Whose School Is It?: Women, Children, Memory, and Practice in the City 9780292796430

Citation preview

w h o s e s c h o ol i s i t ? wo m e n , c h i l d r e n , m e mo r y, and pract ice in t he cit y

Book Twelve Louann Atkins Temple Women & Culture Series Books about women and families, and their changing role in society

WHOSE SCHOOL IS IT? Women, Children, Memory, and Practice in the City

RHODA H. HALPERIN

UN IVERSITY OF T EXAS PRESS austin

The Louann Atkins Temple Women & Culture Series is supported by Allison, Doug, Taylor, and Andy Bacon; Margaret, Lawrence, Will, John, and Annie Temple; Larry Temple; the Temple-Inland Foundation; and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Copyright © 2006 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2006 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html

The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Halperin, Rhoda H. Whose school is it? : women, children, memory, and practice in the city / Rhoda H. Halperin. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (Louann Atkins Temple women & culture series ; bk. 12) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-292-70934-8 (cl.: alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-292-70934-x isbn-13: 978-0-292-70991-1 (pbk.: alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-292-70991-9 1. East End Community Heritage School (Cincinnati, Ohio) 2. Urban schools—Ohio—Cincinnati—Case studies. 3. Multicultural education— Ohio—Cincinnati—Case studies. 4. Community and school—Ohio— Cincinnati—Case studies. I. Title. II. Series. ld7501.c523h35 2006 371.0109771'78—dc22 2005025205

I dedicate this book to the children of the East End, to their families, and to the East End community family, past, present, and future. Memory is one of the richest forms of knowledge.

THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

C ON T E N T S

MAPS x PR E FAC E A N D AC K NOW L E DGM E N T S xvii PROL OG U E 1 part one C R E AT ION

Writing Urban Memory 15 one LIT ERAC Y, SCHOOL, AND IDENT IT Y IN AN U RBA N , WOR K I N G - CL A SS C OM M U N I T Y 17 t wo FOUNDING MOTHERS AND THE C R E AT ION OF T H E C H A RT E R 25 three THE POLITICS OF THE CHARTER A N D T H E P O L I T I C S O F S PA C E 47

contents

four H I R I N G S TA F F

Teachers, Kin, and an Instructional Leader 56 pa rt t wo DE T E R R I T OR I A L I Z AT ION 67 five OPENING THE SCHOOL

Whose School Is It? 69 six KIDS IN THE URBAN BORDERLAND

A Collage 74 seven CLASHING PHILOSOPHIES, CLASHING PRACTICES

Follow the Leader versus Ring around the Rosie 97 eight ACADEMIC BORDERLANDS MICROgirls, A Math Club for Girls With Stephanie Jones 109 nine MOMENTS

Collaboration and Consensus in the Borderland 120 part three R E T E R R I T OR I A L I Z AT ION 127 ten N E G O T I AT I N G T H E BOR DE R L A N D 129 viii

contents

eleven DE T E R R I T OR I A L I Z AT ION , C R I SI S M A N A G E M E N T, A N D T H E B E G I N N I N G S OF R E T E R R I T OR I A L I Z AT ION With Lionel Brown and Roberta Lee 146 twelve BOR DE R L A N D S , FAC T ION S , A N D INVERT ED IMAGINED COMMUN IT IES 164 thirteen TA K I N G BAC K T H E SC HOOL 170 fourteen T R A N S F OR M I N G A N D C YCL I N G BORDERLANDS OF COMMUN IT Y, CULT URE, AND CLASS With Holly Winwood, Janice Glaspie, and Lionel Brown 175 EPILOGUE

Reinventing Urban Memory 191 NOTES 203 BIBLIOGRAPHY 209 INDEX 213

ix

Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky

Cincinnati Neighborhoods

Immediately Surrounding Communities

The East End

East End Area: Saint Rose, Water Works

East End Area: Wenner, Strader, Worth

THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

P R E FA C E A N D A C K N OW L E D G M E N T S

The East End Community Heritage School (EECHS), a community public charter school, opened on Labor Day in September 2000. It now occupies a gray stone school building where Robbie and Athena, lifelong East Enders, went to grade school. The school is a heartfelt, urban, community project—more urban than anything else, with all of the swirling, chaotic, and tense features of a city. Energy, in abundance—conflict, certainly— change, perpetual. It is a success story, but it has not been a smooth ride in any sense of that term. Our imaginations and all of our senses must be heightened in order to understand the creation and workings of an ‘‘outof-the-box’’ community charter school as an urban microcosm (replica of a small city) and, after feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldúa, global borderland (place where many cultures, world and worldly, come together and, often, clash). We are not just dealing with a geographic border or borderland such as the Mexico-U.S. border, but rather with sets of constantly changing, transforming, and cycling borderlands of community, culture, and class. We were and still are a diverse group of people collaborating to create and run a school in a historically multicultural inner-city neighborhood where, until the opening of EECHS, school dropout rates were astronomically high (over 90 percent) and kids dropped out of school in the sixth and seventh grades. The school project is multidisciplinary, multicultural, and multiclassed because it involves liberal arts people, education people, health people, businesspeople, and, especially and most importantly, community people—leaders and residents, mothers and fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, and others, whom Antonio Gramsci would call ‘‘organic intellectuals’’: people without formal credentials who are smart, persistent, and know how to get things done.1 xvii

preface and acknowledgments

The school is also a feminist project (radical feminism is about social justice, bringing together and intersecting race, class, and gender),2 a working-class, human-rights, social-justice project, and a project with many voices directed to multiple audiences. Women figure most importantly in the planning of this project and in its implementation. The women are primarily working-class women who are striving, often struggling, for change, especially change in the lives of children who live in working-class and working-poor families. But many women of the larger city and greater Cincinnati community are involved as well. Collectively we call ourselves the ‘‘founding mothers’’ of the school. The audience for this book includes anyone who is literate and interested in cities, schools, kids, women in cities, and the intersections and interactions among all of the above. Scholars, teachers, activists, policy makers, and other urban practitioners should benefit from the discussions about conflict, borderlands, and culture. Readers will receive and interpret the issues differently depending on class position and local knowledge. Writing for multiple audiences is not easy, and interpretations and nuances recognized by individuals will vary. Readers must use common sense along with book learning, memories along with current experience. To paraphrase Clifford Geertz, knowledge of schools and school projects must be acquired before, during, and after the fact.3 It is very difficult to create a school from scratch—especially a fullblown, pre-K–12 school in an urban neighborhood where for several generations school experiences have not been positive but conventional notions of school are strongly entrenched. It is very much like trying to build a modern city from scratch. I came to the urban community charter school project as a longtime friend, researcher, and advocate of the East End community. The East End is a small, racially diverse, close-knit, working-class neighborhood next to downtown Cincinnati on the Ohio’s riverfront. Along with colleagues, university students, community residents, leaders, and advocates, I have been part of many neighborhood struggles, all related to preserving and enhancing the community for local residents while also allowing for and, in fact, embracing change.4 The community charter school project is an important part of those struggles. In many respects, though, the community school project feels different from the struggles for neighborhood economic development planning and revitalization—more intense, with more emotional investment, more at stake, and higher expectations. Education is, after all, the major path to success and respectability in the United States. Education is also, from the community’s perspective, a major way of preparing to give back. The xviii

preface and acknowledgments

project feels more complicated and more involving of outsiders (bureaucrats and elected officials among them) who, despite or because of their good intentions, create policies and procedures that threaten to tear apart local identities and practices. The struggle to create and run the school as a community school was very much a part of the implementation of the community’s economic development plan, the East End Riverfront Community Development Plan. Returning the old and hallowed Highlands school building to the neighborhood is one of the provisions of this plan, passed in 1992 by the City Council of Cincinnati. But this substantial and beautiful facility is more than just a building; the mention of Highlands instantly recalls positive memories of school and hopes for future generations of East Enders. From the outset, I worried about the identities of community leaders and residents within this new school structure that required state regulations and resources (audits, standards, title monies). Credentialed outsiders worked both in the school itself and with the school staff. How would the decision making work? Would the ‘‘instructional leader,’’ the term the founding mothers substituted for ‘‘principal’’ in order to emphasize curriculum and leadership over conventional administration, listen to the community leaders and be able to work with people without credentials but with lots of local knowledge? What would the power dynamics be like? Community leaders and advocates agree that no project in the East End has ever been easy. The health center, the heritage center, and the units of affordable housing are successfully completed projects; other projects, such as the development plan, are still undergoing implementation. My 1998 book Practicing Community documents the economic development and planning struggle in the East End. The East End Community Heritage School is a community-preserving element of that plan, and many of the same power dynamics of the planning processes cropped up in its design and implementation. Class conflicts, in particular, figured very importantly. Juggling scholarly work and advocacy work is something I have learned to do, although managing the pieces is never easy. There were times in the course of this school project when writing and documenting seemed irrelevant to the urgent political and practical tasks at hand. By the same token, but in opposite ways, crises generate compelling situations, heightened moments, and flashes of insight. The advocate in me wishes the crises were not happening. They generate a three-steps-forward, twosteps-backward feeling. Contradictions, ironies, and inconsistencies set people on edge. Often, it was very difficult to judge whether my anthroxix

preface and acknowledgments

pological lenses were focusing on the wrong things or missing important issues entirely, whether they were too critical, too sensitive to detail, or too nuanced for the practical tasks at hand. We anthropologists write everything down, and many times the act of writing generated a sense of calm, both for me and for other founding mothers. We had, after all, taken on a monumental and untried project. Charter schools are a relatively recent phenomenon, and there are many different kinds of charter schools. They started as part of the school reform movement of the past twenty-five years, and while they remain controversial, there is substantial agreement that they provide educational alternatives, school choice, and local autonomy to parents, communities, and educators. While our school will not hire teachers just because they have been ‘‘surplused’’ by the public school system, we do pay union wages, an issue very important in a working-class, union-oriented community. State monies come to the school on a per-pupil basis, but we do not charge tuition or fees of any kind. We serve free breakfast and free lunch to all students.5 We wanted to create a school that would work for urban neighborhood kids and for the urban neighborhood itself—a school and a school community that would avoid conventional public schools’ rigid structures and class-discriminatory practices. The school would be situated in and belong to the community. It would replicate local learning practices— intergenerational, hands-on learning much like the apprenticeships that naturally occurred in the trades. It would provide choices for kids and families that would allow East Enders to stay in the community and give back to it. For three generations, East End children have dropped out of school in the sixth and seventh grades. The founding mothers saw the community public charter school not just as an out-of-the-box project—a phrase we used a lot—but as requiring us to rethink the principles of box making. As one teacher put it, ‘‘We are not yet building with blocks; we first have to create the blocks.’’ What, for example, does a community-driven, cultureand class-sensitive school really mean? Can the school facilitate and nurture the counter-hegemonic (against the power structure) diverse identities (class, race, gender, ethnicity) that have been supported by extended family and community practices? Or, will the school and the community succumb to hegemonic global market forces that will ultimately destroy diversity and the urban community itself? How can the dreams and memories of a former community school be realized at the beginning of the twenty-first century? What versions and reinventions of memory are required? Memory here is based in commuxx

preface and acknowledgments

nity practices and is a form of local knowledge, a very important form. How can this urban community school be understood, in turn, as a microcosm of the city in a global economy and society? Just as the founding mothers created the school collaboratively, so has this book benefited from many voices, some overtly present in these pages, others more hidden and subtle. Community leaders, teachers, and students of all ages have contributed generously. I am grateful to many people. I especially want to thank Robbie and Athena, my age-mates and fellow founding mothers, for doing whatever it takes and for helping me understand the depths of dreams, memory, and practice. I want to thank Evylyn for holding the school together in times of crisis. To our consulting teachers, especially Janice Glaspie and our consulting principal Lionel Brown, along with my colleagues Robin Lee, Annette Hemmings, Deborah Hicks, and Pat O’Reilly, who specialize in matters educational, I thank you for teaching me how schools and cities work, or ought to. I want to thank the teachers for sharing their insights as well as their trials, especially Alice, Omope, and Hank. The kids must be thanked for being kids and the parents for being there when they could. The Spencer Foundation, the Charles Phelps Taft Memorial Fund, and the University of Cincinnati Institute for Community Partnerships provided much-needed support and enabled undergraduate as well as graduate students to participate in this project. I want to thank my students: Sara, Elizabeth, Blair, Tasha, Nicole, Sheli, Tim, Vanya, Molly, Lauren, Donna, and Kate; and colleagues Nuha, Austen, Stephanie, and Deborah. Also Holly and Lynsay, who in a time of great crisis in the school shared with me a most hopeful sign after tutoring primary kids in the summer of 2002: ‘‘The kids do not want to go home when the time is up.’’ I also want to thank my colleagues Melissa Brown, Barry Isaac, and Vern Scarborough for listening to my many stories and anecdotes and for putting up with my coming to academic meetings late and leaving early. Bill, Sam, Mike, and Sylvia put up with many hours of interrupted family time. The interpretations in this book are mine and I take responsibility for them.

T H E ORGA N I Z AT ION OF T H E BOOK This book consists of a mix of genres: narratives, stories, poetry, short essays, critical writing, and hybrids of these. Incorporating many voices in this book has been essential to the integrity of the project and has resulted in a somewhat fragmented work. Fragmentation reflects the urban xxi

preface and acknowledgments

character of the project and the contradictions inherent in city life. At the same time, interwoven throughout the book are the key themes of the importance of place, the relationship between practicing community and practicing school, and the critical role of community leaders and residents in school affairs. Structurally, the book is divided into three parts: Part I, ‘‘Creation: Writing Urban Memory,’’ characterized by collaboration and shared leadership among a diverse group of women, deals with the creation and early phases of the school’s development up to its opening. Chapter 1, ‘‘Literacy, School, and Identity in an Urban Working-Class Community,’’ situates the school development project in the context of East Enders’ urban working-class identities, especially around the sensitive issues of literacy. Chapter 2, ‘‘Founding Mothers and the Creation of the Charter,’’ documents the struggle to write the charter (the school’s design, curriculum, and governance) and to have it approved by the Cincinnati Public Schools Board of Education. The approval of the charter did not happen easily or smoothly; rather, suffering long delays, patiently cutting through layer upon layer of bureaucracy, and tolerating the intolerance of the power structure became as routine as driving to work. Chapter 3, ‘‘The Politics of the Charter and the Politics of Space,’’ deals with the process of seeing the charter’s approval through the Cincinnati School Board and analyzes the struggle for permission to lease space in the old Highlands building, where two founding mothers had attended grade school. Chapter 4, ‘‘Hiring Staff: Teachers, Kin, and an Instructional Leader,’’ describes the hiring of teachers and staff, including the hiring of an instructional leader who, in a very short time, defined herself as a principal. Part II, ‘‘Deterritorialization,’’ characterized by conflict, fragmentation, crises, and subordination of community leaders to outsiders, begins in Chapter 5 with the opening of the school in September 2000. This chapter is followed by ‘‘Kids in the Urban Borderland: A Collage,’’ taken from a theme discussed by Nan Ellin in her book Postmodern Urbanism, in which she uses the metaphor of the collage to talk about the city. The image of a collage accentuates and confirms the importance of borderlands and their inherent fragmentation. Chapter 7, ‘‘Clashing Philosophies, Clashing Practices: Follow the Leader vs. Ring around the Rosie,’’ elaborates the features of the borderland. Chapter 8 continues the theme of shared leadership in the context of a math club for girls, called MICROgirls. Chapter 9, entitled ‘‘Moments: Collaboration and Consensus in the Borderland,’’ describes a few islands of cooperation and shared leadership during the school’s first year. Part III, ‘‘Reterritorialization,’’ characterized by the renewal of leaderxxii

preface and acknowledgments

ship and community empowerment and the flourishing of organic intellectuals, treats the synthesis and resolution of the conflicts within the school by focusing on the second year of the school’s life. Chapter 10, called ‘‘Negotiating the Borderland,’’ consists of various conflict scenarios between school administrators and community residents. The chapter also describes the Intervention Team, an interdisciplinary crisis management team led by the consulting principal. Chapter 11, ‘‘Deterritorialization, Crisis Management, and the Beginnings of Reterritorialization,’’ documents in a blow-by-blow fashion the retracing of steps after the principal attempted to engineer the firing of seven East Enders from the school. Described in this chapter is the establishment of a training program for case managers, lay advisors/counselors from the community who had proven themselves to be invaluable educational resources in the school. As one East End leader put it, ‘‘We should have had case managers when the school opened.’’ Chapter 12, ‘‘Borderlands, Factions, and Inverted Imagined Communities,’’ returns to the issue of community and the implications of the borderland for understanding the school as a reinvented urban community, that is, in effect, an inverted imagined community.6 It also deals with school structures and policies as forms of colonialism, including the potential recreation of oppressive structures from the conventional hegemonic system of education. Chapter 13, ‘‘Taking Back the School,’’ describes the school’s reterritorialization and the flourishing of community leaders and administrative staff as organic intellectuals. Chapter 14 brings the book up to date by describing how the school was restructured to include academic deans for the lower (pre-K–8) and upper (7–12) schools. The overlap is purposeful, since it is in the sixth and seventh grades that East End children have historically dropped out of school. This final chapter brings to fruition the idea of the school as a global urban borderland in its discussion of the transformations and cycles of community, culture, and class. Cities are constantly shifting terrains, and the school is no exception.

Some names have been changed in order to protect the privacy of individuals.

xxiii

THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

w h o s e s c h o ol i s i t ? wo m e n , c h i l d r e n , m e mo r y, and pract ice in t he cit y

THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

P RO L O G U E

In that place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry patches from their roots to make room for the Medallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood. It stood in the hills above the valley town of Medallion and spread all the way to the river. It is called the suburbs now, but when black people lived there it was called the Bottom. —t o n i m o r r i s o n, Sula

M E M O RY A N D H I S T O RY ‘‘It will give us a chance to get back to what the neighborhood used to be.’’ These were the words of Robbie, a fifty-five-year-old founding mother of this urban public charter school and grandmother of this working-class community, as she scraped and painted and moved furniture for the opening day in September 2000. School opened on the day after Labor Day, to be exact, the traditional day that school starts in the East End. Finally Robbie was back in Highlands School, a Cincinnati public school building where Athena, Robbie, and her sister and brother and cousins had gone. Her father and numerous aunts and uncles had attended Highlands before her. The building is filled with memories—memories of this urban community as it used to be. Robbie had lived in the East End all her life and it had been her dream to bring the old school back to its proper place in the community. In the eighties Highlands had ceased to be a neighborhood K–8 school for East End children. Other kinds of public schools—alternative schools and specialized school programs—had claimed the building’s space. For 1

prologue

a few years in the early nineties, Highlands became Peter Clark Academy, an impressive sounding name for a school serving high-school dropouts. Robbie spoke repeatedly and very articulately about the problems associated with attending Clark Academy. To go there, a kid had to be sixteen and have already dropped out of school. There were many more dropouts than spaces, and Clark gave no preference to East End kids, most of whom had dropped out of school between the ages of twelve and fourteen. ‘‘Why not take in kids as soon as they drop out? That way they won’t fall through the cracks, hang on the street and, if they are in the wrong place at the wrong time, end up getting an education in jail.’’ These were only some of Robbie’s thoughts. Only a handful of East Enders had ever attended Clark Academy. That Peter Clark Academy manifested no attachment to place was not an accident. As far as the school system was concerned, Peter Clark just happened to be located in the East End, but it could have been situated anywhere, including outer space, as one East Ender so aptly put it. To East Enders, though, locating this specialized school in a community with such extraordinarily high dropout rates represented a considerable blow. No preference was given to East End kids, even though the school was located right in the Highlands building in the center of the neighborhood. I did not realize it at the time (the early nineties), but Clark was just one of many attempts on the part of the school board’s power structure to deterritorialize school for working-class kids. After Clark, Highlands became Project Succeed, another school for high-risk kids—this time with records. Most recently, the Highlands building housed Clark Montessori, a yuppie school that had nothing to do with the East End community or with working-class kids. Montessori methods might have worked quite well where conventional methods had failed, but Clark Montessori made no attempt to recruit East End kids or to connect with the neighborhood. When the school grew too big for the building, it moved out of the neighborhood, and the Highlands building stood vacant for a year. Neighborhood leaders, Robbie and Athena among them, saw the empty building as a waste of good educational space and worried that it would become a target of vandalism. It did. The neighborhood and the ways of thinking about school have changed a lot since Robbie was a child, but urban kids still need schools and schooling as much as, if not more than, ever. The question is, what kind of school and schooling work best for working-class kids? I had known Robbie and her family for a long time, almost fifteen years, having worked with her and other community leaders since the early nineties. My main function in the community has been to support 2

prologue

community projects and interests by collecting quantitative and qualitative data that legitimize local knowledge and practice. In reality this methodology equates to telling the power structure what community residents regard as common sense—facts about the diversity, longevity, and stability of the community but also other practices such as dealing with river flooding, the informal economy, and rituals of survival. Some scholar/activists refer to this kind of research as ‘‘action research.’’ Anthropologists might refer to the work as ‘‘applied or public anthropology.’’ As a professor of anthropology, I am perceived as having some status and power; East End leaders tend to call me ‘‘Doctor’’ when they need or want someone in power to recognize my presence or hear my advocate’s voice. Even after all of this time in the community, though, I could not help but wonder what, exactly, Robbie meant by getting back to ‘‘what the neighborhood used to be.’’ Was she talking about the close interracial friendships and the historically diverse community reflected in the school? For Robbie, her time at Highlands was a very positive experience; she loved the teachers and felt welcome. Education was inspiring and meaningful. She belonged. Surely there had never been a community charter school like this one before, even though we had modeled the school on community practices. Did she mean to bring back the feelings, the pride, and the sense of being ‘‘a real East Ender’’ that her old school had given her? Did she mean that the school would provide a place and a sense of belonging for East Enders in a neighborhood that now, after the passage of the East End Development Plan in 1992, was especially vulnerable to global market forces that gentrify and deterritorialize communities at the expense of the existing residents? Was it just the simple matter of bringing back a school that belonged to the community? Clearly Robbie had images in her mind about herself, the neighborhood, and the school. She is now a grandmother working as the school’s community organizer, a paid staff position with an office inside the school. The neighborhood and the city, for that matter, look very different from the East End of Robbie’s childhood memories. While the community still sits just to the east of downtown, upscale condos now line the riverbanks where she played as a child. Now the neighborhood not only borders downtown, but is also a place where many different cultures and social classes come together, with the accompanying boundaries and lines, some visible, others not. Walworth Avenue, a small street that parallels Eastern Avenue near the Delta Avenue underpass, has a few community residents, but it is mostly inhabited by young urban professionals (yuppies, in East End parlance). The same is true of the segment of the East End called Columbia Tusculum. In these gentrifying areas, ten3

prologue

sions are growing between newcomers and neighborhood kids, especially around issues of property and cars. Break-ins and thefts are common, and challenges to outsiders happen regularly in the local bars, where neighborhood kids attempt to pick fights with the yuppies. Many of the old landmarks are gone or changed beyond recognition, and there are new markers of place in the community. Gone is the Sunoco gas station where Fritz, who chaired the Community Health Center board as a lifelong East Ender, used to hold informal community meetings. The Sunoco property is now the parking lot for the reopened Pendleton Heritage Center. The Lewiston Town Homes, eleven units of affordable rental townhouses, opened in 1994, and the Betts Flats, thirteen affordable rental units right next to the school, opened shortly thereafter. Robbie is constantly filtering memories through both the old and familiar and the new and uncertain—rethinking, re-creating, and reimagining her memories to accommodate her own changing goals, personal and political. In a place that takes community personally, the personal and the political are almost always one and the same. Outsiders do not understand this meshing of the private (personal) and public (political) domains of life. For Robbie, bringing back a community school is both very personal and very much a community project. She empathizes with the kids and their families, having grown up with many of the grandparents, and says repeatedly, ‘‘There is no kid in this building who doesn’t want somebody to talk to.’’ The kids and the parents and grandparents do talk to her.

URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY This book is an ethnography based in a school more than an ethnography of a school. That the school is the site of the ethnography is not exactly happenstance, but it is not the most critical point. What is critical is that there are larger points to be made about the nature of cities—urban places, including, but not restricted to, urban schools. These points have to do with global processes of identity formation and change, deterritorialization of local places and monuments, and the patterns of urban life practiced in and around the school. For example, when the Highlands building housed Peter Clark Academy and other non-neighborhood schools, processes of deterritorialization were clearly at work. Such deterritorialization appears to be identical to the deterritorialization that comes with globalization. I cannot help but think of the neighborhoods in San Francisco that have been virtually taken over by global companies such as Starbucks, which drove out local 4

prologue

coffee places.1 The same thing was happening with the schools placed in the Highlands building in the East End: they had a strong presence in the neighborhood; indeed, they were in the neighborhood, but not of the neighborhood. Such global economic processes, which create a diaspora of often small establishments (like small schools), result in institutions that are in the community, but with no connection to it. Such deterritorialization ultimately destroys communities. I see the school as a small city, or at least a model or replica of a small city, with all of the attendant diversity, inequality, income and lifestyle disparities, global markets, capitalist forces, conflict, hegemonic (power) dynamics, and reinventions of tradition and memory. Like many cities, Cincinnati is segregated by both race and class, conservative in leadership and in policies supporting business development and (often high-end) market-rate housing over affordable, low-income housing, job training, and educational programs. In this climate, incentives to finish high school for working-class kids of whatever race or ethnicity are very few. College, then, appears as a completely unattainable goal. Why should a poor or working-class child finish high school if there are neither jobs nor resources for attending college? There is strong pressure from family members, friends, and neighbors to get a full-time job before graduation to help support the family. Social justice and the narrowing of digital divides easily give way to market forces. As a result of years of marginalization, racial and class tensions grow worse and kids exhibit rage in more and more dramatic and often violent ways. How can we channel their energy and creativity in positive directions? Writing this book in the wake of the uprisings in Cincinnati in the spring of 2001 and the terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11 of that year feels drastically different from past research and writing projects. Writing seems urgent. The meaning of words and especially the relationships between theory and practice seem compressed and pressured. The marginality of urban working-class communities intensifies to convey a feeling of being in the third world.2 Urban kids already grow up much too fast. The adults shaping the school, its history, and its future must work quickly. The original out-of-the-box design of the school, the policies and practices needed for the school to function daily, and the long- and short-term plans for the curriculum must all be accomplished at once. The neighborhood has already changed dramatically, and it continues to change in ways unfamiliar and threatening to residents. Recent events have set a new global context for writing about schooling and community in multicultural urban borderlands. If cities are more 5

prologue

vulnerable than ever, more impoverished than ever, and more violent and drug-infested than ever, then our models for understanding cities and their schools must be rethought. Relationships between schools and urban places and the dynamics of schools as urban places that have themselves been deterritorialized are new relationships and new dynamics that are being discussed and theorized.3 Whereas we once may have thought of cities as melting pots and schools as instruments of upward mobility and success, both cities and their schools have changed greatly in the last two decades. Globalization, feminism, multiculturalism, information technology, and the horrific events at schools such as Columbine have impacted the way we think about kids and schools. More and more kids have been to therapy or to jail and feel labeled as ‘‘crazy’’ or just ‘‘bad.’’ 4 The images of kids in the media are many, varied, and more fragmented and complicated than ever. Videos abound with fast-paced rhythms and often raw sexuality. Commercials convey images and messages that might have been considered pornographic just a few years ago. Most recently, the constant threat of global terrorism has demanded new thinking and new models of cities and schools. Cities have become borderlands of conflict and terror—places where strangers rub shoulders in skyscrapers, streets, and schools. The boundaries—community boundaries, personal and professional boundaries, cultural and class lines—shift constantly. Who are the best teachers, counselors, mentors? Does a person have to have credentials in order to teach? Are people with credentials always the best teachers? 5 The term ‘‘borderland’’ borrows from the borderland studies of the Mexican-U.S. border,6 which describe a place where many cultures meet and clash and where contradictions, inconsistencies, and power struggles rule over ordered and practiced cultural patterns. In a single urban school building, we can see lines drawn between East Enders and outsiders, people from the country and the city, kids from different parts of the city and from distinct and separately identified parts of the neighborhood, educational progressives and educational traditionalists, credentialed professionals with no knowledge of the community and uncredentialed community leaders and residents with an abundance of local knowledge, street smarts, and just plain common sense—products of years of living in the community. The East End Community Heritage School can be understood, then, as a microcosm of the city (the global, deterritorialized city). The school, much like the city, is hierarchically organized in a ladder-like pecking order of power and control.7 Within the building, credentialed people interact and often clash with uncredentialed people, mirroring encoun6

prologue

ters in urban spaces. In cities, for example, people from the street set rules and relationships of trust alongside professionals and businesspeople who engage in more formal interactions. In the school, as in many urban neighborhoods, formal and official rules often give way to informal ways of doing things, and resistance to formality and to rules is always in evidence.8 For kids, in school and on the street, even the slightest differences in demeanor, language, clothing, shoes, hairstyle, become markers of status and power. Image is very important—for many kids it is everything. The school is still shrouded in some of the old rhetoric of schooling and conventionality, power and knowledge. Rules prohibiting hats and baggy pants, requiring ‘‘passes,’’ and curtailing urban language and vernacular conflict with the free-spirited educational philosophy in the charter. As the school has evolved, it has changed in structure and, to some degree, in function. The wellness center, established in the summer of 2002, occupies a separate space in the school to meet the health needs of adults and children in the community. East Enders perceive the wellness center as community-controlled space within the school. The Intervention Team operates out of the wellness center as the forum for community voices. Case managers, or lay counselors, were brought into the school in the fall of 2002 to function as the ‘‘human bridges’’ between families and the school. Urban borderlands can and do arise instantly. Contestations began as soon as the doors opened, over space in the building, over who was in charge, over what the rules should be and how should they be determined and enforced, and with what consequences. Every process, from the most trivial and mundane to the most fundamental and profound, seemed open to contestation. The school was meant to occupy the central place at the heart of the community, just as the community is at the heart of the school. The exact nature of this reciprocity is, in 2005, still unclear. But this murkiness is one of the key features of the borderland. It is clear, though, that community presence in the building symbolizes and enshrines past memories of school and educational opportunities for the future. Occupying the building certainly, at least for the time being, prevents developers from turning it into upscale condominiums.

METHODS When I came to work in the East End in 1990, community leaders and residents were participating in a long and contentious economic development planning process designed to preserve and revitalize the community. 7

prologue

My job was to strengthen the ‘‘community’s voice’’ in the planning process, primarily by collecting data that would be useful in documenting the strengths of the community and combating negative stereotypes.9 Beginning in 1990, a diverse team of twelve university students, a field coordinator, and I conducted intensive ethnographic research. Strong presence in the community as researchers and advocates, in-depth interviews with families, the creation of elaborate kinship charts with attendant family histories and stories, and the documentation of meetings, both inside and outside the community, have been conducted without interruption over the last fifteen years, continuing up to the spring of 2004.10 Throughout the school’s planning and first year, I chaired its board of trustees and acted as a founding mother. I see my involvement in the school itself as a necessary, albeit at times problematic, part of the research itself. I write both from the position of an insider and from that of an outsider within. Some East Enders refer to me as a second-generation East Ender, a testimony to the power of what Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘‘practical kinship.’’ 11 In the East End, though, kinship is a metaphor for trust. I am a trusted member of the community and school development team because I support and advocate that local knowledge is as legitimate, if not more so, as other forms of ‘‘outsider’’ and ‘‘credentialed’’ knowledge. As the school’s history unfolded, additional people became part of our research/advocacy team, including various members of the staff and board and several undergraduate and graduate students who also contributed to the school program as tutors, teachers, coaches, and friends. We continued to collect information that would benefit the school’s growth and the students’ achievement. Participatory evaluation and collaborative documentation involved all of the school’s stakeholders, including parents and kids. Before anything was published or presented at a professional meeting, community leaders were always consulted. We all worked hard to obtain input, build consensus, and move forward with the school’s agenda. As an urban anthropologist, I see the school as a microcosm of the city—not just Cincinnati, but cities globally. This urban school contains within a single building all of the elements of a contemporary global city: it is multicultural, class-stratified, fluid (always changing with many people moving in, out, and around), territorially (spatially) segmented, and fragmented. It is tense, conflict-ridden, and often explosive. Class here refers to situated practices based in economy and culture, and while there is an internal stratification pattern in the East End, most people are still working-class or working-poor. Hierarchy within the school refers to power structures and hegemonic decision making. The school is not only situated in the city at large, but also operates within a special, and some8

prologue

what unclear, power relationship with Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS). Working with a democratically elected school board and its fluid administration presented some challenges. As a new, publicly chartered school, we, and the public school system, were literally creating the rules as we went along. CPS’s charter school manager, a highly paid administrator, functioned as the liaison between ‘‘us’’ and ‘‘them.’’ There are multiple layers of urban-ness in the school, including kids’ street images and representations of street life. Schools contain the cultures of the city at large, including those stakeholders who constantly attempt to remove the community from the school and, in essence, deterritorialize it. Even those with good intentions can take over a project, or an aspect of a curriculum, to the point where it no longer ‘‘belongs’’ to the community. By employing East Enders and making sure community leaders, parents, and residents play important roles in all decision-making processes, the EECHS board of trustees has managed, albeit with great difficulty, to keep its community context and focus. A focus on workingclass culture and practice has remained a strong point. The school embraces all working-class families in the city—a practice that has created an urban, multicultural environment that is both energized and tense. With these features of the city in mind, we designed the East End Community Heritage School to be a multicultural, public community charter school, K–12. It is an independent public school, operated under the aegis of CPS but run by our own nonprofit corporation, complete with a community board of trustees, a seven-figure budget, and a complicated set of partnerships with local universities, corporations, and other nonprofit groups. Dedicated to working for change and social justice, the founding mothers, as we still call ourselves—community leaders, university professors, teachers, and neighborhood activists—spent two years designing an out-of-the-box school that would work for kids in this smallscale, long-lived community with astronomically high dropout rates. In the nineties, almost no one graduated from high school and most kids dropped out of school in the sixth and seventh grades. Going to school as a poor child meant not having the right clothes or the right language (dialect of English) and having the lunch ticket that stigmatized a child as poor. We planned the school with community practices foremost in mind—intergenerational learning and hands-on projects that would teach concepts and practical skills at the same time. By an out-of-the-box school we meant many things—community-based, nontraditional, nonbureaucratic, small, innovative, hands-on, and apprenticeship-based. We all agreed we did not want to create another conventional CPS school, for these schools, like many public schools, had failed not only this gen9

prologue

eration of kids, but also several generations before them. We were very idealistic and somewhat naïve about how we would put these ideas into practice, but the momentum of those intense two years of school development kept us going and pressured us to get the school open as soon as possible. Ironically, perhaps, it was precisely this out-of-the-box-ness that created the most conflict and the most contentious discussions about what the school was really meant to be. In short, it was the unconventional, community-driven character of the school that laid the groundwork for the global borderland. On a conceptual level, the fact that many different cultures come together in this urban school makes it an urban borderland, in Latina feminist Gloria Anzaldúa’s terms. Further, Anzaldúa’s concept of borderland can be used to theorize the city as a conglomeration of discrete cultures. But the concept of borderland is more than a descriptive term; it is a conceptual tool for dealing with complexity, diversity, fluidity, contradiction, irony, conflict, even anarchy. In several senses, then, this analysis is an expansion and elaboration of ‘‘borderland anthropology’’ in a global urban context.12 The cultures in the borderland do not melt together, but rather retain their identities in conflicting, contested, and deterritorialized ways. Moreover, these diverse urban cultures (including class cultures) straddle country and city, often becoming deterritorialized or reterritorialized in complex ways. The school, then, can be understood as a microcosm of the city—a small-scale version of the urban environment within an urban setting that is still connected to ‘‘the country’’ (rural areas) and that is increasingly subject to global processes. If the dynamics of the school model the dynamics of the city, then we can learn a lot about cities by understanding the school.

C EL E BR AT I N G D I V E RSI T Y, C OM MON S E N S E , H E R I TAGE , A N D FA M I LY Diversity in the East End of Cincinnati is historically etched in community practices and is practiced in everyday life. From its inception in the late eighteenth century, the East End has been home to people from many cultures. The East End Community Heritage School is dedicated to celebrating all forms of diversity—racial, ethnic, class, gender—and to respecting all heritages, whether these are conceived as rural, urban, African American, European, Appalachian, Hispanic, or combinations of these and others. Cincinnati’s East End is a multicultural, working-class, urban

10

prologue

neighborhood where many people maintain strong ties to the country as well as to other urban communities. ‘‘We haven’t got a lot of book learning, but we sure have common sense.’’ I have heard this exclaimed a thousand times in the East End. It took a long time for me to figure out what, exactly, East Enders meant by common sense. It can be deconstructed as follows: ‘‘We know our community; we have strategies for survival and strategies for life. We want to be free and autonomous, and, perhaps most importantly, we take care of our own.’’ Practicing common sense—living by it—is a fine art in the East End. It is something learned through apprenticeships and experiences, not books.13 In fact, common sense in the East End, and probably in most other working-class communities throughout the United States, if not the world, is a perfect example of ‘‘common sense as cultural system,’’ to borrow Clifford Geertz’s phrase. It is something children learn not in school, but by spending time with adults—watching, imitating, and eventually reproducing and elaborating community practices.14 If we think about how children grow up to be viable adults in most cultures as we know them in historical and evolutionary time, schools as we know them have not been part of the process. In the East End, children watch and listen with focus and concentration; they imitate, mimic, and internalize patterns in the course of everyday life much more effectively than they appear to do in school. Common sense is complicated and multilayered. Can the process by which common sense is learned be replicated within a school building? Throughout the entire school development process, I was acutely aware that we were creating an institution that would privilege book learning over common sense and ‘‘street smarts.’’ 15 There were prices to be paid for such privileging. At the same time, to link the two, book learning and common sense, to use one to enhance the other, was the major challenge. We thought we could encourage book learning by celebrating street smarts. Writing projects would be based on students’ experiences. Other forms of expression, visual and musical, would incorporate skills and creativity. We knew the kids had a lot to write about, and their writing was, in fact, powerful and persuasive as well as gut-wrenching and troubled. Family is central to East End culture and takes priority in the lives of children. To be a member of the East End family is an honor, but with honor comes responsibility. To be accepted as a member of the community, a person must meet family needs before all else, including school attendance and schoolwork. Family and community membership confers trust and anticipates sharing. It means ‘‘being there,’’ for better or for

11

prologue

worse. Family became the metaphor for the school. Many stakeholders spoke of ‘‘our school family,’’ but people with differing agendas used words like ‘‘family’’ and ‘‘kin’’ in their own ways. Moreover, families squabble, fight, don’t hold back. Families are fiercely loyal; they have their rituals and their rules. Families are about warmth, tough love, and discipline. As much as family models were used to characterize the school, there were also other competing models—corporate models, progressive educational models—that were seen as simultaneously undisciplined, elitist, rebellious, and threatening to conventional community practices. The words spoken by progressive teachers sounded strange and unfamiliar—words like ‘‘living the writerly life,’’ or ‘‘studying interdisciplinary projects in the humanities.’’ One leader asked, ‘‘What exactly is humanities, and do our kids get credit for it? If so, what kind of credit?’’ Theory and practice are related, and the school presented an opportunity to think about the nature of the city, to theorize the city, as academics say.16 Like the city, the school has permeable boundaries; people move in and out of it, but usually remain connected in some way. The timing of school entrances and exits is interesting. Sometimes parents move their kids from one school to another within the community or the city. Sometimes, when urban life gets too difficult, parents take the whole family back to the country. Movements within the city, and from city to country, reflect the tensions and contradictions of urban life.

K– 1 2 People were amazed that we opened a K–12 school in the first year. Why not start with a few primary grades and add a grade each year, as most new schools do? It has to be K–12, argued community leaders, with great conviction, so we can have a school for all children in a family—so parents don’t have to run around to different schools on parent-teacher nights. Kids in one family need to be in one school. Against the advice of our trusted education colleagues, we opened with thirteen grades, and now we have a preschool as well. In the first year, most of the high-school teachers were hired at the last minute, just before school opened, because our high-school enrollments shot up from twelve, in late August 2000, to seventy-five, in early September. Many of the primary teachers also came in just before school opened. Having been rejected many times by schools and other bureaucracies, East Enders didn’t trust that a neighborhood school could really be opening. Many families signed up at the very last minute. There was little time for planning curriculum and even less 12

prologue

time for teachers and staff to get to know each other. In September 2000, we had 160 students and fourteen teachers. Finally the school, a very important piece of ‘‘the plan,’’ as the economic development plan for this increasingly valuable neighborhood on the Ohio riverfront was known, had been realized. The dream of one East End grandmother was a reality. But as this grandmother said many times, ‘‘I wonder whether my dream is turning into a nightmare.’’ The nightmare was her way of referring to the conflicts in the school borderland. In this book I use different genres (narratives, stories, essays) and incorporate different voices (community leaders, teachers, students) to talk about the challenges faced by a coalition of diverse women as we designed and opened a public community charter school in one of Cincinnati’s oldest urban neighborhoods. The focus is on a global, urban borderland in which East End community leaders changed their identities several times—first being leaders, then going through a subjugated and exploited phase as ‘‘mere employees,’’ and eventually becoming organic intellectuals. Simultaneously, and in parallel, the community went through a process of first establishing, then coming close to losing, and finally taking back the school. It seems fitting to carry over our team concept to the telling of the school’s creation, birth, and first four years of life. This book builds on and is part of the institution-building involved in ‘‘practicing community,’’ only in a broader sense, because working-class people and communities outside of the East End are involved. From the outset, every meeting and conversation (large or small), every event, and every decision had and continues to have multiple dimensions, multiple interpretations, and multiple retellings and reinventions. Only a day later, memories of a conversation, a meeting, even a minor incident varied greatly. The characteristically urban potential for conflict was always close to the surface, and there were many times when I could see the borderland take on a life of its own. It is always energized, vibrant, and alive. Every time I walk into the building, I can sense the energy in the school, the sense of anticipation, the sense of hope. Rather than create a dreary narrative of chronologically arranged blowby-blow descriptions, I have condensed events and told them thematically, while still, I hope, providing the necessary contexts and backgrounds. I have deviated substantially from chronology and favored key issues and moments, especially crises, tough decisions, and ordinary growing pains. In the thick of it, we had difficulty discerning the differences among these. My goals for this book operate on several levels, both practical and theoretical. One goal is to document the school’s creation and first four 13

prologue

years of life, so that others with similar aims in similar urban settings might learn from our working models as well as from our mistakes. This is the story of how the East End Community Heritage School came to be and how it worked, or didn’t, in its first years. On May 31, 2002, ten students graduated from our high school. The primary goal, though, is to use the processes of this urban school’s creation and function to theorize it as a global urban borderland, subject to processes of establishment (characterized by collaboration and shared leadership); deterritorialization (characterized by fragmentation, conflict, and crises); and reterritorialization (characterized by renewal of leadership, community empowerment, and the flourishing of organic intellectuals). The community agents in the school shaped their positions in accordance with these processes. The three phases of agency in the global urban borderland correspond with the three parts of the book. In this respect, though I am writing about a school, the site of this analysis could be any urban site: a health center, community center, school, or neighborhood. As such, the analysis is not heavy-handed. If anything, the opposite is the case. That is, many of the narratives, the telling of events, the reports of meetings, are lightly analyzed so that the reader can interpret, reimagine, and remember the authenticity of the voices telling the story.

