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Friday, June 2, 2006
Dispatch from NOLA: McDonough 35 is Open
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
New Orleans – Next on our tour, we venture out of the Ninth Ward to visit two schools that are less damaged. On our way, we notice all the abandoned cars under the expressway, a symbol of the desperation and chaos that reigned in New Orleans less than a year ago. We also see FEMA trailers, rows and rows of stark white trailers people are living in for who knows how long. Our tour guide tells us some are living in shifts, one group sleeping during the day and others sleeping at night.
At Marion Abramson Senior High School, which got three to four feet of water, a sign notifies voters that the polling site has been relocated.
Our next stop is McDonough 35 Senior High School in the Treme community. This school was not seriously damaged, and inside we find students going about their day. The air conditioning isn’t fully functional, but the school is usable. After Katrina, the building reeked of mold, the principal tells us. But today it seems like a typical aesthetically-challenged urban high school.
McDonough 35 is a choice school. Students apply. The criteria are standardized test scores, grades and a writing assessment. The school has long enjoyed a good reputation, the principal tells us. There is a long story about McDonough 35’s name that I won’t go into here for fear of getting part of it wrong and getting flogged by proud alumni. Like all southern cities, New Orleans has a complex history of race relations, and the name reflects that.
More noteworthy is the fact that students here – 100 percent of them, the principal says - pass the graduation test. Most go onto college on either athletic or academic scholarships. The school is in a rough area, and he tells us students get threatened and sometimes beaten up on their way to and from school, but they come anyway. The school has long been neglected in terms of resources. A coach tells us the buses that pick them up to take them to games are always late – especially when they’re playing a rival school. (Ah, sports. It rules the high school world in NO just as it does in Georgia.) But the kids want to attend McDonough 35 anyway.
Odell Isaac, 17, evacuated to Texas with his family. An honors student and athlete, he wanted return to McDonough 35. He is a junior. He said his school in Texas was fine, and the students were very nice to him in light of the tragedy. But… “This is home.” I think he said he returned in March and is living with a friend’s relatives. Some of McDonough 35’s current students attended other New Orleans schools before Katrina. But those schools have yet to reopen.
Of the 12,500 kids now in New Orleans schools, 40 percent are high school students. For teenagers, the draw of home, of the familiar, is powerful.
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Dispatch from NOLA: the Lower Ninth Ward
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
New Orleans — The first thing I notice are the textbooks. They’re on the floor, face down and open. They’re tucked inside desks, which are turned on their sides with workbooks spilling out. The books are ruined, of course. Everything at Joseph Hardin Elementary School is mucked up and moldy.
During Katrina, the school was submerged under about six feet of water. A brown water line is visible in some places. In one classroom, children’s math worksheets, the corners curled, hang on a bulletin board decorated with a cardboard ice cream sundae. “Good job!” the teacher wrote on the papers.
We happen upon what was once a teachers’ lounge. We see broken coffee cups and a coffee pot and an empty vending machine. Then we see a cabinet stocked with dishes emblazoned with fall leaves. The dishes are unharmed.
Located in the lower Ninth Ward, Hardin Elementary is no longer a school. The community is not livable. This is the first stop on a tour organized by the Education Writers Association, which is holding its annual meeting here. We are advised to wear masks and gloves when poking around. The stench of mold is exacerbated in the afternoon heat.
We see no construction crews. The streets are creepily quiet. A colleague observes there are no Dumpsters, just high heaps of rubble. The falling-down houses are marked with numbers noting how many bodies were found inside and whether there were any animals. Our guides tell us it’s unclear what will happen with this community, where many residents owned their small homes. FEMA frowns on rebuilding on flood plains.
School had just started when Katrina hit. The kids and their families scattered in all directions, with some ending up in metro Atlanta. Some lower Ninth Ward residents have returned to live with relatives in other parts of New Orleans. Their kids attend one of the 25 schools that re-opened around the city. But in the place they call home, there is nothing to come back to.
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“There’s No Escape”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Okay, I knew I had something in mind to post on the last day of school. But…I went and forgot all about it. Here it is, a week late. It’s from Frank McCourt’s “Teacher Man,” and I swear this is my last post from his book, which for the record I enjoyed even though it didn’t work a lot of the time due to rambling, repetition and a disturbing level of self-hatred.
Here goes:
“Find what you love and do it. That’s what it boils down to. I admit I didn’t always love teaching. I was out of my depth. You’re on your own in the classroom, one man or woman facing five classes every day, five classes of teenagers. One unit of energy against 175 units of energy, 175 ticking bombs, and you have to find ways of saving your own life.
They may like you, they may even love you, but they are young and it is the business of the young to push the old off the planet. I know I’m exaggerating, but it’s like a boxer going into the ring or a bullfighter into the arena. you can be knocked out or gored and that’s the end of your teaching career. But if you hang on you learn the tricks. It’s hard, but you have to make yourself comfortable in the classroom. You have to be selfish. The airlines tell you if oxygen fails you are to put on your mask first, even if your first instinct is to save the child.
The classroom is a place of high drama. You’ll never know what you’ve done to, or for, the hundreds coming and going. You see them leaving the classroom: dreamy, flat, sneering, admiring, smiling, puzzled. After a few years you develop antennae. You can tell when you’ve reached them or alienated them. It’s chemistry. It’s psychology. It’s animal instinct. You are with the kids and, as long as you want to be a teacher, there’s no escape. Don’t expect help from the people who’ve escaped the classroom, the higher-ups. They’re busy going to lunch and thinking higher thoughts. It’s you and the kids. So, there’s the bell. See you later.”
Well, teachers, can you relate?
