Inner City Schools
Inner city schools present very challenging situations. The students are angry and want to kill each other. How do you build a community when the community members want to kill each other?
Teachers have to be military commanders. They have to mean business all the time. They have to ferociously scold, and then turn it off like a light switch, and praise and love. If your heart is in it, you can learn how to do it. It takes about three years.
There are experienced teachers who have total control of their classrooms - absolutely no violence amongst the students, and high test scores. The students straighten up at the sound of a little whistle. They are obedient and compliant. But what happens when they walk out of those classrooms? They turn again to violence. What does this tell me? The students in those classrooms do not really learn compassion, love, and respect. They have no opportunity to learn morality. All they learn is to obey authority, and compliance is ever so temporary. While my heart is in education, I don’t have it in myself to be a military commander, because I believe I would be not only teaching the wrong lessons, but not teaching the right ones - critical lessons, like how to live together.
But the teachers have to mean business all the time at inner city schools. The students are angry and want to kill each other.