14

one

L I T E R A C Y, S C H O O L , A N D IDENT IT Y IN AN URBAN, WO R K I N G - C L A S S C OM M U N I T Y

In his much acclaimed book In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio, Philippe Bourgois describes handing a New York Post article to a charismatic man he calls Ray, the ‘‘main man’’ directing a large retail network for crack distribution in the Upper West Side of New York. The article featured a picture of Bourgois next to celebrity Phil Donahue after a television special on crime in East Harlem. Bourgois admits to basking in his increasingly close and privileged relationship with Ray, who had just made a point of buying this young white anthropologist a special Heineken beer (fifteen cents more expensive than the Budweiser everyone else had received). Bourgois’s guard was down and he was feeling cocky enough to want to impress Ray as a ‘‘real professor’’ with abilities to access the mainstream world of white daytime television. Bourgois had shoved the newspaper into Ray’s hands, and the guys surrounding Ray were urging him to read the caption. In an effort to help, the anthropologist pointed to the caption; Ray tried to act indifferent and threw the paper into the gutter. His admirers began calling out to him: ‘‘Come on Ray! What’s the matter? What’s it say? Read it! Read it!’’ In order to save face, Ray turned on Bourgois and started swearing, ‘‘Fuck you Filipe! I don’t care about this shit! Get out of here! All of you’s!’’ He jumped into his Mercedes and sped away. Later on he redefined the article as a breach of security through media exposure and threatened Bourgois, making it clear that such breaches could cost him his life.1

In the East End, literacy, and especially illiteracy, is a very sensitive topic. Illiteracy is not just a negative stereotype but a label too often pinned 17

creation

on working-class people to further disenfranchise, displace, and disempower. It is the antithesis of school, the very opposite of being educated. From the point of view of the power structure, the implication of the label is that a person is illiterate because of school failure, rebellion against going to school, or both. The assumption is that if a person is illiterate, it is that person’s fault—very much a ‘‘blame the victim’’ way of thinking.

‘‘S C R E A M I N G I L L I T E R A T E S’’ W R I T E ‘‘They’re calling us a bunch of screaming illiterates.’’ ‘‘Who are ‘they’?’’ I ask, with a sense of real wonder in my voice, since I cannot believe that people with such obvious spoken and written skills could have such a negative label attached to them. It did not make any sense. ‘‘You know, the people who wrote the report.’’ ‘‘What report?’’ ‘‘The report they did after the interviews.’’ ‘‘What interviews?’’ ‘‘The surveys—the ones they did while most of us were at work. They never talked to a lot of people since they work third shift and were sleeping when they came around.’’ There is a lot of anger in these voices. What is this discussion of (il)literacy really about?

M I S TA K E N ( I L L I T E R AT E ) I DE N T I T I E S It was 1991. An economic development plan was being hatched by the City of Cincinnati, for, and presumably in collaboration with, East End residents and leaders. ‘‘They’’ turned out to be a small group of advocates attempting to gather community data to ‘‘strengthen community voices in the planning process,’’ something the city fathers and mothers on the planning council had mandated. The nine-to-five, impersonal surveys, followed by a report describing rates of illiteracy and school dropout, had the opposite of the effect intended by the advocates. Community leaders ‘‘read’’ the report as strong criticism. Calling people illiterates and school dropouts translates to ‘‘calling us a bunch of ‘dumb hillbillies’ or ‘river rats.’ ’’ Also, as community leaders were quick to point out, conducting interviews during working hours excluded nine-to-five workers as well 18

l i t e r ac y, sc hool , a n d i de n t i t y

as people who worked third shift, who rested during the regular working day. The East End report was negative in many ways that have implications for children in a globalized world. Among other things, it implied, wrongly, that illiterate parents had no interest in schools or schooling. The corollary to a label of illiteracy is not only ‘‘unschooled,’’ but also uncaring and uninterested in schooling. In fact, the very opposite was the case, for Robbie in particular and later on Athena and many other East End parents and grandparents were passionate about school and schooling, for their families and for the community at large, including educational programs for adults and night classes for kids with daytime jobs. After the angry reactions to the labeling died down, two East End leaders began to write, furiously and prolifically. Robbie wrote the equivalent of several volumes of short essays. I call her writings ‘‘renderings,’’ because they have the spontaneity and intensity of quick sketches or artists’ renderings. Her topics cover everything from remembering and interpreting in recent political contexts the events of her childhood, to memories of her family, especially her brother (who died as a result of injuries sustained in the Vietnam war), to commenting on government officials, developers, and others in positions of power. The mood of these renderings is often light, as humor can cover and provide ways of coping with a great deal of tragedy and pathos. I remember one rendering that Robbie wrote to her granddaughter when she was still a toddler. It was about the continuity of generations— how Robbie remembered her own grandmother and wished she were still alive for her granddaughter to meet. Documenting memories has always been important to Robbie, and for her the creation of a school institutionalizes and immortalizes her own memories of school and community, albeit in many changed forms. Another community leader wrote poems, which were simultaneously spiritual and political, about the East End community, East End people, and East End institutions. The old and hallowed Highlands school figured prominently. The poems, printed on brightly colored paper, became flyers left on doorsteps. The author brought these flyers in substantial quantities to meetings both inside and outside of the community. East Enders have, historically, used flyers for many purposes: to make political statements, to announce community events, and to attract people to important and controversial meetings. The brightly colored poems were always placed in neat stacks next to the other handouts. The fact that these poems were made available at meetings contributed to their power when they were read out loud at City Hall. One of my favorite poems is about traffic in 19

creation

the community; it has special meaning to East End children waiting in the dark for school buses and playing on sidewalks close to the speeding cars. It privileges parents and carries an egalitarian message. Traffic speeds become metaphors for social justice, including safety and health as well as equal access to quality public education. ‘‘t r a f f i c’’ a p r i l 14 , 1992 My temperature rose and I wanted to yell Traffic speeding down Eastern Avenue like a bat out of hell Come on traffic engineers, come out of your shell If you do your job, Eastern Avenue will become a show and tell All this speeding, we don’t and won’t condone Eastern Avenue is not an expressway nor a speed zone We can talk all we want to, but the speeders need to be shown There is so much worry and concern about our own What kind of price do we have to pay? Our children are on Eastern Avenue each and every day Please don’t let it be the wrong kind of ‘‘pay day’’ All East End parents speak up you should have the last say The way people are speeding, we know it’s illegal It seems their mission is to run down all East End people This is not the way we want to be under St. Rose’s steeple God said it, I didn’t, ‘‘we are all created equal.’’ The cars cannot keep speeding as they’ve done in the past Something must be done, and done real fast Will some have to die? Or end up in a cast? Is stopping the speeders that big of a task? I’m going to fight with both tooth and nails You can’t bring someone back to life by putting someone else in jail The price to pay is too great for us to fail As you know we’ve already been told; ‘‘We’re a ship without a sail.’’ Education is taught common sense you’re born with (there are some exceptions) Let’s not wait too late, where we’ll end up with a bunch of stiffs Then all of city hall, will be ready to take the ‘‘fifth’’ And when someone gets hurt, the blame they will want to shift.

20

l i t e r ac y, sc hool , a n d i de n t i t y To all the commuters in your cars and the drivers of metro 35 miles per hour on Eastern Avenue you’re supposed to go Concern and respect for our community you will and must show This is a residential neighborhood, the speed limit is not too slow. Our children and elderly are special to us as yours are to you If this was your neighborhood, you would be concerned too You know the speeding must stop, so why not take your cue Take care of our safety so we don’t have to hear the words, ‘‘code blue.’’ Please take the time, and do something about what’s being said Are any of you leaders? Or do you have to be led? Do the words: ‘‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’’ have to be read? Please don’t wait till one of our children ends up dead.

Prolific writing and a hard-fought provision in the East End Riverfront Community Development Plan to bring back Highlands in the form of a community school began to combat stereotypes of illiteracy. Ten years after these poems and essays were written, Robbie fashioned a joke among East Enders that she told and retold (in almost mythic proportions) at every possible opportunity: ‘‘We didn’t know we were illiterate until we read it in the East End report.’’ The joke was told most recently in January 2001, at a luncheon honoring the success of the newly renovated trolley car barn known as the Pendleton Heritage Center, which was brought back under ‘‘the plan’’ as a community building. (The school development team had used a large room on the west side of the Heritage Center to plan the East End Community Heritage School.) Antonio Gramsci’s idea of the ‘‘organic intellectual’’ is important here. By organic intellectual, Gramsci means people who are not formally trained or schooled but who not only manage to get their points across, but also manage to get things done, to move bureaucracies in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The writing of community leaders simply reaffirms their commitments, not only to the power of the written word, but also, more importantly, to the working-class community in the largest sense. In a globalized world, it is no longer sufficient to work hard at a manual job. Kids must acquire technical and written skills in order to keep a place in the community and give back to others. Literacy is about many things: memory, identity and heritage, selfesteem and power, stereotypes and images of working-class people. Not only are there forms of literacy, there are limits to literacy as well. These limits are culturally constructed as common sense versus book learning. 21

creation

TEACHERS, TEACHING, AND LITERACY One teacher lamented that middle-schoolers do not want to show any weaknesses; the children think of themselves as able to read and write, but are reluctant, afraid, unable to live the life of a reader/writer outside of what they ‘‘have’’ to do for the teacher. Reading to function in the world is what school is supposed to teach. Reading or writing as an end and activity in and of itself is quite another matter. Being a writer, or a reader who spends time reading for pleasure or pursuing an interest, violates conventional notions of school, schooling, teaching, and teachers. The implication is that children will limit their own education and personal growth if they work only to satisfy the teacher. Reading is also a privilege; it requires time and leisure. I remember in the early 1990s witnessing Robbie spend hours and hours helping a neighbor’s second-grader with homework, especially reading. In a private moment, Robbie confided that the child’s mother could not read well enough to help him. Robbie filled in willingly and lovingly, stating the mother’s reading deficiencies as a fact, a situation to be dealt with just as if the child were hungry or in need of a nap. The mother’s issues were a bit more complicated at the time, because she felt that the adult learning center’s staff stigmatized single women with children and treated people in a patronizing manner. She could not get the certificate offered, a GED. Robbie went straight to helping the child. For Robbie, reading is a practical matter, and her vision was to deal with the literacy issues in both the short and the long term. Short-term help with homework would do for the child. In the long term, a school that would serve the whole community, adults and children, without prejudice, became a mission for Robbie. Robbie herself dropped out of high school at sixteen and then went back in her late twenties to earn her GED. The high school she left was large, impersonal, and located in another community quite a distance from the East End. Many East End adults of Robbie’s generation have GEDs. The meaning of literacy and schooling runs long and deep in the East End. The generation of people who graduated from high school in the 1930s proudly display diplomas on living room walls. Dorothy worked hard for her diploma, not only on her schoolwork, but also on getting to school. She had to walk a full five miles each way in all kinds of weather. When she applied for a job as a secretary, she was told that black people were not eligible. She spent her life working as a domestic and raising the children of a wealthy white family. A generation later, the child of the poet author of ‘‘Traffic’’ attended one of the specialized, magnet public 22

l i t e r ac y, sc hool , a n d i de n t i t y

schools in Cincinnati, the School for the Creative and Performing Arts. Children must audition before acceptance, and many are rejected in the competition. He was literate all right, more than literate. But his talents, creativity, and artistic temperament did not develop without costs. We do not know whether Danny was self-medicating with drugs, but he was using nonetheless. He died of an overdose in 2001, the father of several children. Illiteracy is something powerful people think they can do something about. Many wealthy Cincinnatians, mostly women, tutor children in urban schools on a regular but voluntary basis. These women talk openly about how gratifying their tutoring efforts are. Teaching someone to read is a finite task that can be done with a reasonable expenditure of resources in a reasonable amount of time. But in the twenty-first century, teaching children to read is not enough. Computer literacy and knowledge of information technology have replaced the prestige associated with general competency in math and science, and to be non-literate in these areas further subordinates people and exaggerates cultural and class differences. While labels of illiteracy are often quite polite—so polite that they are condescending—the politeness only accentuates the class differences that are compounded by race, gender, and ethnicity. In the context of the first-world United States, the ultimate ‘‘other’’ is a low-class, illiterate, poor person, whose failure to learn to read is perceived as the individual’s fault and an embarrassment to the greater community. Labels of illiteracy give the power structure the right to design and implement plans for poor people, not in collaboration with residents and leaders of the community. The labels not only reinforce the already substantial social distance between rich and poor; they also justify the distance and, in the case of the East End, the attempted takeover of the community by market forces. For a person to be poor and not only literate, but also a talented writer, is shocking still to many in positions of power. Community leaders in the East End are extremely literate, and this hyper-literacy, as I will call it, creates as many problems for all East Enders, especially East End leaders, as it solves. To those in power, poverty and talents of any sort are contradictions, inconsistencies, incomprehensibilities. Images and ideologies of poverty do not include writing talents. For poor, (presumably) illiterate people to want to open a school, to be capable of opening a school, is a serious contradiction—the very definition of the postmodern urban condition of pieces in motion that do not seem to fit together. Here the urban is not just a collage, but a collage (or mobile) in motion. Organic intellectuals turn the stratification system on 23

creation

its head. Early on, certain members of the Cincinnati Public School board made it clear that they would not give the community leaders the time of day without the support of university professors. Community leaders forged partnerships with deans, professors, master teachers, and activists. The next chapter, ‘‘Founding Mothers and the Creation of the Charter,’’ begins with some of Robbie’s renderings, short written sketches that foreshadowed the East End Community Heritage School. They were written in 1992, just before the passage of the East End Development Plan but almost a decade before the actual opening of the EECHS. For the founding mothers, the concept of a school devoted to understanding heritage extends to the greater community, especially to other working-class communities in the greater Cincinnati area. The idea is for all children to be aware of their heritage, regardless of actual origins. Heritage is a repository of memories, a vehicle for learning, a framework to which experience and local knowledge such as history, storytelling, the science of the river and city environments, demographics, mathematics, and many other things can be attached. Because of its rich heritage, the Highlands school building is the model and icon of school in the East End community and in the city at large. Notice that the building is assumed in the renderings; nowhere is it explicitly mentioned. In the early days of the school’s existence, heritage became a complicated and contested issue. Initially, discussion of heritage brought out internal divisions in the East End community, especially those between Upper and Lower East End, but also between East End kids and outsiders.

24

t wo

F O U N D I N G MO T H E RS A N D T H E C R E AT I O N O F T H E C H A R T E R

renderings of robbie, a founding mot her May 13, 1992 When the East End Heritage School is established it should be very clear that it may have taken money to make it a reality but it was love that it was born of. Along with the need for children to know of their heritage there is still a stronger need for them to know that there is no place in this world that prejudice, intolerance, or violence is acceptable. That the basic human instinct is to love and to trust, anything else is an outgrowth of the society we live in now. It is time for society to have a major attitude adjustment if we are to survive. Now is the time for people to speak out if they see an injustice and not just sit back and say ‘‘that should not have happened.’’ We all have to learn to say ‘‘it will no longer be tolerated’’ and then and only then will we truly be a civilized culture. May 17, 1992 Every once in a while I think back to when I left the East End to make sure Tracy was in a quality school and I think being away is what made the East End even more important to me. I guess Tracy was not the only one to get a good education out of it. I hope when our new school is in full swing that it will serve the same purpose for the children and the parents of the East End as moving away did for me. A quality education and an appreciation of what we have right here. Somewhere between May 13 and May 19, 1992 Dreams and reality for the East End in the 1990s I do most of my dreaming when I am awake, and it is always the same dream.

25

creation There are parents on Eastern Avenue walking their children to the East End Heritage (Awareness) School. The dream for a school leads into my dream for a better life for the children of the East End. The road to this better life can start on Eastern Avenue and there are no boundaries to where it may lead. I have always thought it is easier to get where you are going if you know where you have been. This is where the East End Heritage (Awareness) School makes a difference. Right along with the basic education that a school affords you, you will learn who you are and where you come from. The pride in one’s heritage should never be dampened. It should always be fostered. You may move from a house but you always take your heritage with you. It is always there but if you are not aware of what your heritage is there is always a void in history, your own history. A neighborhood school is or should be the center of any community. It is important that children have all the encouragement we as parents can give them. To be able to walk to your child’s school for a program, meeting, open house or even in case of an emergency is something that is essential, to let our children know that you support them. It also serves the purpose of bringing a neighborhood closer together. There is no more wondering why this child goes to one school and next door they go to a different one. Parents would then be on common ground. If there were a problem it is much easier to find the solution if you are only dealing with one school. You get to know the teachers on a more personal basis and they in turn have easier access to you. The other positive aspect of a neighborhood school is your children are no longer bused all over the city. This brings in the safety factor as well as the time they may be adding to the rest they need. We will also not have children five and six years old going to school in the dark or crossing Eastern Avenue in the dark to catch a bus. One thing that I have not mentioned about this school is, in all reality a quality school with the right curriculum and the right teachers, with the loving support and encouragement from home, will dramatically cut the dropout rate for our children. In all likelihood, it would instill in our children the desire to learn even more. All dreams have an end and mine is not different. It ends with the first graduation class from the East End Heritage School. In one hand they have their diploma, in the other, a scholarship and a step toward a higher education. This step will be taken by children who know who they are and where they come from, where they are going and a lasting pride every step of the way, and as they walk toward their goals they will know that it is OK to dream for it was a dream that leads to their reality. 26

founding mot hers and t he chart er ‘‘I have a dream.’’—Martin Luther King. May 17, 1992 I cannot tell you what having our school become a reality means to me. All of a sudden it is practically the most important thing in my life. It’s like I’m afraid I won’t be here when it finally does happen. If that were to be the case I hope there are enough people that now believe in it to keep this dream alive. . . .

Women all, a diverse and multicultural team of community leaders, professors, and activists, we were about ten in number, plus or minus a few, depending on who was counting and when the counting occurred. We shared a common vision and we worked collaboratively to bring back, in reinvented form, a community school in a sacred old school building that had come to symbolize education in the East End. Ours was not a conventional or ordinary team, but a team that life’s experiences had taught to struggle, to persist, to never give up, but to give whatever it takes and to do it from the heart. As Robbie’s futuristic rendering attests, ‘‘It may have taken money to make it a reality, but it was love that it was born of.’’ Her goals for social justice and combating class prejudice have always been clear. Several of us on the team had known each other for many years, ten, twelve, a lifetime; most had just met, and by strokes of serendipity at that. All had struggled to accomplish unconventional goals. All believed that rootedness in place and heritage is still important.

THE UNFOLDING Exactly fifty years ago, two little primary school girls sat next to each other in the old Highlands school—authentic East Enders. Even then it was a very old building, gray-stoned and majestic with worn, dipping, marble steps and creaky wooden floors. Athena took her blackness in stride, as Robbie did her whiteness. Robbie’s father went to Highlands, and so did her brother and sister and a whole bunch of cousins. Back then, going to school in the East End was part of being an East Ender. School provided a sense of belonging, identity, and pride. If a child behaved badly, especially if a kid tried to cross the very dangerous main street, any adult could reprimand that child, even ‘‘slap it upside the head.’’ 1 Eastern Avenue had been a death trap to more than one East Ender. Front doors of houses open right out onto the sidewalk. Children play very close to this busy street. As the traffic poem in the last chapter documents so 27

creation

well, the cars speed up and down, ignoring the fact that the East End is a residential neighborhood.

