that we send Todd to the principal's office. Twenty minutes later there was a request for Jordon to visit the office as well. I am in the middle of lecturing about the Civil War when Jordon burst through my classroom door walks over to a desk and throws it across the room. It did not come close to me or any other students, but I remember how scared I was. One of his friends asked him what was wrong and he said, “Because of this white bitch I now have to go to in-school detention.” His friends continued to try to calm him down. I walk to the class next door to get help from a male teacher. I was shaking and I broke down in tears. Jordon was escorted out of the class and has to report to the in-school suspension room for the remaining 10 days I have left at the school.
The assistant principal reached out to me a few days after the incidence to check in on what took place. He told me that Jordon’s grandmother had come to the school to talk about what happened. They both wanted to apologize to me, but it was up to me if I wanted to meet with him. I declined the offer and I have regretted that decision for 17 years.
Alternative Explanation/Alternative Solution
As I read Cara Shalaby’s (2017) Troublemakers, I could not help but think about Jordon and how I was not listening to messages that he and his peers were giving while acting out in class. For example, rather than allowing students to have a voice in my classroom by implementing student-centered activities, I forced them to listen to my lecture while taking notes passively. The following quote reminded me of what I did wrong:
I want us to imagine their behaviors - which are admittedly disruptive, hypervisible, and problematic - as both the loud sound of their suffering and a signal cry to the rest of us that there is a person in our shared air. That is, when a child is singing loudly - and sometimes more and more loudly, despite our requests for silence - we might hear that song as a signal that someone is refusing to hear her voice. (Shalaby, 2017, p. XXI).
I now view the students’ disruptions during my lecture as signals that they are refusing to be passive in their learning and that they crave engagement and agency. I take the onus of the fact that my poor instructional decisions may have fueled their frustrations and realize that I should have included small group discussions or hands-on activities in our class sessions.
As I encountered the readings in this module, I also think about the racism the permeated (and still permeates) the classroom, the school, and the community where I was teaching. The physical set-up of a segregated classroom provided a visible reminder of the racial tensions. Todd’s reference to Jordon as “boy” is a great example of the difference between Gee’s notions of discourse and Discourse. As Powell (2008) describes, “Gee differentiates between ‘discourse’ – a particular linguist form – and “Discourse” – a way of speaking, behaving, and valuing that signals membership in a particular community. (p. 7). The “Discourse” surrounding the use of the term “boy” connotes a history of white supremacy and segregation. As I reflect back on what I should have done, I wonder how the class and students would have functioned if we specifically developed a literacy of practice in the classroom. What if we implemented classroom activities to help students learn about each other and develop respect for their peers? What if we had students critique historical accounts, excerpts of non-fiction, etc. as a way to understand how their “Discourses” have been shaped by racism or misunderstandings of others?
Finally, as I think back about this case, I feel like I failed Jordon. Shalaby (2017) observes that “as a noun, troublemaker is a kind of person – an identity encoded in and imprinted on individual bodies. It locates the problem of noncompliance in people, fogging our view of the social and cultural production of trouble (p. 151). By referring him to administration at the same time I referred Todd, I sent the message that a curse word is an equal infraction as a racist threat. Instead of listening to why Jordon was frustrated, I took his reaction personally. By refusing to meet with him, I sent a message that the door to communication was closed; that I gave up on him. Reflecting back, I realize that I also shut down communication with Jordon’s grandmother who also reached out to talk. In my mind, Jordon became a trouble-maker and not a real person. This experience reminds me that instead, I need to create an alternative image of all my students and honor their humanness. As Shalaby advises educators, we should look at trouble-making as a verb. This would help me redirect myself “away from ‘fixing’ people whom we assume to be broken and instead toward addressing the harms that seek to break them” (Shalaby, 2017, p. 154).