Robbie The mere mention of Highlands brought back memories of the old East End of Robbie’s childhood, some good, and some bad—using chairs as sleds when the Ohio froze, playing up on the railroad tracks and down in the big old pipes by the river. Robbie cannot forget the day one of a pair of seven-year-old twins fell over the banister in the entryway of Highlands and landed on his head. He did not survive. She is still haunted by this terrible tragedy every time she goes into the front door of the building; she avoided that door for years. Yet she has always revered Highlands and has given its return to the community top priority on her list of projects. In the 1940s and 1950s, Robbie’s family lived in the ‘‘old red brick,’’ a small apartment building in Lower East End, right on the river. Historically, Lower East End has always been the most beautiful as well as the most diverse part of the neighborhood. Highlands is in Lower East End. For generations kids went to Mrs. Wilson’s variety store after school; she’d give them penny candy. Now there is no place to go when school lets out. Trolley cars used to run up and down Eastern Avenue, stopping for cleaning and repairs at the old Pendleton carbarn. Now there are only buses. The school yearbooks show rows of faces: black children and white children side by side, arranged alphabetically. Racial diversity is very much an important part of the school and the neighborhood as a whole. When Robbie attended Highlands, her father drove a delivery truck; her mother stayed at home. Robbie remembers snapping beans in her grandmother’s kitchen. She learned to cook in that kitchen and she learned to be who she is. Grandmothers still take care of children, but they often deal with great obstacles—abusive grandfathers, drug-dependent mothers, children who cannot focus or settle down or children who are explosively angry. When it came time to plan the cafeteria for our school, Robbie insisted that we create our own menus and cook our own breakfasts and lunches. (Miss T is doing just this kind of cooking to this day.) Robbie knew the school system’s food was terrible, and she saw food and food preparation as contributing to the education and nurturing of the community’s children. Her grandmother had provided the model, and Robbie repeatedly talked about cooking for and with the kids. As it turned out, she was much too busy to cook, having taken on too many

28

founding mot hers and t he chart er

other responsibilities as the community organizer in charge of volunteers, programs for parents, outreach, and transportation, to name only a few. Robbie’s memories of her own childhood shaped her newly realized vision of school. These memories included her siblings, cousins, and friends, but especially her brother, with whom she was very close. For years and years, Robbie had kept a picture of her brother in the ‘‘punishment chair’’ in the corner of the kitchen. It was a straight-backed hard wooden chair that sat in the corner waiting to be occupied. When Robbie’s brother did something wrong, he had to stay in it until their dad got home from work. Too bad if dad worked overtime. It was a tried-andtrue, old-fashioned form of discipline that was viewed by the kids as a kind of slow and humane yet humiliating torture, especially on beautiful, sunny days when everyone else in the neighborhood was outside playing along the riverbank. Reading was allowed in the punishment chair, and this made the time go by a little bit faster, but unfortunately it also connected reading with punishment. The family moved around Lower East End, first within the old red brick, then to lower Delta Avenue, in a very low floodplain. This part of the neighborhood is connected to, but different from, Eastern Avenue. It is a very open area where widely spaced houses seem to stick up out of the river itself. I remember the day I went to ‘‘the park’’ (the city-owned recreation center) looking for Robbie, and the kids there told me her house had burned. Right after the fire, she moved in with her daughter for a short time before she and her mother went to Strader, a street that runs between the river and Eastern Avenue. No one could figure out why the house, with all of its family pictures and knickknacks, had burned. Some said it was the old wiring; others thought arson. The fire’s erasure of the family artifacts of many years of life in the community somehow accentuated Robbie’s dreams and memories. Her dream of a school took on even greater importance, so vivid was it in her mind, so central was its location right next to the park. When I first met Robbie, she had a lot on her hands. Her mother was entering the final stages of Alzheimer’s and Robbie, her mom’s primary caretaker, was in her prime as a housing activist and president of the Community Council. The fact that Robbie also worked as a ‘‘barmaid’’ in the local, developer-owned bar—the real, though informal, community center—added to her stress as well as to her already substantial fund of local knowledge. She was able to keep abreast of events in the community, but she was also constantly criticized by her employers. Among other things, they accused her of stealing booze by giving out free or double

29

creation

shots. Robbie’s practical, operating philosophy is that of a female Robin Hood—a princess of thieves—robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. Her mom always sat in the back of the bar, waiting for Robbie to get off work—often it was not until two or three in the morning, after Robbie had taken away car keys and driven her fellow East Enders home.

Athena Athena’s family lived ‘‘up on Hoff,’’ a street that parallels Eastern Avenue just below scenic Columbia Parkway, the major east-west route from the suburbs to downtown. Hoff is in the center of Lower East End. Hoff Avenue is a small, intimate street, only a few blocks long. You have to ascend St. Peter’s Street, which forms what feels like a sixty- or seventy-, almost ninety-degree angle from Eastern to Hoff. ‘‘Up on Hoff’’ feels different from the rest of the East End. Hoff is a street out of the past with small houses close together. You can sense the history, the linkages, the generations of families raising children and grandchildren, a community within a community, schooling itself. Hoff Avenue doesn’t look like a hotbed of community activism, but it is. The founding family of the East End Community Health Center has lived there for over a half-century. In 1995, the Health Center celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. Miss E passed away a few years before that, but her husband and granddaughter still lived on Hoff, that is, until Eva moved to Baltimore to take a job as an urban planner. Miss Z lived there too, another activist, a member of the Health Center and Community Development Corporation boards. She got her nickname, ‘‘Roadrunner,’’ from her days running from here to there in the neighborhood. A very skinny woman, skin and bones in fact, she died just after Miss E did. They both belonged to Mt. Carmel Baptist Church, just a few blocks to the east. Rick Baxter also lives on Hoff. He is a longtime active member of the East End Area Council (the Community Council). Athena’s legacy of activism is also long and deep. The same families have lived on Hoff for generations. Upper and Lower East End, or ‘‘Higher’’ and ‘‘Lower,’’ as the kids refer to the divisions—always rivals—are connected, but different. ‘‘Higher,’’ at least in the recent past, has had two schools, while ‘‘Lower’’ has had none since Highlands closed. Convincing the Cincinnati School Board that ‘‘Higher’’ and ‘‘Lower’’ are two distinct sub-neighborhoods required educating the school board members, who, of course, resisted this instruction from presumably illiterate community folks. Until the college pro-

30

founding mot hers and t he chart er

fessors stepped in to legitimize the local knowledge that everyone in the community has understood as common sense for generations, that is. The underpass at Delta Avenue bisects the community. ‘‘Higher,’’ to the east, has always been densely populated, with small houses in rows and rows, housing mostly poor whites. ‘‘Lower,’’ to the west of the underpass, is more spread out and diverse. Race really matters in ‘‘Higher,’’ but not so much in ‘‘Lower,’’ at least to Robbie and Athena’s generation. A university student who grew up in the community remembers serious racial tensions in ‘‘Higher’’—gang activity and fights. Highlands is in ‘‘Lower.’’ In ‘‘Lower,’’ streets like Wenner, Strader, and Setchell go from Eastern Avenue down to the river, historically to boat docks and seaplane bases. The old schoolhouse at 260 Setchell, a historically African American school, is now gone, but the adults remember it and all the children have heard of it. Schools and schooling carry many associations in the East End. The schoolhouse on Setchell became apartments teeming with humanity, too much humanity. The City condemned it; the community tried over and over to save it, but it had to come down. Lower East End also has two black churches, which function broadly as informal community schools, with classes in Bible study, music, choir, and the importance of community. One is Baptist and the other Methodist, Mt. Carmel and Phillips Chapel respectively. Athena is very active in Phillips Chapel; she sings in the choir and recruited Evylyn, a fellow choir member, good friend, and neighbor from Hoff Avenue to work in our school. Evylyn began working as the administrative secretary and is now officially the school coordinator; unofficially, she is the vice principal in charge of everything. Everyone knows that she runs the place, gently but firmly. The East End also has a white church, St. Rose Catholic Church, the one with the big ruler on the rear wall with markings from the floods. Every East Ender has memorized the markings on that ruler. These landmarks have a way of keeping the peace, in part through their strong histories, but also because they convey a sense of belonging and caring. Athena’s house is a safe haven for people on Hoff Avenue. She is constantly giving out plates of food, advice, help, and other forms of support. She keeps her family around her and supports them in many ways. Her eldest grandchild lives with her and she proudly sent him to the most competitive college-prep high school in the city. The community has changed a great deal in the fifty years since Robbie and Athena went to school, but a lot has stayed the same. The trolleys have long since stopped, and upscale condos occupy several blocks where East

31

creation

Enders once lived. Many members of the old community have dispersed to the suburbs, to other working-class communities in the city, and out to the rural hinterlands as well. The General Motors plant in the adjacent city of Norwood closed in the early 1990s, forcing kids into the fast-food industry and adults into a variety of lower-paying jobs without benefits. Deindustrialization has taken its toll in ways that have not yet been realized. Dramatic changes in working-class lives are ramifying far beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. Cars—larger and larger SUVs—speed up and down Eastern Avenue at fifty and sixty miles an hour. Rush hours are treacherous, with all of the upscale vehicles carrying people from the suburbs through the East End to and from downtown. So far, though, the condos are confined to a small part of Lower East End, although developers would love to turn the old Highlands school building on the river into more units. The building is set back from the riverbank to provide green space. It is angled just right to maximize the city’s panorama. At sunset, the views of the river from the school’s walls of windows on the upper floors are spectacular—brilliant light and color seen nowhere else in Cincinnati.

BRINGING BACK SCHOOL We knew that re-creating schooling and resurrecting the school would involve reinventing it, but how much so we had no idea. We did not anticipate the details, the conflicts, the dissonances, the extraordinary energy required of all. The new school would change Robbie and Athena’s identities, alter relationships within and among families, and change the community. In October 2003, the fourth year of the school’s life, Robbie stated categorically, but with an expression indicating her usual sense of humor, ‘‘I’ve changed so much, my own mother would not know me.’’ To some people associated with the school project, mostly people who would not identify or be viewed as authentic East Enders but who either occupy or pretend to positions of power, the school’s program could be separated from the Highlands building. Alternative community spaces, such as churches, storefronts—even temporary trailers—could be considered for EECHS. To East Enders, though, the school’s program and the building have always been, and still are, one and the same. This sense of a perfect fit between the school program and the building comes from Robbie and Athena’s childhood memories and ideals about school. These included caring teachers, a conventional curriculum, and a community that supported and nurtured the school. Even the most logical among us 32

founding mot hers and t he chart er

knew that, as rational and practical as it might be to consider spaces other than Highlands, no other space would magnetize students or families. The realities of children’s lives today present some challenges similar to those faced by Robbie and Athena, as well as many that are different. For many reasons, conventional ways of teaching have not been successful for kids in the East End community, so alternative, hands-on methods of learning have been outlined in the charter. These hands-on methods are consistent with community practices as well as with effective techniques of good pedagogy at all levels of education, including higher education. In addition, a school-based health and wellness center has provided a way of dealing holistically with children and their families. Chronic as well as acute health problems must be monitored and treated if kids are to benefit from staying in school. The East End is an old community, long-lived. Schoolchildren are seventh- and eighth-generation East Enders. Historically, older people have taught younger ones; in the past, children learned to work on the river, initially as apprentices and eventually as full-fledged workers. In a similar manner, young people learned to work on cars, do construction work—everything from framing to drywall—and work as landscapers, on cleaning crews, and in factories. Households were almost always multigenerational. Many still are. The challenge: to re-create a working-class school in the midst of a gentrifying neighborhood on the Ohio River. Market forces are at the door; global forces are impinging on all aspects of life—from music videos to name-brand clothing produced across the border to computer support based in India. The kids are connected to all of these global forces, and they are simultaneously tantalized, bewildered, and swallowed up by them. Nothing in the East End is ever easy, and we founding mothers knew it from the outset. In 1997, Robbie and I had tried to help save the ‘‘boat school,’’ as everyone in the community called the CPS school whose ‘‘classrooms’’ were located on a river barge, with two riverboat captains as the teachers. The captains taught kids how to work the river in a tough and disciplined yet caring style, using real-life, hands-on methods to solve practical problems of river commerce. They gave kids reasons to learn math, to know physics, geography, and the vagaries of the river—winds, tides, and floods. East End kids were able to get jobs on the barges and riverboats and make decent money. Robbie and I knew the captains well and their methods inspired us. We went to all the hearings and meetings. We tried to convince the CPS board of the program’s worth for working-class kids. But like many programs that worked for East Ends kids, the system shut it down. The boat school did provide us with models of hands-on learning, how33

creation

ever, and we did not want to abandon the idea of a boat school. We even had a few conversations with one of the captains about pulling up a barge along the riverbanks of Highlands and attaching the boat school to our charter school. But the barge was very expensive, both financially and politically. Since we were a CPS charter school, at that time in our initial year, we could not run the risk of alienating the very system within which we had to work. We began to see clearly that we could not do everything, especially in the first year.

MORE LABELS As the EECHS was being formed and we dealt with the various steps leading to the approval of our charter, the press insisted on calling the East End an Appalachian neighborhood and the East End Community Heritage School an Appalachian school. While such labeling gave the neighborhood and the school an ethnic identity that was easily recognizable and, indeed, palatable to the larger community, the label proved difficult at best. To begin with, a single ethnic label does not capture the complexity of the neighborhood or the diversity of the population the school is intended to serve. A few people, both black and white, who have connected with the Urban Appalachian Council (UAC) or with the Appalachian Political Action Committee (APPALPAC) do identify themselves as having roots in rural Appalachia.2 But to most Cincinnatians, including East Enders, the word Appalachian really translates as ‘‘poor white trash’’ or ‘‘hillbilly’’ and places individual people and the community itself at a very low point in the urban pecking order. The facts contradict the press releases. East Enders demonstrate a deeply ingrained respect for difference that comes from living diversity, not just talking about it. ‘‘We are a multicultural community,’’ Athena said proudly, over and over again. Working-class and working-poor people of a great many backgrounds can be found in the East End. People talk not about being black or white, but about being poor. All you need to do is drive up and down Eastern Avenue to know you are in a poor neighborhood—boarded-up buildings, empty lots with trash, old, small structures, old cars, and lots of people on porches, sidewalks, and the streets. There are many old people and lots of kids surrounding them. You see kids, both black and white, playing together. But the physical conditions and exteriors are deceiving. To some degree the deteriorated exteriors represent a loss of dignity and pride, an erasure of the positive memories. On another level, though, they hide the many strengths in the community, includ34

founding mot hers and t he chart er

ing the strong relationships among kids and adults in multigenerational families. One of the oldest, most politically active families is biracial—the grandfather was black and the grandmother is white. She takes care of her grandbabies just like all the other East End grandmothers, especially now that the grandfather has passed away. She is now living in the handicapped-accessible unit of the Lewiston Townhomes, affordable rental townhouses built by the Community Development Corporation in partnership with another nonprofit run by legal aid lawyers. Senior housing is in very short supply, so it made sense to use this ground-floor unit. It took years to get the approval to build the eleven units, but driving by the complex a person would never know that these lovely-looking townhouses, with white porch rails and steep, graceful steps, lead up to low-income housing. It is difficult to imagine where these old East End families would be living now without this housing—perhaps they would be gone from the community, living downtown in Over the Rhine, the neighborhood that exploded in April 2001. Schoolkids of all ages—black kids and white kids—pour out of these townhouses at seven in the morning to climb up the stairs into classrooms at the East End Community Heritage School. Most importantly, though, the townhouses testify to the persistence and hard work of neighborhood leaders. When Athena stares at you, you know she is serious, especially when she stands up and walks around during a meeting; you can feel her regal power. She is tall and straight, nothing tentative or compromising about her. When she says nothing, you know she is listening, thinking, feeling inside. Her grandbabies know it too as they climb onto her lap during a meeting. She whispers to them to be quiet and they scoot over to the computers in the corner at the far end of the room. (Without the dedication of a neighborhood lady cop we would not have these computers. Her uniform confers power. Kids stare at her gun and nightstick and expressions of respect come over their faces. She is a gentle soul, though. She is almost a founding mother.) Robbie’s dream to bring back a neighborhood school was kept alive by her strong objections to busing kids all over the city. She could not stand the idea that kids had to be bused out of the community up to Walnut Hills or out to Mt. Washington. Ideally kids should be able to walk to school, just like she did. At the very least, they should stay in the neighborhood where family members are accessible and neighbors and friends can be involved in the school and called on to help in times of emergency. ‘‘Sure we’re white trash,’’ Robbie jokes, ‘‘but we’re the recyclable kind. We always come back.’’ Her humor gets her through a lot. ‘‘The school 35

creation

board wouldn’t go out on a limb if you gave them a giant sequoia,’’ she quipped one day as we were negotiating for the school building in the superintendent’s office. Robbie has always been open to kids from other communities sharing their heritages with East End kids. To her, building a school around heritage makes sense, for teaching heritage teaches past experience—very important local knowledge. Like many community elders, Robbie sees heritage getting lost, disappearing. For her this loss is deeper than recent memory. The history of working-class experience, the richness of it, is extremely important to preserve and pass on. Meeting families from other working-class communities creates the opportunity to link these communities around educational programs, housing, and many other needed services. Robbie also sees heritage as a learning tool. Family history is something kids know a great deal about—they feel strongly about their connections to family. To center the curriculum around heritage legitimizes local knowledge and strengthens kids’ sense of belonging both to the immediate and to the greater community.

BEGINNINGS We saw children being driven into dumbness by a failure to challenge their curiosity, to build on their natural desires toward competence. We thought adults had important things to teach children, not just a mission to get out of their way. Our kind of classroom was not stocked with ditto fill-in sheets but literally full of stuff: books of every sort, paints as well as paintings, plants, animals, broken radios to repair—things. The curriculum we sought was both conceptual and tangible. We wanted children to fall in love as we had with stories of the past, including their own; we wanted schools that would evoke a sense of wonder.3

November 1999 The table in the old Pendleton carbarn, now the heritage center, anchored us, gave us a focal point, a place to talk, to lean on, a reference point. If a founding mother said, ‘‘I left it on the table for you,’’ everybody knew exactly which table, and that the papers, even if buried under a pile, would be safe from loss or theft. Our planning table was small and comfortable, if a bit raggedy, with folding bowed legs and an already cracked and coffee-stained surface. Around it the founding mothers did most of the school development work. We squeezed around its cozy space with fold36

founding mot hers and t he chart er

ers, books, Filofaxes, loose-leaf binders, papers scattered. Even though the table was not round, we acted as though it was—a circle of collaboration and sharing—no one in charge, everyone invested. (Later on, there were both good and bad consequences of this collaborative, egalitarian model. Empowering uncredentialed people is threatening to people who may want to project their own idealizations or rest on their credentials. In a culture that values credentials over almost any other value, to downplay their importance can be risky as well as enriching.) The phone interrupted incessantly, and more often than not two or three people got up simultaneously to answer it, in attempts to help out and not assume that any one person was always expected to get the phone. My coffee cup with a special picture of a chocolate Lab often sat precariously, half full, on a file folder—a special present from Robbie. Hers was a large terra-cotta cup with the words ‘‘Puerto Rico’’ on it. Her grown daughter, informally adopted at the age of nine, brought it back from the island after a business trip for a multinational corporation. She is ‘‘the girl I raised,’’ says Robbie. She is proud of her daughter’s accomplishments, crediting her decision to send her to an excellent suburban public school outside of the community and the city. When her daughter reached high-school age, Robbie moved temporarily to a community I have always thought of as a miniature East End, in a suburb called Highpoint. Highpoint looks like a square East End—small box-like houses situated on a grid, five blocks on a side, in the midst of sprawling tract developments. The Puerto Rico cup represents success as well as hope for all East End children in a changing and increasingly high-tech and expanding world. It is success with a twist though, since it requires both giving up and giving back to the community. Robbie’s daughter moved out of the East End after marriage. Her granddaughters, however, did many chores for the school development team—phone answering, envelope stuffing, meal serving, and cleanup. They visit frequently. Her partner, June, also helped, in a quiet and strong way. She is from an old, solid, East End family— her father and mother have spent well over fifty years here. Their house is across the street from the school on the north side of the river, and is surrounded by the houses of children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. I remember when June’s mom told Cincinnati Bell that she would never use a long distance phone package because all of her calls are local. Everyone she cares about lives within ten minutes of Grandma and Grandpa, as everyone calls them, young and old. June’s daughter is a student in our school. The planning table sat in a large room on the west side of the heritage center. Robbie and I, along with several East End community leaders and 37

creation

advocates, had worked for more than ten years to convince the City to give the Pendleton carbarn back to the community. We had learned a lot in that long and drawn-out process and had succeeded just in time, because we needed a place to work. The room was large, painted a stark white with ledges all around. The whitewashed walls and ledges soon became filled with calendars, schedules, and artifacts, even a miniature yellow toy school bus. Robbie’s desk held pictures of her grandchildren, along with piles and piles of filed and unfiled papers, books, and school enrollment forms. To sustain us during the hours and hours of meeting, we brought food, healthy and unhealthy. Chips of all kinds, Goldfish, crackers and cheese, cornbread, pop and water, plates of vegetables and fruits brought from home or the local Kroger. Long meetings made people tired, cranky, and hungry. Comfort food such as home-baked cookies or cakes appeared when we wanted to try out our culinary skills or just wanted a break from brain work. The starving university students always ate with relish. These students did the typing and got the paperwork out the door. It made the mothers and grandmothers feel good to feed them. The food was small payment for extraordinary computer skills and untiring energy to type at breakneck speeds on four different computers with as many different word processing packages. Hourly student wages were not nearly sufficient in this community of informal and alternative economic practices where favors and sharing count for more than money.4

U N I V E R S I T Y- C O M M U N I T Y PA R T N E R S H I P S We were a team of women planning the schooling of urban memory. We had just become collaborators, and our different experiences in the city, in communities, and in schools created tensions as well as complementary relationships. In addition to Athena and Robbie, two professors met and joined the team, quite by chance. One had discovered a book written by the other in a local bookshop window. The book was my own Practicing Community. Several e-mails and cups of coffee later, the two professors began talking about the possibilities for a community school that would be modeled on community practices. We discovered our grant writer at a meeting and talked about the school’s possibilities in the parking lot, a place for which I have come to hold some reverence, as many intense talks take place between cars that seem, somehow, to listen silently and at the same time provide privacy. Conversations are more condensed with the urgency of leaving. 38

founding mot hers and t he chart er

Several more women joined a bit later in the planning process. One of the most charismatic was a small, fiery, self-identified black Appalachian storyteller and Montessori teacher. It was difficult to fathom how one woman could have so many talents. We were also fortunate to have as part of our team a soft-spoken school evaluator by trade, who was a strong advocate at heart. Two teachers joined us as consultants. One had a great deal of experience using expeditionary (hands-on, projectbased) learning to teach first-graders in Over the Rhine, a dense inner-city neighborhood in the center of Cincinnati. The other had been teaching at the primary level in another, more shallow urban neighborhood called Madisonville.5 By ‘‘shallow’’ I mean simply that, much like East End, the community manifests all of the features of urban life but is not quite as dense in population or as inaccessible to the countryside as most urban areas. The two consulting teachers had been friends for many years; they had trained other teachers for the Cincinnati public school system and had written curriculum standards together. One of the teachers, Jenel, often speaks with passion about ‘‘the children,’’ their classroom gardens, and the homemade soup and creative story projects generated from the homegrown vegetables. I had been well schooled by grassroots leaders in community practices, having worked in the East End for almost fifteen years as researcher and advocate, friend and confidante. Telling the power structure what the community already knows had been my specialty for many years; it was my job to legitimize local knowledge. The power structure viewed the community in negative stereotypes: illiterate transients, passing through by renting rather than owning homes and apartments. Outsiders did not understand that people renting had lived in the community just as long as, if not longer than, the owners. They did not know (we came to take pride in calling outsiders ‘‘they,’’ since it was what people in power themselves called East Enders) that East Enders who owned apartments usually rented to kin at below-market rates. Family support came before down payments. East Enders who have been renting in the community for thirty years or more could have paid for their homes several times over had they not shared their down payment money with neighbors and kin or been denied loans because of race and class discrimination. In short, there was a great deal of stability in the neighborhood, if you looked below the surface and understood what kinds of local knowledge and local patterns of life prevailed. One particularly vivid and disturbing memory fueled my own sense of urgency for our community school project. This memory, from the early 1990s, haunted me. It had to do with Red, then a twelve-year-old middle39

creation

schooler and one of the most intelligent and charismatic East End kids. I remember picking him up as he was standing, waiting for the Metro bus, looking miserable, in front of People’s Middle School. People’s was a considerable distance from the East End, in a wealthy neighborhood. His disheveled red hair fell in his eyes at odd angles; the straps of his overalls never seemed quite anchored, as one dangled while the other held fast. In summer he went bare-chested and often barefooted. In winter he stood shivering, waiting for the Metro to take him downtown and then out to the East End, a bus ride that could take over an hour. By car it was about a ten-minute drive. ‘‘What did you do?’’ I would ask each time I picked him up. ‘‘I asked a question,’’ he would say, or ‘‘I was running my mouth,’’ or ‘‘The teachers don’t like me.’’ At least from his perspective, the reasons for his suspension and, sometimes, expulsion seemed elusive at best. His ‘‘discipline problems’’ seemed trumped up, manufactured, and unfairly class-discriminatory. Did the teachers not understand his dialect of English? Did they favor the wealthier kids in the school? What was going on here? Certainly he was not fitting in—a misfit, maybe; misunderstood, definitely. I was always amazed and impressed by his meticulously detailed and historically thick local knowledge. His excellent memory rooted his knowledge in place, in family, and in community history. He knew the stories of each house up on Gladstone, a small, block-long street that used to be connected to Athena’s Hoff Avenue on the hillside. He knew the families, their members, their intergenerational relationships, and the turnovers of families in each house. At the age of twelve, Red dropped out of school. He never attended high school. Now he is a father. Professor D was new to the city and unfamiliar with community practices. She had grown up in a working-class town in the southeast and had struggled to become a scholar and academic. She talked in big words and powerful concepts that at times mystified and intimidated people around the table, but she worked very hard. Her creativity and boldness of intellect indicated a strong mind, big ideas, and a deep commitment to the project. She slaved for hours writing the curriculum for our school charter—pages and pages for language arts, math, science, and social studies. She found the necessary teacher consultants to help us write a curriculum that would satisfy the CPS board. Since we were proposing to be a charter school under CPS, we had to make sure that our ideas still met state and local requirements. Working-class backgrounds come in different versions, and Professor D’s working-class family memories gave her a kind of steadfastness and determination from which she never wavered. One day, after a long and tedious meeting at CPS with the charter school manager, Professor D asked the group whether they had noticed 40

founding mot hers and t he chart er

that he never seemed to look the community people in the eye. ‘‘Why do the bureaucrats only look at the professors?’’ she asked. ‘‘Doesn’t it bother you?’’ she queried, looking straight at Robbie. ‘‘Of course not,’’ Robbie replied with a gleam in her eye, ‘‘we’re poor white and black trash.’’ Smiling at Athena, she added, ‘‘We’re used to it. That’s why we bring you professors along.’’ KB, our grant writer, personifies a set of contradictions indicative of the global urban borderland. Formally, she has only a ninth-grade education, but she writes grants for the two universities in town, among other institutions, including the public schools and the YMCA. In the community she is a professional, an activist, a grant-writing guru, a public school advocate. In the university she is a community person. She has a certain disdain toward academics, almost a hostility. ‘‘I don’t do the past,’’ she says whenever research, writing, and documenting become topics of discussion. Flowers and gardening are her passions. If you call her when she is just coming in from her garden, she sounds breathless, talks with utmost clarity for a few minutes, and then announces, ‘‘I’m very dirty and dying of thirst; see you on Tuesday at 2 p.m. Bye.’’ Millions of dollars pour into the universities from her efforts. Her blue eyes sparkle as she concocts various schemes to ‘‘work for change’’ and make a difference in the lives of children. When she has an idea or is responding to an idea that she really likes, she uses food images. ‘‘That’s delicious,’’ she will say, or ‘‘It’s so wonderful it makes my hands sweat.’’ She often refers to wearing ‘‘my accountant’s hat’’ and running the numbers, by which she means not the racket or the mob but making sure we can afford what we need to do. She is the perfect antidote to ‘‘fuzzyheaded professors’’ with lots of ideas but not always with practical knowledge of income and debits. She will not let us write her into any budgets. ‘‘Someday the school will be able to afford to pay me to write grants,’’ she says. She goes without health benefits. Multiple livelihood strategies are her lifestyle: she does people’s taxes and fights hard for her family. When the going gets really rough, she winks and asks with a smile in her voice, ‘‘Are we having fun yet?’’ She is a devoted grandmother and baker of fresh rolls and cookies. She is task-oriented, always moving forward. One of her task lists, e-mailed to all on a dreary winter Friday during the first year of the school development process, did not sit well in the community. I should have intervened. Nothing new, or old for that matter, goes over well on a Friday. People are tired, thinking about rest and depositing their money, relaxing and playing cards, going to bingo. She has some rough edges—the ruthlessness of a corporate CEO about to downsize by 50 percent, the language of a sailor. If I expressed concern over a 41

creation

deadline, or over a battle we needed to fight, without hesitation she would say, ‘‘No shit, Sherlock.’’ Yet she admits to ‘‘batting my eyelashes’’ to get a corporate CEO to pay attention. KB is a longtime public school activist, and her knowledge of the politics of public schools proved invaluable for getting our charter through and, later, for obtaining the various title monies. She is a budgetary wizard who claims that she does not ‘‘do education or school.’’ Controlling the purse strings situated her in a strong power position to shape the school though, and she knew it. The finance committee, composed of KB and our treasurer, a certified public accountant of considerable experience and talent in the for-profit as well as the nonprofit community, has made some formative recommendations, which, before our very academic eyes, became decisions about school.

E VA L U A T I O N , A C C O U N T A B I L I T Y , A N D PROF E SSION A L I M AGE S Our evaluator’s family hails from the East End. Soft-spoken and thoughtful, she made sure our accountability system was in order. She understands how important culture is and contributed a set of culturally sensitive curriculum standards from an Inuit community school in Alaska. These proved amazingly useful—everything from respecting elders and ancestors to embedding the curriculum in community practices of handson, intergenerational learning. We worried about having our evaluator on the board, for the same reasons that I worried about being both an ethnographer and the board president. Research, evaluation, and activism seemed to be intertwined. Community leaders need trusted professionals. The youngest of the group was an urban planner with a master’s degree from UCLA and two years of teaching in Los Angeles. Born and bred in Cincinnati, she is very organized, almost corporate in style, but sensitive and experienced in community work. She feels comfortable in the East End, having worked on our team as an undergraduate. She is sophisticated in politics. She sets agendas and schedules, drafts letters and advertisements, and generally makes sure that all paperwork is processed. She appears stiff and formal to the community because she worries about the professional image of the office and kids spilling Coke on computer keyboards. She is committed to education and social justice. I try to tell her that there is no such thing as a professional image in the East End. It is informal and spontaneous, flexible and easygoing. Last-

42

founding mot hers and t he chart er

minute emergencies arise constantly in large extended families. When these occur, everyone rallies to help. That is the beauty of the community. Professional, formal practices clash with everything the East End is about. After generations of negative interactions with schools and schooling, kids and their parents need evidence of progress toward a real community school. Making computers accessible to East Enders would send a wonderful message. Robbie and Athena are right; there is plenty of space for multiple activities in our large school development office. The ides of March 2000 brought conflict between professionalism and informal community practices. Our group of founding mothers almost abandoned the school development project. Community leaders threatened to quit if computers were not allowed in our planning office. The millennium didn’t help, since anxiety in the country over technology made the issue simultaneously more powerful and more problematic. The police had donated half a dozen computers to the school development office. Community leaders wanted to invite kids in right away. Others wanted the office to remain ‘‘professional,’’ pristinely neat and controlled by adults—not the East End way. Kids are always in the midst if not at the center of things. Although we did not know it at the time, this conflict foreshadowed many battles to come, internal conflicts, conflicts over control of exactly whose school this was. I could not have articulated the nature or ramifications of the clashes, but a borderland of conflicting cultures, in this case professional/corporate versus community culture, was emerging. There were class issues as well, but these were not nearly as marked at this early stage as they became once the school was open and operating.

C R E AT I N G T H E C H A RT E R F OR A N O U T - O F -T H E - B O X S C H O O L The charter is a book-length document with many parts, beginning with the mission and the vision. We spent hours debating ideas as well as wording—the boundaries of the area from which we would draw/recruit students, how we would define the student population, how many grades we should start with, what the governing structure would look like, and on and on. Our ideals were, and still are, very high. We believed that we were doing something unique and meaningful. We knew we had a strong team to work with and that any obstacle could be overcome. In short form, the essentials of our school’s mission are the following.

43

creation

This unique, community-based school is located in the Highlands community in the East End. The school is modeled on community structures, cultures, and social practices. The mission is to: a. Engage children in high-quality educational experiences that build and nurture the desire for lifelong learning. b. Prepare students for the workforce and/or post-secondary education—meshing theory with practice. c. Use the East End heritage and culture as the learning base for the acquisition of knowledge and skills. d. Close the gap between community and family, school, and work by involving the whole community in the school in meaningful ways. e. Serve as a model for other community schools—rural and urban. With respect to curriculum, we wanted teachers to have the flexibility to design and implement curriculum and instruction based in state proficiency and curriculum standards and tailored to students’ learning needs. We wanted to be able to assess and evaluate students in nontraditional ways, so we planned to use portfolios and exhibitions alongside state proficiency tests. We hired interdisciplinary teams of teachers to collaborate on program and instructional planning, school-wide governance, and professional development. We wanted programs to be designed in collaboration with local artists and community-based organizations, so that thematic, project-based learning would integrate technology and infuse the arts. These were big orders, and we had no idea how many details we would need to attend to in order to begin to approximate these goals. The school’s bylaws stipulate that 51 percent of the board members must reside in the community. We wanted community members to have more say than any other stakeholders in the design and functioning of the school. Partnerships with two universities and businesses in the area included everything from technical support to tutors and mentors—but this is jumping ahead. Our first task was to get the charter approved by the CPS board. There were several reasons for choosing to create a local public charter under CPS rather than a state charter school, although we were ready to sign on as a state charter if CPS rejected our plan. We wanted the Highlands building, which belonged to CPS.6 We also knew that the super44

founding mot hers and t he chart er

intendent of schools in Cincinnati was behind our initiative and that he had hired a high-powered support staff to see us, and other charter school projects, through the process. There were people on the school board who, for a variety of reasons, were opposed to charter schools, but so strongly did we believe that our school would meet the needs of workingclass children in the East End and elsewhere that we took on all of the challenges systematically and doggedly. Robbie kept the dream alive and became our community organizer, doing everything from recruiting potential students to arranging meetings, keeping files in order, answering phone calls, stuffing envelopes, and so on. Athena worked on human resources policies, which were difficult to create because we did not know exactly how many employees we would have. There were times that Robbie had to be reigned in and kept in low profile because of some prior legal issues that had been blown out of proportion by developers and the press. Just as the planning of the school had gotten underway, a newspaper article had dredged up some past history. We did not want to take any risks. We worked hard to keep Robbie involved but out of the public eye. Our accountants worked on budgets. Professor D and the teacher/consultants worked on curriculum. ZD, our evaluation person, worked on the accountability plan. Participatory evaluation was her watchword. By that she meant that the community, both the school community and the larger community, had to be involved in shaping the questions in as well as the responses to her numerous questionnaires. I worked on the cultural pieces. We brainstormed a lot about what exactly we meant by a community school, built on community practices—hands-on, learning by doing, project-based, culturally sensitive curriculum. All of these sounded wonderful, and we had to spell them out just enough to be clear, but we recognized that once teachers and administrators were hired they would, quite rightly, elaborate the curriculum and create new programs. In other words, we were creating a structure, an outline, that would be further developed later by actual teachers, administrators, and students. I remember the math examples Robbie came up with, from sports, from family patterns. There are ten children in the family: four full brothers, four half brothers, and two full sisters. What percentage of the children are full siblings? We talked about writing our own math text based on community practices. We had long and intense discussions, but they were all goal-oriented, enthusiastic, energized, and most importantly, collaborative. Our school development team was constantly pitted against the power structure. After every hurdle and every roadblock, KB would quip, ‘‘Are we having fun yet?’’ 45

creation

As school developers our job was first to show how the curriculum would meet the educational standards of the state of Ohio. Really the educational goals and objectives are the same for all schools, but the roads taken to get there are different. Since the conventional roads had not worked for East End kids, we wanted a curriculum that would be based in the familiar—the lives of the kids. Soon, however, other issues took precedence over curriculum.

46

three

T HE POLIT ICS OF T HE CHART ER A N D T H E P O L I T I C S O F S PA C E

In this chapter I discuss two essential steps toward opening the East End Community Heritage School: convincing the Cincinnati Public School board to approve our charter, and obtaining permission from CPS to lease the building. Both of these steps took much longer than anyone anticipated. Everything was delayed, in part because bureaucracy moves slowly, but also because understanding the concept of a school built on community practices was new for many school board members. The fact that unions oppose charter schools did not help. CPS administrators—the superintendent and the assistant superintendents, and the charter school manager—were all extremely supportive, but the real decisions rested with the school board. The founding mothers had been advised early on to separate the charter, i.e., the school’s design and program, from the Highlands building itself, even though in the minds of the community leaders and parents these were one and the same. Separating approval of the charter from approval to lease the building meant double the work; after the charter was passed, we then had to campaign to obtain permission to lease the Highlands building.

C R E AT I N G A L L I A NC E S I N T H E URBAN BORDERLAND Cincinnati has always had a democratically elected school board consisting of a diverse group of citizens—retired teachers and government officials, corporate people, public school activists, professors of education, housing advocates, and other prominent citizens. Forging alliances 47

creation

with the various school board members and using connections (universitybased, activist-based, union-based) to support the passage of the charter became our strategy. Teachers’ unions are opposed to charter schools for many reasons. Many union supporters regard charter schools as using public funds for private purposes, thereby weakening public school systems. Charter schools do tend to be small and therefore resemble private or independent schools, but this is where the similarity ends. Our school, for example, charged no fees of any kind and provided free books, school supplies, breakfast, and lunch. We also paid our staff public school salaries; in some instances our wages exceeded those of the union.1 We agreed that public schools should be supported, and we saw our efforts as doing just that, creating a public charter school that was small and tailored to meeting the needs of working-class kids. One of the main differences between charters and regular public schools is that charters are not obligated to hire ‘‘surplused’’ teachers, and many charters do not want to pay union-negotiated salaries. While we needed the power to hire and fire our teachers, we were also committed to paying the going public school wage rate. Robbie took on a staunch union supporter. Some people said she was in the union’s pocket. Like many working-class communities, the East End has always had many people with histories of union involvement— automobile workers, carpenters, and tool and dye workers, to name a few. Robbie knows how to persuade people, and she is persistently clever. Robbie’s authenticity as a working-class person and community leader eventually won the woman over. Before we knew it, what began as a casual conversation in the parking lot ended with a dare from the school board member to succeed with our charter school. We interpreted her strong words both as a challenge and as a subtle and indirect form of support—at least tacit agreement with our mission. I was charged with talking to a school board member who was a young parent and public school advocate. She was sympathetic to our project, but had some definite ideas of her own about the structural and educational needs of the school system in general and the East End in particular. She asked a lot of questions: were there enough students in the East End to warrant a charter school in the Highlands building? To this question my students and I responded by presenting her with bar graphs representing numbers of children in the neighborhood and numbers of children currently not in school (dropouts) who would be reentering the system by coming to our school. One of her questions proved especially grating to Robbie and Athena, who, along with other East Enders, regarded the

48

polit ics of t he chart er and of space

Highlands building as belonging to the East End. Advocating for the public schools at large, she asked: what if the building were needed for another school population that had been displaced from another building? At the time, various sites were being considered for a new CPS community school, one whose description sounded very much like that of EECHS. My assigned school board member made it clear that she wanted to hold the Highlands building in reserve as what she called a ‘‘swing’’ building, which would house a school population temporarily while its building was being renovated, for example. As a result she was initially reluctant to vote in favor of allowing us to lease it. She also expressed some suspicion that our project’s major agenda was to return the Highlands building to the community. Finally, after many long discussions, she did vote in favor of our charter and, in the CPS facilities committee meeting, ultimately supported our lease of the building. She even argued that our lease should be granted for the initial term of the charter: three years rather than a single, initial year. Athena was in charge of speaking to the two African American women on the school board, one of whom is a faculty member in the University of Cincinnati College of Education. I remember how pleased Athena was the day Dr. F returned her phone call (April 5, 2000). She apologized for the delay and gave Athena her home phone number. Athena, with amazement, reported that she said, ‘‘Call me anytime.’’ Clearly Athena felt flattered and empowered, strong and influential—truly happy. I learned later that the way had been paved for Athena by an administrator at the College of Education who had worked with several other members of our team. He had become impressed with Athena after talking with her at a public school fair a few days before Dr. F’s phone call. This confirmed what I had known all along, namely that Cincinnati is a small town, and one never knows when someone in the network can be of help. Professor D talked to the former governor of Ohio, a charming, whitehaired older gentleman who proved to be a real champion of our project. Our grant writer KB talked to a housing advocate on the school board. We learned the idiosyncrasies of each member; some nitpicked at the details of our contract, others were big-picture people, others had their pet issues, and we learned these so as to attend to the timing and staging of our speeches and phone calls. We used indirect connections, talked to mutual friends and colleagues of school board members, and generally kept our fingers crossed. We all used connections we had made from sitting on the boards of other nonprofits or from our collective years of working in communities. Cincinnati is a small city, under half a million. Local networks

49

creation

are extremely important. That is how we got our treasurer. People who sit together on boards of nonprofit organizations develop trust that lasts a lifetime. The politics of the school board were very complicated and illustrate once again the diversity and contentiousness of urban borderlands. While all the school board members would have defined themselves as champions of public schools, each member had a different definition of education, the public, and a host of other key concepts. Some members adopted an elitist position of noblesse oblige that, in their view, rendered them right about which buildings should be used for what purpose, for example, or whether or not there was enough ‘‘student demand’’ or ‘‘customers’’ for another school in the East End. Lessons on the different parts of the neighborhood had to be given—existing schools were in Upper East End, and there was not a single school left in Lower East End, where the Highlands building is located. Certain people clearly had agendas, such as picking up on the idea of a neighborhood school, copying our community school design, and using part of it to create a neighborhood school in another part of the East End. (Such a plan is actually underway as this book is going to press, although in the fall of 2001 the plan for the new community school was put on hold for at least three years. Since we know the East End is undergoing gentrification, the definition of community is changing as well. As flattering as it is to be copied, resources are at stake. KB sits on the planning committee of the ‘‘copycat school,’’ which will be located on the edge of Columbia Tusculum, historically part of the East End, but currently the most gentrified and upscale part of the neighborhood.) After pairing with school board members, we huddled in the hallways of the CPS administration building to plan our strategies—exactly who would say what to whom. We also planned our speeches to the board as a whole. We knew we had to have an African American member of our team talk about race and diversity. We also knew that some members of our team would begin crying while speaking about what was so close to their hearts, and that these emotional outbreaks needed to be followed by calm and rationality. We needed to strike a balance between passion and reason in our public presentations. Ironically, diversity, despite its popularity as a contemporary buzzword, seemed to be a foreign concept to the school board and the press. From their perspectives, either the school and the community was black, or it was white. (Though more and more Latinos are moving into Cincinnati, at the time, and historically, the main minority community was African American.) The idea that some people self-identify as both African 50

polit ics of t he chart er and of space

American and black Appalachian seemed too complicated for the school board or the press to grasp. Enter our storyteller, a founding mother and longtime friend of the community. She gave a dazzling speech about multiculturalism. A performance artist and Montessori teacher, she can rivet even the most resistant and difficult of children to their seats for hours. She talks about her own roots, her childhood in rural Appalachia, her strict and proper mother. She can enact a whole story by herself, changing voice, body language, and tone. She is a fount of inspiration. Her two beautiful daughters, ages seven and ten, always came with her to meetings, whether in the old carbarn or at the school board. Many nights she ordered pizza for their dinner. I remember one particularly long school board meeting during which they sat, ever so quietly, fascinated somehow by the long speeches, the posturing and pontificating, and, of course, the ever-present tension between us (the community folks and advocates) and them (the power structure, in this case, the school board). The school board had made it very clear that without the university’s backing they would not have given the community the time of day. Dr. D arranged for the dean of the University of Cincinnati College of Education to appear at the school board meeting, and in a crucial split vote the College of Education faculty member on the school board abstained, swinging the vote in favor of our charter’s approval. Without the dean adding to Athena’s efforts, the faculty member on the board would probably have voted against our charter. Finally the charter was approved by the CPS board in April 2000. The founding mothers shed tears of relief, but the work ahead was to prove even more difficult than the passage of the charter. We now faced the task of obtaining permission to lease the building.

S TAGE 1 : NO S E I N T H E T E N T : A P L AC E F OR PLANN ING A COMMUN IT Y CHART ER SCHOOL All bureaucracies have their guardians—people who believe in the importance of ‘‘the process,’’ form over substance. We did need some guideposts through the bureaucratic morass of preliminary proposals, charter school contracts, leases, and facilities management, but there were many times when the guideposts turned into obstacles. ‘‘You cannot have your nose in the tent,’’ said the charter school manager when we asked about office space in the Highlands building. Owned by CPS, the building had been empty for a year, and it made sense to think about creating an office to plan the new school. An office in the Highlands 51

creation

building would convey an immediate presence in the neighborhood and would begin to restore some trust in the idea of school. East Enders, and others, would see that a school was, indeed, going to happen. What made sense, though, from the community’s perspective did not coincide with the protocols of power. Since our team had not received official permission to lease the building, locating an office inside it was viewed by the power structure as presumptuous. To CPS, the building was only a facility, just like any other facility in any other place. Facilities, and communities, for that matter, are like dominoes; they are interchangeable and they fall. Although we did not realize it at the time, this mechanical attitude toward community, space, and place was to foreshadow processes of deterritorialization in later phases of the school’s life. But somehow this insensitivity only strengthened our resolve to continue the fight for the building. We maintained our pressure on the charter school manager for planning space. Cincinnati is a city of fifty-one neighborhoods, each with distinct ethnic, racial, and class compositions, and each with specific senses and sensibilities of belonging. The charter school manager, in an attempt at generosity and after checking with his superiors, offered our team office space in a CPS building in Mt. Auburn, another working-class community some distance from the East End. He had a great deal of difficulty understanding that the space simply would not work, both because it was not practical logistically and because people from one community cannot just walk into another and feel comfortable. East Enders must work locally; founding mothers must work in the community. The whole point of a community-based school is to locate in the community. Grandmothers must be near their grandchildren. Just in time, the Pendleton Heritage Center opened, providing an office for us to lease for school planning. The Pendleton needed tenants, so we would be supporting a community project by providing rental income to keep this rehabbed carbarn solvent. Something about the timing made the process feel right and natural. Robbie and I had spent years working on the board of the Pendleton Heritage Center to acquire that building as part of the East End Development Plan. It was the next best thing to Highlands. The Highlands building had been vacated in September 1999, when the Clark Montessori school grew too large for it. Clark left the East End almost a full year before the founding mothers needed space to plan EECHS. The building had been standing empty, and community leaders worried about break-ins and vandalism. A few windows had already been smashed, with minor damage to the stonework. Nothing is worse for 52

polit ics of t he chart er and of space

community morale than an empty school building. If we had been able to use a small part of Highlands as a school planning office immediately, we would have had much more time to interview and hire teachers, work on curriculum, and develop essential policies and guidelines—human resources, financial policies, and personnel. Instead, we had to do everything in a hurried manner. Enrollments for the first year suffered also, since nobody, not even the founding mothers, was sure the school would really open. While the availability of the Pendleton was a well-deserved blessing, we lost six crucial weeks of planning time worrying about planning space. Unfortunately, CPS officials did not understand any of these local and symbolic elements of community practice. In their view, the Highlands building belonged to Cincinnati Public Schools. It took some very lengthy explanations before the charter school manager realized that using a space outside of the East End simply would not work. The closeness of work to family and community is not just a matter of convenience; it is a necessity. Transportation is one issue. The sense of danger and vulnerability in an unknown community is another. In the CPS model, though, there are no textures, culture, attached features, or sentiments relevant to buildings, or to schools, for that matter. The bureaucracy controls the space and has the ultimate power to allocate it according to master plans drafted by architects and engineers, not educators or community leaders.2 While we were negotiating for Highlands, CPS was in the process of drafting such a facilities master plan. Whether space allocation plans made sense to communities was not of concern to the bureaucracy.

S TAGE 2 : P E R M I SSION T O L E A S E H IG H L A N D S It is difficult to understand how anyone could support a community charter school without supporting the return of the community school building in some form, by lease or purchase. Ideally we would have liked to purchase the building, and we had some rather serious but general and preliminary discussions about leasing with an option to buy. Eventually we negotiated an initial one-year lease. At the April 2000 facilities committee meeting of the CPS board, after a long discussion of a site for the ‘‘new East End school,’’ the committee finally turned to the Highlands building. Their central concern had nothing to do with the community’s needs, but rather with the needs of the board of education. As the chair of the committee put it, ‘‘Do we have a 53

creation

need for the property? What is the fair market value to sell or to lease? Is there any other student body and staff that would need to use Highlands?’’ The proposal of the chair was to have a draft of the relevant figures by May 4, 2000. We were really getting close to our June 1 deadline, by which time our state planning grant required that we have a facility identified. It was also very clear that the school board was strapped for funds, and that they were not going to lease us the building without considerable cost. Soon we were down to the eleventh hour. Discussions went round and round about a multisited school; a school in a church basement; a school held in modulars, basically large mobile-home like structures that would probably never survive the floods in the East End. Community members worried that parents would fear for their children’s safety in such unstable structures. Convincing parents to send their children to the new community school seemed precarious at best, given the absence of a safe building and especially the uncertainty surrounding Highlands. East Enders had been let down by the power structure many times, so what reason did they have to trust the CPS bureaucracy this time? Couldn’t this new charter turn out to be just another negative school experience? Community founding mothers had to answer to the community, so recruitment was put on hold. Limiting recruitment created shakiness in other areas. The school’s budget was based on per-pupil allotments of funds from the state. Without sufficient students, teacher recruitment was also put on hold, and other fixed costs, such as phones, electricity, and rent, became magnified. Finally, the school board agreed to lease us the building for one year, but only after long discussions of the possibility of needing it as a swing building to house school populations from buildings that were undergoing renovations. Of course, the question in the community leaders’ minds was always, ‘‘Why our school, why our building????’’ A satisfactory answer to this question never came. When the board finally got around to agreeing to lease Highlands to us, it was for a substantial rent. The school board had long been ailing financially. Market rental rates prevailed as amounts per square foot were calculated. Some members of the school board’s facilities committee wanted the length of the lease to match the charter’s three-year contract. Others were not willing to grant such a long lease. Finally a one-year lease was granted for $63,000, with renewal the following March. Our lawyer reviewed the lease and ironed out the landlord’s responsibilities. He worked with our two accountants. We obtained the key to the building on July 1, 2000, scarcely more than two months before school was to open on September 5. In the course of these discussions and negotiations about school space 54

polit ics of t he chart er and of space

and building options, we reviewed many possibilities. Developers would have no trouble purchasing the building for the assessed value of $570,000 and we knew that they could easily outbid us. The community feared that developers would turn Highlands into upscale condos. As a CPS building, however, it first had to be declared ‘‘surplus’’ by the school board before it could be put up for bid. If the building remained CPS property, no one could buy it. As long as we stayed on good terms with CPS and they continued to rent us the building, at least in the short run the community had a stronger hold on the building and thus the school. Highlands symbolizes rootedness and stability both to Robbie’s generation and to older residents of Lower East End, including people in her parents’ generation. Because of its continuity with the past and promise for the future—a promise that includes an educated and technologically trained younger generation—Highlands is also a symbol of working-class authenticity. The idea is not to become educated and move up and out of the community, but to remain in the neighborhood and contribute to the East End’s maintenance and revitalization. Occupying Highlands is also a territorial claim, a staking out, a foothold for authentic East Enders. These are big issues.

55

four

H I R I N G S TA F F Teachers, Kin, and an Instructional Leader

The time we spent struggling to lease the building prevented the founding mothers from attending to many other important issues, including the renovation of the space, the design of curriculum, orienting parents and staff to the mission, vision, and structure of the school, and orienting teachers to the community. This last proved to be an extremely serious omission. We had planned to run a three-week ‘‘teacher institute,’’ during which the school’s teachers would be instructed by community leaders in the nature of community practices, traditions, and salient memories. Reversing the roles of credentialed and uncredentialed people would set the tone for the importance of local knowledge. The plan was to give local knowledge equal billing in the curriculum and in the running of the school. Local knowledge is what will keep the school going. Unfortunately, time ran out before the ‘‘institute’’ could be planned and implemented. Multitasking became our way of operating. It was April 2000, and the CPS school board had just passed the charter. We were committed to opening a school, with or without the building, and had to begin hiring teachers even before we had our instructional leader, a term we preferred to principal because it emphasized curriculum, teaching, and educational leadership over conventional administration. We imagined the instructional leader as a kind of super-teacher—a person who would become a model of teaching excellence for the rest of the staff and who could further the mission of the school by working collaboratively with the entire school community. By teaching excellence, we meant modeling the very best educational practices. We expected a great deal from our instructional leader, and such a person was not easy to find. Ideally, the instructional leader would play a strong role in the hiring of teachers, but we 56

hiring staff

also knew that we had to have some teaching staff in place before other schools hired teachers out from under us. In short, we had to attend to several tasks simultaneously: the building, the teachers, and the instructional leader. Curricular matters would have to wait. Finding the right teachers meant creating job descriptions and advertisements that accurately described our vision for an unconventional school. We designed flyers and newspaper ads, and we encouraged networking and word-of-mouth advertising. What, exactly, the school would look like was not at all clear, but we knew we wanted people who could shape the school into a lasting place that would encourage the community to join in the learning and growing experiences of children and families. We wanted teachers with spark, creativity, and compassion. Formal teaching experience or credentials were not essential. We talked about the challenges of teaching urban kids with negative school experiences. There was no shortage of applications, and it almost became a full-time job to review them and set up interviews. We spent many hours processing résumés. The interviews were lengthy and intense. We interviewed as a team— consulting teachers, community leaders, and professors. Everyone had an equal voice. We talked to motherly teachers with great capacities for kindness, but no creativity; we interviewed very sparky teachers who seemed to smile a bit too much, so eager were they to please. One young woman came in with so many manipulative gimmicks that we wondered whether she really knew how or when to use them. We also had some setbacks. A very talented young English teacher took a job in a suburban school before we could give her a contract. We were all disappointed. Every time we took a few steps forward, we had to take several backward. Explaining the urgent need for the school took time at each interview. Red was only one example of the fact that our kids were growing into adults and the dropout rate was not getting any lower. Our vision and mission for an out-of-the-box school generated a great deal of interest in the Greater Cincinnati community. We continued to work collaboratively by encouraging all on the interviewing team to ask questions, ranging from, ‘‘How would you feel about having grandparents in your classroom, people kids might go to with a question before they went to you?’’ to questions of classroom management, educational philosophy, specific kinds of strategies for teaching, including interdisciplinary teaching, project development, and overall skills with children. Often these interviews lasted for several hours. After the applicants departed, we always went around the table asking for impressions, thoughts, and reactions. Often, these post-interview sessions lasted for several additional hours. We dissected 57

creation

every word, every gesture, and every nuance. It was quite amazing to realize the different impressions of our team members. The consulting teachers proved to be extremely valuable resources. They asked the most pointed questions: ‘‘How would you design a lesson about . . . ?’’ Or ‘‘What would you do in the following situation where some discipline might be required?’’ Our teacher consultants saw through false enthusiasm and nervous insecurity. Community leaders talked about some people being too ‘‘full of themselves,’’ or too tired to take on our new school and its students. Connections helped. A young first-year teacher recommended by a trusted principal in a neighboring community had a definite edge over others. It was really Robbie’s experience with the principal that landed this teacher the job. The fact that the neighboring school and its principal were very much ‘‘in the box’’ mattered less than the fact that Robbie felt that a young teacher from this school had to be adoptable—accepted as a daughter to her. This potential for kinship, the creation of an intergenerational tie, is important in the community and cannot be underestimated. As it turned out, the primary team teachers (kindergarten through fourth grade) were the most conventional of the group. Children were to sit in rows, discipline was to be strict, and curriculum totally scripted. This group was also the most accepted by the community leaders, in part because the kids were the youngest and the easiest to teach, but also because their idea of school corresponded so well with the conventional ideas of school already familiar to the community. At the time, we didn’t realize how strongly the ideology of conventional school influenced the hiring of teachers and the workings of our school. In fact, we had the makings of an urban borderland before we realized it. Exactly where conventional school ended and an out-of-the-box school began was not, and still is not, clear. Teachers came from many realms of life. A ‘‘rifted’’ teacher appeared from a large urban high school. (‘‘Rifted’’ meant that as one of the last hired, he was the first to be let go.) He was referred to EECHS by Athena’s niece, Diana, who was transferring to our school. He taught the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table with such passion and creativity that he could be instantly trusted to teach the most esoteric of subjects to the most challenging students. A former off-Broadway actor, he had just recently completed his certification as an English teacher. His acting skills were certainly going to be assets in the classroom. But our newly hired principal, a title she preferred to instructional leader, decided that he was too specialized and convinced the group to pass him over. A young, talented woman recently certified to teach fourth through 58

hiring staff

eighth graders won instant approval from the team with her quiet manner and sincere caring for children. It was clear to everyone that she had a kind of inner strength and talent that would, in turn, draw out the talents of children. In fact, she was a gifted writer and speaker who never raised her voice. I knew some of her professors from the university and she had been mentored well. Somewhere in the early phases of interviewing, when Robbie, Athena, and I were alone in our whitewashed planning room in the Pendleton Heritage Center, Robbie looked at me as though she wanted to talk. ‘‘Dr. H,’’—she often called me that in her serious moments—‘‘we need to talk. We don’t feel comfortable interviewing these teachers.’’ ‘‘Why not?’’ I asked. ‘‘They all went to college and we didn’t.’’ I was somewhat surprised by the statement, but I understood, paused a few seconds, and said, ‘‘But your knowledge of the community is just as important as any degree. You can tell whether a teacher fits in the community. You know the kids and the families.’’ While I did not realize it at the time, Robbie and Athena were expressing their discomfort in an emerging borderland, a world of credentialed versus uncredentialed people where matters of status, power, salary, and legitimacy were to be contested on a daily basis. Our high-school English teacher Aurelia, who had been instrumental in developing an arts high school in New York, talked about an interdisciplinary identity project with students and staff called ‘‘Who Am I?’’ involving media, writing, and visual arts. She developed extraordinary multimedia portfolios with the high-school kids; she insisted that they write, and they did, some prolifically and others more sparsely and sporadically. But all the kids gave their hearts to their work, just as Aurelia did for them. Barbara, a high-school science teacher, could create a laboratory out of anything. When a reporter asked her how she could teach science without a well-equipped lab, she countered with, ‘‘I have a lab right here.’’ For her, everything had scientific potential: her classroom, the school’s backyard, the world itself—all were laboratories. Her heart was in horticulture. She talked about a community garden. One day Robbie discovered an article in the Cincinnati Enquirer describing a working-class kid who had struggled to overcome many obstacles, including a visual impairment, and gone on to graduate from Mt. St. Joseph, a small Catholic college on the west side of Cincinnati. She called him. A tall, thin man, the father of two children, he appeared covered with tattoos and talked about his own difficulties finishing school. The vision of EECHS as a school for working-class kids caused him to think about the teachers who were important to his success, who had kept 59

creation

him from dropping out. We hired him as our health and physical education teacher. He taught all of the kids in the school, from the tiny kindergarteners to the strapping high-schoolers. He also coached the basketball team. Everyone agrees that he is ‘‘awesome.’’ Robbie convinced one of our founding mothers, the talented African American Montessori teacher and storyteller, to teach her passions. I remember well the meeting when we asked her to write her own job description, infusing the arts, teaching humanities. Her Montessori training had provided her with a very clear and strong set of beliefs and practices about hands-on, conceptual learning. She had considerable experience in the arts community as well. We hired her with a rather vague job description, and this turned out to present some immediate philosophical as well as practical conflicts.

T E C H NOL OGY — CL O SI N G T H E D IG I TA L D I V I DE : A N E N G I N E E R T E AC H E S M AT H In December 2000, after trying to handle technology classroom by classroom, we hired Harry, a young engineer, to teach mathematics and computers—in fact, all elements of information technology. He had just graduated from the Ohio College of Applied Sciences, was a young father with several children, and came from three generations of African American educators. Narrowing the digital divide was a goal, and we had received a great deal of pressure from the kids, and from the community, to find a technology person. We agonized over the budgetary issues, since we could not really afford another faculty member, but went ahead anyway. Harry worked doggedly, with very few resources. Most of our computers had been donated and were quite old. Consequently, he pirated hardware from one computer for another, networked the machines, reconfigured the system, and worked long, long hours. Harry had many talents, including the ability to understand people. Later, when the gap between conventional and alternative education grew deeper and wider, he became the emotional mainstay of the high-school teaching team and the only person who could clearly explain progressive educational philosophy and practice to community leaders and parents. Instructional assistants, or IA’s, were quite easy to find. With qualifications limited to a high-school diploma or equivalency (GED), many East Enders wanted the positions. One IA had worked in a factory for all of her adult life. Though she was only in her early forties, she was al-

60

hiring staff

ready experiencing health problems. Her shift began at 6 a.m. and ended at 2 p.m., and she had worked on her feet in unventilated spaces for more than twenty years. She was a repository of local knowledge and a natural teacher. Another IA, a Baptist minister, came from a family long active in Athena’s church. A third was a childhood friend of the principal’s— a gentle, thoughtful man who wanted a new beginning. He had attended college for two years and now had a wife and several children. Two other IAs were East Enders whose families were well known in the community. Prestige based on family connections became an important aspect of the urban borderland. But prestige and status in the community accentuated the already marked differences between insiders and outsiders. Later, the prestige and status associated with East End connections were diminished by privileges extended to people related to the principal.

FINDING AN INSTRUCT IONAL LEADER Finding an instructional leader, someone who would inspire teachers, guide the curriculum, and implement the vision of an alternative community-based and community-modeled school, became our quest—a holy grail of sorts. We had high ideals and, perhaps, little understanding of how difficult it would be to find someone who could simultaneously be a leader and attend to the details and nuances of curriculum and instruction in an out-of-the-box community school. This search was probably the most difficult task in the development of the school, even more difficult than getting the charter passed and getting permission to lease the building. Fighting the bureaucracy of the public school system, manipulating it, playing the politics, was something we were good at; we had experience and we were all prepared to work tirelessly in our usual collaborative ways. Finding and agreeing on a school leader was another matter entirely. The job description was not at all well defined. It was not really clear what we were looking for and how we would know when we had found the right person. We spent countless hours trying to make contacts with qualified candidates or with people who might lead us to such candidates. We followed every lead, called everyone recommended by someone halfway trustworthy. Ideally, we were looking for a combination of energy and experience, someone who knew enough and had seen enough to run the school calmly and evenhandedly, but also someone with spontaneity who could think creatively, model professionalism, and teach with passion.

61

creation

Unfortunately, energy and experience appeared to be characteristics that canceled each other out, or at least they did not seem to coexist in the same person. Many of the more experienced administrators looked worn-out—even their clothes were shiny and wrinkled, their posture bent, and their speech slow. We tried to be polite, to listen to their questions and concerns, to explain what we envisioned our school becoming, but we all knew almost instantly that after the requisite time was up—so as not to seem perfunctory—we would usher the person out the door, breathe a sigh of relief, continue down the list, and schedule another person. In contrast to the older and more experienced people, the newer administrators seemed too polished and enthusiastic, too perky, too willing to please—too anxious to get the job. They told us what they thought we wanted to hear and made inappropriate comparisons. One candidate said categorically and somewhat arrogantly that we probably wanted to be like Clark Montessori, the school that had previously occupied our building. While it was true that our out-of-the-box philosophy had certain Montessori-like features, the neighborhood leaders did not see a single point of similarity between the populations served by the two schools. Our kids were poor; the yuppie kids were anything but. These young administrators might as well have been interviewing for a position with Procter & Gamble or General Electric. They did not fit in the community. But we persisted. Robbie and Athena narrated the neighborhood and the kids to the job candidates. Each candidate provided a new audience, a new chance to replay and, of course, reinvent memories of school and the community. Robbie would describe Highlands as she remembered school. Robbie and Athena always seemed to have much more energy than the candidates did; they certainly had more passion. Memory always entered the conversation. On one occasion Robbie recounted a piece of East End educational history to a gray-haired gentleman who looked like he needed a nap: ‘‘We don’t have anything to offer our kids in the way of education. We at one time had five public schools. Now we are down to two and those will soon close. We have been promised a whole lot in the East End by CPS that never happened. Our kids have fallen through the cracks. They have never been invited in.’’ At this point, Athena chimed in, ‘‘We are not an Appalachian school, but a multicultural heritage school.’’ The way she emphasized ‘‘heritage’’ conveyed the power and importance of the past. The candidate, who did not pick up on any of these cultural signals, proceeded to ask a series of technical questions about the relationships between our community heri-

62

hiring staff

tage school and CPS. Robbie explained, ‘‘We chose to go with CPS for two reasons: there’s a building we want in Lower East End, the old Highlands school building. And although CPS hasn’t been great with our kids, I believe in public schools.’’ She then said something quite prophetic in light of the new CPS community school slated to come online in 2004 and modeled on our charter: ‘‘We’re hoping that our school will give CPS ideas about what will help a neighborhood like ours. We are working with CPS, but we are a district of our own.’’ The candidate responded, in a rather halting and not very articulate way, ‘‘This seems to be a little bit out-of-the-box and a little bit visionary. Ideas are just starting in my head—big challenge. What do the kids think?’’ Robbie said, ‘‘The kids helped design the school. They want better teachers and they want teachers that listen. They like the idea of multi-age classrooms because they learn from older brothers and sisters. They want to walk to school, just like their parents and grandparents did. They want to have a sense of place they don’t have now; they will make the rules and do peer counseling.’’ This interview took place on April 3, 2000. As time went on, we talked about all sorts of alternatives and strategies for finding an instructional leader. Having decided for monetary reasons to hold off on a national search, we encouraged all members of our team to seek out possible candidates. Recent memory turned out to play an important role in the selection of an instructional leader. Robbie’s oldest grandchild had attended kindergarten and first grade in a neighboring community that in recent years had become a miniature East End. As housing became more and more scarce in the East End, many East Enders had moved east to Mt. Jefferson and already had relatives there. Some years ago, almost ten to be exact, Robbie had spent a considerable amount of time as a grandparent volunteer in the neighborhood. She loved the principal there and her granddaughter Kelly’s teachers. She felt comfortable in this highly structured school environment that was still small enough to feel intimate. Although the other founding mothers did not know it at the time, Mt. Jefferson was really the school Robbie wanted to replicate for East End kids. Our school, however, would have a high school to accommodate all of the kids in a single family; Mt. Jefferson stopped at the eighth grade. It was a model for Robbie, with its high levels of parent involvement, a kindly but authoritarian administrator, and a rigid learning environment. Robbie went to Mt. Jefferson to find an instructional leader and discovered a very ambitious young kindergarten teacher who had been work-

63

creation

ing on obtaining her principal’s certification at a local private university. Robbie was not thinking about educational philosophy. She wanted someone she could trust from a familiar school environment. She also wanted someone quickly. We were running out of time. We had been through many interviews; Robbie had even tried to recruit our best and most experienced consulting teacher to the position of instructional leader. Through humor, feigned bribery, joking, and cajoling she worked for several weeks to convince her to take the job. Jenel refused with grace and gratitude, but she refused nonetheless. The most desirable candidates seemed to be already committed to their existing jobs. Robbie’s efforts at Mt. Jefferson proved fruitful at last. Karley appeared as a godsend. She is a large woman in her thirties who came to the interview in a dark suit, white blouse, and heels. Since we were working to create an out-of-the-box school, I worried about her attempt at a corporate image. By the time Karley came to the interview, though, Robbie had made it clear that she had the instructional leader’s job. She told everyone she had found the right person. Anyone expressing reservations would be attacking Robbie and the neighborhood itself. Karley’s smile, easygoing manner, and immediately apparent social skills conveyed a motherly, caring quality. She talked about looking after her grandmother, fixing her meals, worrying about her. These were the magic words, obviously already conveyed to Robbie. Most East End women express closeness to their grandmothers—elders occupy special and revered places in East End culture. Karley grew up in Mt. Saint Marie, an African American, working-class community on the north side of town. She talked about her two daughters, ages two and four. She had worked as a kindergarten teacher for twelve years and had been taking night courses for her principal’s certification. When she realized she would be heading a K–12 school, she went for certification not just in K–8, but for high school, the same training that is required for a superintendent. She never finished that training. Her warmth and working-class background, combined with her middle-class style (dress, language, switching in and out of dialect), seemed to ‘‘fit’’ into the community. In contrast to so many of our applicants, who seemed too stodgy, straitlaced, in-the-box, and ‘‘full of themselves,’’ she presented an energetic, positive image. A motto printed at the top of her résumé sounded very good, even though we didn’t exactly know what it meant: ‘‘You can’t teach what you don’t know, you can’t lead where you won’t go.’’ At the time, the saying conveyed a sense of adventurousness, a willingness to accept new ideas. We ignored the clichéd

64

hiring staff

elements of the phrase, including the rhyme, in favor of the sympathetic interpretation we founding mothers wanted to believe. We could not have anticipated the kinds of struggles that ensued between progressive teachers and the instructional leader, who was soon to take on the identity of principal.

65

THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

five

OPEN ING T HE SCHOOL Whose School Is It?

‘‘It’s not fun anymore,’’ Robbie told me sometime in mid-July 2000, before the opening of school. ‘‘We are low on the totem pole and nobody listens to us anymore.’’ As soon as we had obtained permission to lease the building in the late spring of 2000, community leaders began to talk about losing control over space, decision making, and a series of other issues, including salaries, benefits, teacher competency, discipline, schedules, transportation, and a myriad of details that the founding mothers did not anticipate in the school planning process. Somehow, the reality of the school, especially getting the key and actually entering the building, altered the collaborative relationships that had taken so long to build and nurture in the school development process. A hierarchy emerged, with the newly hired instructional leader putting a metal plate on the door that said, ‘‘Karley Smith, Principal.’’ The message was clear—one person was in control. Staking out space in the building, deciding how to renovate space, what colors to paint the walls, where the phone lines go, where to put the computers and fax machine, all became contested decisions that precipitated conflict and criticism for months after they were made. Robbie claimed the old principal’s office, a place she and the community had revered since her childhood days at Highlands. She put her special mark on the space by painting it a vibrant, almost psychedelic, green. Athena, who had become human resources director, claimed the old vice principal’s office, a mirror image of Robbie’s space. Each spacious office had a private bathroom, beautiful large windows, and the privacy of double doors, one to enter the general space, the other for the office itself. During the school’s initial year the new principal’s ‘‘office’’ was really a

69

deterritorialization

large, double classroom on the third and top floor of the building. By saying repeatedly that she wanted visitors to tour the whole building before arriving in her office, Karley rationalized her de facto exile from the centrally located original principal’s office. She shared the space with the administrative assistant, who screened people before they were permitted to see the principal. In practice, the space was problematic at best. Privacy was nonexistent, except in a small coat closet that became a kind of secret talking space for very serious conversations. While Athena guarded her office jealously and kept both of her doors closed most of the time, Robbie welcomed teachers and kids. She felt free to police the hallways and take students out of class for the slightest reason. Many people, especially parents, referred to Robbie as the vice principal, and she enjoyed her newly invented status. As an untrained person, though, and with the best of intentions, she would often find herself in situations that were beyond the realm of her experience and expertise. Since she had known most of the East End children from birth, they treated her as a grandmother, not as a tutor or a teacher. She would often try to help the children with math or writing, and, for the most part, she succeeded. Children’s self-esteem rose with Robbie’s caring attention. Frequently, though, she became an excuse for kids to miss class. In addition, her time spent with kids was perceived by her critics to be time away from her job, which was to organize volunteers in the school. Early in the first weeks of school, Robbie accused the new principal of favoring the outsiders in the school, especially the principal’s own friends and family. By her own admission, in an attempt to increase enrollment (and widen her political base of support) the principal made an open and concerted effort to recruit as many people as possible from her own personal networks. As a result, a significant proportion of non–East Enders in the school, both students and staff, had some tie to the principal. At that time Robbie saw the issue as a matter of inconsistency in disciplinary procedures: that is, punishing East End kids and letting others, who just happened to be relatives of the principal, go unpunished. Prioritizing family is a model familiar in all working-class communities. Trustworthy people are family, defined in cultural terms. If the principal was privileging her own family in this finite pie of resources, East Enders experienced discrimination. ‘‘She’s looking down on us,’’ said Robbie. These feelings of subordination only intensified Robbie’s need to take charge of the school, so she stepped up her hallway patrols, her unannounced entrances into classrooms, and her counseling and tutoring of kids and parents.

70

opening t he school

CLASS BORDERLANDS WITHIN THE SCHOOL: INSIDERS VERSUS OUTSIDERS What was going on? How had the collaborative, egalitarian, social justice–oriented ideas and ideals of the founders become so quickly subverted? What kinds of differences and schisms were being emphasized, and by whom? Class distinctions seemed always to be in the foreground. Despite the widespread use of working-class discourses that spoke of social justice and equality, there were considerable class differences and differences in people’s thinking about the importance of class mobility between East Enders and outsiders, including the principal and teaching staff. Enormous differences among parents of children in the school also came to light. In the early phases, the principal’s top-down rule that no denim be worn by the staff exacerbated these differences. With voices combining resentment, wonder, and criticism, several staff members noted that the principal herself wore trendy, dry-cleanable clothes and drove an SUV with signature license plates. In an attempt to keep the peace, some of the founding mothers, who were now EECHS board members, tried to convince the principal that as long as staff members wore clean, neat clothing, what did it matter what it was made of? There were other issues around class and culture, many of which had to do with the fact that the principal had little experience in or knowledge of the community. Her outsider status, her emphasis on credentials, and her own class aspirations seemed constantly to be in the forefront, shaping her everyday behaviors as well as the decisions she made. She insisted on being called ‘‘principal’’ rather than ‘‘instructional leader,’’ as our charter mandated. Add her religious fundamentalism to this gender and class mix and the complexity of the interactions multiplies geometrically. At one point, also early in the school year, the principal refused to allow Robbie and June, her partner, to have desks next to one another. The conflicts within the school community took many forms and came from the community, the teachers, and the administration. One of the most dramatic moments occurred early in the school’s first year, when Robbie accused a teacher of striking a child. There were no adult witnesses. It became very clear that if the incident was not handled properly, the teacher’s career could be damaged permanently and the school placed in great jeopardy by negative press, at the very least, and possible litigation. Fortunately the conflict was mediated by a very skilled person, and peace, or at least rapprochement, was restored in the building. The following description of the mediation process illustrates only one of the many

71

deterritorialization

Herculean attempts to preserve the integrity of the school and its diverse staff and students.

OCTOBER 2000 Seven people sit around a table on the top floor of the school: our consulting principal Dr. L, three EECHS board members, the principal, Miss O (a teacher), and the mother of one of the children involved in the incident. There is a somber kind of spirituality pervading the room. Everyone is anxious, and all are hoping for a calm resolution to a very difficult problem. Dr. L, himself a highly respected retired principal and our mediator, begins. ‘‘We are here together as a family to look into a situation. I want to facilitate the decision, reach an agreement as to how we are going to handle it. Parents and community know that we are together.’’ The principal: ‘‘Our purpose is to make a difference in the lives of kids. I appreciate everyone being here to make this right.’’ Everyone nods, echoing her sentiments nonverbally. The principal summarizes the facts. ‘‘Noise was heard in the classroom by two teachers who saw nothing out of the ordinary. Four adults in the hallway came to see what happened. Two children said they were hit. Two students exchanged blows.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘So we had a couple of scrimmages. Did anyone handle this?’’ Principal: ‘‘Miss O separated the children from fighting.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘So she broke up two fights. Injuries?’’ Principal: ‘‘No.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘Where are the issues?’’ Principal: ‘‘The child in the second fight was smacked by the teacher’s chair. He was hit by another student for sitting in the chair. He was allegedly hit only on the arm. He felt he was hit unjustly. He felt he got hit because he hit Miss O’s daughter.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘Are the stories in agreement?’’ Principal: ‘‘No, we really don’t have agreement.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘There were no adults at the scene other than Miss O?’’ Principal: ‘‘One adult only at the site of disagreement.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘The teacher must maintain discipline. Reasonable force is warranted in order to prevent children from hurting one another.’’ Robbie: ‘‘I responded to the loud noise. Louis said Miss O’s daughter hit him.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘What did you think?’’ 72

opening t he school

Robbie: ‘‘All three boys are very free with their hands.’’ Dr. L to Robbie: ‘‘What do you think? Was Miss O being malicious or was she trying to restore order?’’ Robbie: ‘‘From her voice I thought that it was more than it needed to be.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘It is important to try to understand what may have happened. Going by experience, I don’t see it as overly forceful. To me she acted responsibly in this situation. I have seen how some people stand by and children have been hurt. We have a teacher who acted in a responsible way. She placed herself in danger by dropping to her knees. She made herself vulnerable. This was not malicious. She was trying to restore order. Nothing happened of a questionable nature. This was not a teacher abusing the kids. The situation was a fight and the teacher acted responsibly.’’ The Mom: ‘‘With having my three in the same classroom, it’s a wonder that classroom ain’t fall down.’’ Dr. L to Mom: ‘‘We are very blessed to have the school here. It’s a blessing that the school is here—the sense of love and care that’s here. The kids need a lot of things. We have a teacher—she was not going to have the kids hurt one another. She was restoring order to the situation. End of mediation.’’ In order to further diffuse the situation, Miss O worked at home for a few days. The calm with which this highly volatile situation was mediated was impressive, but unfortunately the control issues among school staff and between staff and kids had been smoldering for a long time. I certainly did not realize it at the time, but the lines in the borderland were already sketched out. Robbie remained convinced that she needed to protect the community’s children from one another and, eventually, from certain teachers. Many school staff members remained convinced that Robbie had acted irresponsibly by interfering in the classroom. While we did not know it at the time, this conflict between community leaders and teachers foreshadowed other, more serious conflicts involving philosophies of education and groups with different political agendas.

73

six

K IDS IN T HE URBAN BORDERLAND A Collage

In the arts, a collage is created by an artist who juxtaposes different images, textures, and colors for the purposes of a larger whole. I use the collage as a metaphor here to emphasize the creativity of children and to portray the many different expressions of kids’ urban experience. Some of the pieces in this chapter are descriptions of kids as agents who navigate, interpret, and negotiate school in their own ways. Other pieces are stories written to convey the lives of children confronted with complexities and contradictions beyond their years. Their sense of agency shapes the school and creates the sounds, textures, and images for generations of children to reshape even as conflicts, inconsistencies, and contradictions are daily facts of life in this urban borderland. Borderlands are difficult places for anyone to be, especially kids. Kids not only experience the borders between home and school, child and adult, teacher and student—they also sense the tensions and conflicts around them. The kids could feel that control of school spaces and practices was being contested constantly. One student stated categorically, ‘‘This is my show. I am in charge.’’ The students’ mimicking of the conflicts among adults created increased difficulties for an already challenged school population. The kids became involved in power struggles over control of school and school practices, almost always at the expense of learning. At best, conflict provided distractions from the work at hand. As one student put it, ‘‘There’s mass shit goin’ on.’’ I have interspersed vignettes or written sketches of kids with several short stories. The vignettes vary—some are quite long and involved; others are very short. I have written the stories to show themes in the lives of kids as well as idols and ideals in the community. The stories are based

74

kids in t he urban borderland

on real events, but they are changed, along with the names, to preserve confidentiality.

AM I A CHILD OR A GRANDCHILD? My name is Ronnie Ann, but I’d rather be called Annie than Ronnie because that’s a boy’s name. My hair’s blond, bright yellow, really. For most of my life, I’ve lived with my mom, Jackie, at Grandma and Grandpa’s. It’s a small house—bright yellow on the outside—but it always seems big when we pack so many people in. On holidays everybody comes—all my cousins, aunts, and uncles. They’re everywhere. The Christmas tree in their house always has trains running around it. There’s hardly room for all the presents. My mom and me, we used to sleep in the apartment upstairs. It’s not much. Doesn’t even have a stove. It didn’t matter because we’d spend most of our time downstairs. I could go downstairs anytime, especially when mom was sleeping after work. Grandma fixed a lot of meals and Mom and Aunt Jenny and my cousin Mary helped fix dinners. Grandma was always there in the kitchen or the dining room when I got off the school bus. She had a snack ready and helped me with my homework. My cousins came there too after school. Grandma still sits for hours at the head of the big old dining room table with her magnifying glass reading the obituaries to see if she knows anybody who has died. Since she’s lived in the same place for so long, she usually finds the name of somebody she knows in the newspaper. She complains because there’s only a small circle at the top of the glass that is strong enough for her to read through. It’s about the size of a quarter and it takes her hours and hours to read anything through such a tiny space. She can spend the whole day just with the newspaper. Grandpa’s there too, except when he’s resting in his bed. Their bedroom is right next to the dining room and the back door, so Grandpa doesn’t have to go very far to eat or see people. Some days he just stays in bed all day. ‘‘J,’’ Grandma calls him. He’s as big as Grandma is small. Grandma feeds him too much and the wrong things for his sugar. They fight sometimes, but they always make up. When I was little, I used to go to the East End Area Council [EEAC] meetings with Grandma and Grandpa. I’d bring my homework and Grandma would help me there, in whispers, of course so we wouldn’t bother the meeting. I was afraid to make even a little bit of noise with

75

deterritorialization

my papers. People looked up to Grandpa and he’s still a very respected man in the neighborhood. Lots of people come to him to talk, to get his advice. Sometimes they borrow money and he always seems to have it. If he doesn’t he gets it from Grandma. If it wasn’t for him, the new part of the recreation center (us kids—we call it ‘‘the park’’) wouldn’t have been built and we’d have no place to play ping-pong. Just being with Grandma and Grandpa makes me feel important. Grandpa looks at me like I am somebody. Maybe that’s because he’s somebody important in the neighborhood. Even when skinny old Mr. Brattle tries to insult Grandpa I am proud because Grandpa never lets Mr. Brattle get his goat. Mr. Brattle thinks he’s hot stuff just because he owns so much property down here in East End. Just because he owns the River Inn, where people go to get drunk on Saturday nights, doesn’t mean he has the right to push people around. Grandpa knows that; he just leans back in his chair and says nothing. Mr. Brattle just keeps on giving his speeches in that loud, insulting voice of his. They’re very long—lots and lots of words. I suppose he just likes to hear himself talk and doesn’t even see Grandpa sit back and roll his eyes. Grandpa only talks when he has something to say. Mrs. Brattle doesn’t look at all like she should be Mr. Brattle’s wife. She is very fat and wears flowered dresses that look like curtains and bedspreads—or the material on our couch. When she gets mad, she pounds her shoe on the table and her face gets so red she looks like a balloon that’s about to burst. Her car license plates have her initials, BB, for Bambi Brattle, but all of us kids in the neighborhood call her Big Bertha. She hasn’t the foggiest. They have been trying for years to buy Uncle Jim’s house right there on the river, but he won’t sell. They ask him over and over again, almost as though they think he hasn’t heard them the first time. But he has, and he won’t sell. You see, Uncle Jim talks funny, a speech defect they call it, so a lot of people think he’s got something wrong with his brain. He doesn’t. My mom and him are close. He’s her brother you see, and anytime you are looking for Grandpa, when he does go out, he’s usually down by the river with Uncle Jim. Then came the flood of March 1997. The river came right up into my Aunt Jenny’s basement. It came into Grandma and Grandpa’s basement too, only through the storm sewers backing up. We didn’t have no electric or water for days—it seemed like forever. It was so cold we had to get a big old kerosene stove in the dining room to keep us warm. Grandma and Grandpa had to go up in Mt. Wash. to sleep. But they came back down in East End in the day. 76

kids in t he urban borderland

It was then that my mom became Robbie’s ‘‘sidekick,’’ as Robbie calls her. Robbie and my mom are both ‘‘lifers,’’ born and raised in East End. Mommy is the youngest of nine children. Grandma still calls her her baby. My mom has to get up real early every morning to go to work in the factory. They make uniforms. You know, the kind nurses and waitresses wear. She really hates it. She complains about how hot it is and how she has to spend the whole day on her feet hanging up the heavy uniforms and arranging them for shipping. But she knows she can’t stop now. Too many years in—almost twenty. That’s a long time to be hanging up uniforms. Her cousin, Jo, works there too and they ride together. Robbie is an activist. Before Big Bertha and the developers took over the community council, Robbie was president. She was damn good too, she was her own person and made sure East Enders counted in the long planning meetings when I even ran out of homework to do because the meetings lasted for hours and hours. Before that Robbie was in charge of dealing with the city whenever the building inspector would come and try to tag people’s houses. When the flood came and water was everywhere, Robbie and my mom spent so much time handing out cleaning supplies to people that my mom forgot my number ten birthday. Even though Mom said she was sorry, and I know that it’s a lot of dirty work to clean out mud from people’s houses, and I could tell she really felt bad, it was too late for sorry. Her forgetting made me feel worse than when the kids at school tease me about being fat. I know I can’t help it. It’s my medicine. I don’t care much about school anyway. Even though I get As and Bs, my teachers treat me like I’m retarded, or crazy, or something that’s not the same as other kids. After we moved up to Robbie’s apartment and outside of East End, she tried to help me with my homework, but it’s not the same as Grandma. Grandma can correct me without making me feel stupid. On weekends I go to my daddy’s. His place is on the other side of town. He can’t pick me up because of his DUI [driving under the influence], so Mommy has to bring me and take me back home. I wish Mommy and Daddy lived together. I don’t like having to pack and unpack every weekend, even if Daddy does give me almost everything I ask for—even candy that I’m not supposed to have. Robbie says I am bad every time I come back from Daddy’s. She says he spoils me rotten. Now I am taking Ritalin for what they say is ADD [attention deficit disorder]. I’m not really sure what that is, but I know I don’t feel right a lot of the time. Sometimes I feel very down; sometimes I cannot sit still and feel like I am jumping out of my skin. Mommy calls 77

deterritorialization

Ritalin ‘‘truth serum.’’ I guess that means that I always tell the truth after I take this medicine. I have two doctors. One is Dr. Z, who is a head-shrinker. He plays games with me to try to get me to talk, but I won’t. He doesn’t seem interested in what I have to say. Besides, he’s mean and stuffy. My other doctor reminds me of Grandpa. He has white hair and is easy to talk to. He has all sorts of hammers and toys for testing my muscles. I’ll miss him when he retires, which is right after my next visit. Robbie has two grandbabies. One is just my age, ten. The other one is six. They live with their mommy and daddy out in the country, they have a house—not an apartment—a yard, and two dogs. They seem to do everything just right, especially when it comes to money. They get an allowance for chores, which I don’t. They even buy their own videos with the money they save. I wish I had some money of my own though. That’s why I took $50 from Grandma’s purse. I mean to pay her back as soon as I can. But Robbie doesn’t see it that way. She thinks I stole the money. Just because my teacher found it and took it from me doesn’t mean I am a thief. The kids at school will surely pay more attention to me if they think I have some money. Money talks. Look at Mr. Brattle. Maybe Robbie has it in for me. The other night when my cousin Mary Lou came over, I was in the shower. She’s more than a year older than me, but she doesn’t like kids her own age. Robbie thinks she’s a bad influence because she likes to hang on the street. I don’t know why she came to see me so late, but by the time she left it was past my ten o’clock bedtime. I couldn’t help it, but Robbie punished me anyway. Now I have to go to bed at nine-thirty for a week. This makes me feel very down. I forgot to mention that we are now living back with Grandma and Grandpa in Mommy and Daddy’s old apartment upstairs. After Grandpa came back from the hospital, Robbie and Mommy decided that they had to move back home to help Grandma with him. He had some serious surgery on his back and he complains that he is not getting better as fast as he would like. Grandma says it took so long (thirty years) for his back to get that way. Why shouldn’t it take a while for him to heal? Grandpa doesn’t see it that way. Mom is worried because Grandpa is too big for Grandma to handle by herself. At least I can have my old room back; even if it is messy, it’s mine. Also, I can go down to Grandma’s living room and take a nap on my favorite couch anytime I want. It’s got a soft white cotton cover that I can put over me. Nobody aggravates me when I’m sleeping there. Robbie doesn’t like it when I go downstairs. She says Grandma doesn’t like her. 78

kids in t he urban borderland

Robbie is too old to be my mommy, but she’s not nearly as old as Grandma. She’s a grandma, but she’s not my grandma. Maybe because Robbie is in between my mommy and my grandma, put me in between— not quite a daughter and not quite a granddaughter.

JOSH ‘‘I’m a bad kid,’’ Josh announces as I walk quietly into the middle-school classroom and sit down at the teacher’s desk in the corner, right by the door. ‘‘No you’re not,’’ I say definitively. ‘‘There is no such thing as a bad kid, only bad situations.’’ Josh is on his third spitball, having wadded up small pieces of paper from the teacher’s desk, wet them with saliva, and sent them sailing with a mighty puff on a clear straw from his pocket. He is a very small kid, with a pale and sullen look. He has been smoking since he was seven and is very much a street kid; he steals things, having been taught by his father, who is now divorced from his mother. He is wary, having seen a lot in his short life of thirteen years. He is almost a small adult in spirit; he is smart and picks up on cues and subtle meanings. In many ways, his intelligence separates him from other kids, who, along with adults, give him a hard time. Unlike his brother, who has a different father, who picks him and their sister up for weekends, Josh is now with his mother and her new boyfriend. He is a loner and lacks friends. The teacher sits at a small student’s desk in the center of the classroom, engrossed in helping several other kids, whose desks are arranged side by side, diagonally across the large classroom. Josh is on the outside, in his usual position on the margin of any group or activity. He is moving back and forth between the teacher’s desk by the door and the cluster of activity in the center of the classroom. He is literally in some kind of limbo.1 The teacher’s passion for the subject matter is clear. He communicates a kind of intensity that is new to many of the kids—new because they have been used to large classrooms, textbooks, and learning primarily by rote memorization, not by understanding concepts and becoming involved in projects. The kids are at different levels of skill and interest, but they all seem to be involved in the material at hand. Each kid really needs individual attention from a skilled person. We are working hard to provide mentors and tutors for the kids. Our ideals are certainly very high, and we know that the kids are capable of meeting and exceeding even our lofty expectations. Josh moves away from the group toward the teacher’s desk and pro79

deterritorialization

ceeds to take a pair of scissors, spread the blades, and try to jimmy open the lock on the classroom closet door. He does this decisively and without hesitation, a simultaneous challenge and cry for attention. He has a defiant, I-dare-you-to-do-anything-about-it expression on his face. I sit quietly and watch him. He jiggles the scissors. ‘‘You can really hurt yourself that way,’’ I suggest gently, realizing that he should not have picked up the scissors in the first place and that he should not be fiddling with the lock. But I know that anything even remotely resembling discipline will strengthen his defiance. He seems to be bored, definitely in need of a challenge—at the very least he is too freely and nonchalantly meandering around the classroom. I continue to sit quietly and watch his every movement. He knows it. I sense that he can feel the pressure of my eyes. To my surprise and relief, he walks right up to the desk and gently places the scissors in front of me. The following reflection was written about Josh by one of the undergraduate students on our tutoring/research team. It testifies to his untrusting tentativeness and fear of establishing relationships. I saw Josh only once at the East End Community Heritage School. It was during the beginning of my classroom assistance in the spring (2001). He seemed rather uptight and tense for such a small boy. Josh had a wide-eyed look to him, as if he’d seen more than he should have in his short lifetime. I had met the other boys already the week before, so I picked up on Josh’s name quickly when I heard Mr. Grabley speak to him. At one point, I addressed Josh by his name. He looked at me very suspiciously and demanded, ‘‘How’d you know my name?’’ I thought for a moment and then told him, ‘‘I heard Mr. Grabley call you Josh earlier.’’ He then sternly responded, ‘‘Only people who know me call me Josh.’’ We had never been introduced and I could clearly see his point of view. I understood why he might be suspicious, but was bewildered about how to handle this. I politely asked him, ‘‘What would you like me to call you until I know you then?’’ He too now looked bewildered and after a moment walked away without responding. The other boys had been eager to introduce themselves to me even if they initially used false names. Josh might have been as well if I had given him the same chance, but I sensed a lot of mistrust. Later that afternoon Josh appeared to have gotten over the whole incident. Maybe after seeing that the others accepted me he had decided to trust me, at least as much as he could, and began to show me some work he was doing on the computer. Unfortunately, the bell rang before I had a chance to know him better and I didn’t see him again.

80

kids in t he urban borderland

R AY : N O V E M B E R 3 , 2 0 0 0 Ray, age nine, African American, lives with his grandmother. He gets a ride to school each day with a teacher and her two children. He has multiple learning disabilities that cause him to have problems concentrating and sitting still. He gets angry easily. One of the IAs is trying to teach him long division. It becomes clear that he has no idea what division means, never mind what long division means. She tries everything, from sticks to paper objects that she cuts into several pieces. In frustration, she goes back to trying to teach him long division by rote. It does not work. A few weeks later, the teacher is working on number sequences. Ray seems to have a special gift for these and is way ahead of the other kids. Soon after that, the teacher decides she can no longer drive Ray to school; he is such a bad influence on her girls.

C RY S T A L Crystal starts attending EECHS after the holiday break in 2001. She and her sister Tina are both seventh-graders, although they are old enough to be in the ninth grade. They come from ‘‘Higher,’’ the vernacular for Upper East End, which kids always contrast to ‘‘Lower,’’ the part of the neighborhood west of the Delta underpass, and the location of EECHS. Crystal and Tina consider themselves to be leaders of the pack of self-defined bad girls. Tina says at one point, in reference to people from ‘‘Lower,’’ ‘‘I don’t give a fuck, I’m serious, if they even look at me I’ll go off. I’ll kick their ass. I don’t give a fuck.’’ Both girls have a real working knowledge of street life. They brag about getting into fights outside of school, smoking weed, and dating older guys. Both Crystal and Tina have problems with truancy. Tina stops coming to school completely in the spring, and other kids say that she has run away from home to avoid time in ‘‘20-20,’’ a juvenile incarceration center. Crystal uses her street smarts, her looks, and her willingness to fight to control both boys and girls, giving and withholding attention according to whatever her current agenda happens to be. Alliances are very important, and to be with Crystal is to be cool, to be bad and not care what anyone thinks about it. Many of the girls want badly to be like her, but when Crystal is alone she seems deeply sad and unaware of what is really happening in her life. Sometimes students create borderlands within themselves, conflicts of identity between the tough adult and the emotionally labile child.2

81

deterritorialization

STREET SMARTS VERSUS BOOK LEARNING Popular culture, especially rap music, street life (including drug abuse, dealing, and encounters with the law), and street-stylish clothing (low pants and new shoes for boys, tight clothes and lots of makeup for girls), are all central to the lives of kids, much more so than academics. Literacy (read: book smarts) does not matter on the streets. A person can be street-smart and respected without knowing how to read.

Diana Diana is a prominent high-school student. Her mother is a longtime East Ender. They live in the Lewiston townhomes, the newest affordable housing built by the community development corporation in 1994. Diana is quite a charismatic figure, a queen of drama. She can easily get into a physical fight with another high-school girl over a debate about whether or not her hair is ‘‘real.’’ She has a way of digging in her heels and insisting that what she says is the absolute truth. She is very competitive and builds her arguments about ‘‘real’’ hair on her authenticity as an East Ender. Fashion and expensive clothes are very important, and Diana and her peers will ‘‘mess with’’ (take up with) older men just to acquire clothes, jewelry, hair and nail treatments, etc. But this striving for a glamorous image conflicts with the whole gestalt of the school. Why spend time studying if it will not get you the things you need to maintain and enhance your image? 3

Ned Ned is a fifteen-year-old eighth-grader. He always dresses in the right clothes, according to the street-thug look. He works much harder on developing his street charisma than he does on schoolwork. The other kids are always talking about him; he wears new, top-of-the-line designer clothes, draped in a very particular way (self-consciously). His jeans are always very low, even lower than those of other boys in school; his shoes are designer tennis shoes or hiking boots, and there always seems to be a new pair. Ned also has two real gold teeth that he likes very much; he carries the receipt for his teeth in his wallet and shows it to students and staff from time to time to prove they are real. Ned periodically takes off for long stretches. It is rumored that Ned sells drugs; he mentions drug dealing to me once, stating, ‘‘I might sell narcotics but I don’t smoke narcotics.’’ I have 82

kids in t he urban borderland

never been convinced that Ned is actually involved with drug dealing himself—something always gives me the impression that this is just something he has created to boost his gangster image. Ned is extremely smart. At one point he explains to me the definition of a ‘‘baller’’ in an open conversation in the school’s computer lab: ‘‘So what’s a baller, Ned, what does that mean—is it like being a playa?’’ ‘‘Na, na, being a playa is like having the way wit da ladies. Being a baller is like having dough, having the ride, the look, ya know, ya got the diamonds, big wad a money in ya pocket and people see you ridin’ down the street and think, ‘Yeah, he’s got it, he’s cool.’ ’’ ‘‘So is baller just another word for drug dealer?’’ ‘‘I don’t know nothin’ ’bout that.’’ He laughs but the implication is clear.4

Danny Danny, a seventeen-year-old eleventh-grader from a longtime East End family, also has a gold tooth. The following is taken from field notes. I asked him about it once and he replied, in a mumbled, discreet tone, ‘‘It’s cool, it’s cool.’’ This is part of keeping it on the ‘‘DL’’ (‘‘down low’’). Don’t talk about yourself. I noticed that all the boys with gold teeth seemed to like to talk about themselves if you could break through the tough-guy front. Throughout the year he wrote one complete short story for his English Composition class, although the class completed writing assignments every two weeks. Danny rarely worked on academics, he strolled around the class, slept occasionally, flirted with girls, but did not have excessive absences. I often wondered why he came and it seemed to be for the social interactions. He was sort of a people-person deep down inside; he liked to be helpful, was polite with staff and students, and enjoyed group conversation. When Danny did write for class, he wrote a story about gang life, selling drugs, smoking weed, drive-by shootings, and retaliation murder. The story seemed to be a mix from videos and films; it was so romantic that I doubted he had been involved with anything so serious and violent.

The following is a short excerpt from Danny’s story: ‘‘So what are we doing later on?’’ ‘‘Let’s go to the club or something,’’ Bobby said. ‘‘I guess we could do something like that. Man, where did you get that fat Guess outfit and them new Jordans?’’ 83

deterritorialization ‘‘I went up to New York to get this shit.’’ ‘‘Tony, that shit is tight as hell ain’t it?’’ ‘‘Hell yeah, Dave lets go to the mall so I could get some new shoes’’ Tony said. ‘‘Alright lets go, this block is getting hot.’’

Jewelry can either be pawned, sold, or traded for other goods. Highschoolers, both girls and boys, flaunt their goods, and these goods must be real. Many girls get their jewelry from older men, and the need for these goods propels girls to have relationships with guys who have more resources than any high-school student could possibly acquire. It is also not uncommon for high-school boys to spend $150 on new shoes several times per year. The shoes and the clothes must be of certain brands. Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger are two. These brands symbolize worth and success. A person’s value is equivalent to what can be bought or put on.

PA R E N T S I have known some of our parents since they were teenagers. Take Don and Pam, born and raised in the East End. Pam is almost a daughter to Robbie, and they do have words from time to time. Don is a jovial, nononsense man who works two jobs, loves his children, and tries as much as possible to give back to his community. Pam is smart, talkative, spunky, and rebellious. She also works two jobs to support their three kids—all in the EECHS, one in high school, one in middle school, one about to enter kindergarten. The little one is really a bubbling volcano; Pam worries that he learns too much from the older kids, swaggering around and trying to act sexy when he does not even know the meaning of the word. He mimics their body language as he runs back and forth across the gym on student recruitment day. To say he is an active kid is an understatement.

The Browns Another parent, Betty, angry and combative, talks of her own high-school days, pregnant with a huge belly. She recognizes Dr. L. He was her principal. ‘‘You didn’t get very far with me,’’ she announces, with a cocky angle to her head. She looks like a kid herself and acts like one too sometimes, picking fights to the point where she is barred from entering the school building. 84

kids in t he urban borderland

B A S E B A L L A N D S C H O O L I : PA R E N T S Baseball fields have always been prominent in the East End. Old photos show teams on the diamond wearing old-fashioned uniforms. Robbie coached girls’ baseball when Toni was a kid. Six-year-olds have their Knothole teams. The Reds are really important in the East End. The players themselves provide role models for East End kids and are known by name throughout Cincinnati. Reds families are among the few who can afford to buy the upscale condos along the river. The players’ wives do charity work; they are like a small-scale Junior League in and of themselves, with many community projects on their agendas. They donated a small community library and the kitchen appliances for LeBlond (a city-run Department of Recreation facility), enabling cooking classes to be held there and establishing a strong presence in the community. Anyone who represents baseball becomes an automatic icon for kids in the community, boys and girls alike.

He did not look like a first-class passenger—shorts, baseball cap, a red T-shirt. This huge man’s feet, even in first class, extended way into the aisle. His worn sixties leather sandals did not match the rest of him. They did not belong on a man so youthful, so clean-shaven and short-haired. He had a certain familiarity about him, as though I had known him for a long time. He could have spent his childhood in the East End, or in a similar community. When the flight attendant inquired about drinks, he ordered a cranberry juice and vodka—a good combination, I thought, wondering if it had a special name. It came with a lemon wedge. I looked up from my book and commented that the drink sounded delicious. Just the color of cranberry juice alone is enticing, and the vodka would not alter the intensity of color or flavor. He spoke like an experienced traveler. I wondered what kind of work caused him to fly so much. There was nothing corporate about him. I thought fleetingly that maybe he just hid his executive status in the comfort of casual clothes, but I trusted my first impression. He seemed young, too young to exhibit the inner security it would take to dress like this on a business trip—too boyish and unguarded, too suntanned, too muscular. ‘‘Do you travel for business?’’ I asked tentatively. ‘‘Yes,’’ he said in a matter-of-fact and friendly tone. ‘‘I’ll be working all weekend at a college called Mont-something.’’ ‘‘Montclair?’’ I volunteered. 85

deterritorialization

‘‘Yeah, that’s it. Four college teams will be there. Penn State and some others. I’m a scout for the San Diego Padres.’’ He began to talk about missing his family this weekend, how he loved going home just to relax. It sounded quite idyllic. I began to imagine a pretty wife there just to serve him, one who attended to all the details of their lives, just so that he could relax when he came home. His baseball scout persona seemed just right, and I had a great sense of relief that this anomaly did indeed have a reasonable explanation. ‘‘Really! How many scouts work for the Padres?’’ ‘‘Twenty-three,’’ he said without hesitation. ‘‘Were you a baseball player yourself?’’ ‘‘I stopped in ’88.’’ This seemed rather longer ago than I expected, and I began to calculate how old he might be. If he had stopped in his early thirties or even his late twenties, he could easily be in his early- to mid-forties. He ordered another cranberry juice and vodka. I did not bother to ask about the circumstances of his employment, but I wondered which team he had played for—a farm team, minor league, major league? What position? Perhaps he had been a pitcher or catcher, calling the signals. I pictured him in the dugout, nervous but not crazy. He began to talk about his father: ‘‘He worked his ass off to make ends meet.’’ As a scout, he clearly had it much better than his father, and I began to imagine the father slaving in a steel mill or working in a coal mine. I could not help but ask whether his father had worked in a factory. ‘‘He was a machinist, not just an ordinary factory worker. He knew what he was doing. When I was a kid we used to go to the Dove Bar factory. They’d cut the ice cream in blocks, stick a stick into it, and dip it in chocolate as many times as you wanted. It was really good.’’ ‘‘Sounds delicious.’’ He had a pleasing persona, with a certain rough kind of charm. He asked for a glass of red wine to go with his third or fourth round of cranberry juice and vodka. I had lost count, but I started wondering when his speech would begin to slur. Instead, the pace of his speech quickened, and he began chattering about his twins, a boy and a girl. ‘‘My boy never studies and gets great grades. His sister busts her ass and does okay, but not anywhere close to her brother.’’ He talked about taking his son to the park to play ball. ‘‘He teaches me a lot. Sometimes he yells, ‘Did you see what that guy did?’ And I missed it. He sees more than I do.’’ ‘‘How do you go about recruiting players? What do you look for when you scout?’’ 86

kids in t he urban borderland

‘‘First I look to see if a kid is having fun, if he has a smile on his face. I don’t like to see kids moping around.’’ He seemed somewhat in awe of kids in general, and his kids in particular. ‘‘My little daughter, she’s only six, she reads all the time, all the time, imagine that! I send them to Catholic school, but it’s not the same as when we went. Ten thousand grand a year I pay for the twins.’’ He asked me whether I thought it was worth it, as though he needed to talk to someone older and wiser. Perhaps it was the book on my lap. I began to tell him about our community school—free, no fees—created to respect all heritages, including working-class heritages. It turned out he lives, part time, in one of the upscale condos on Eastern Avenue, one of the market-rate buildings that are out of range for ‘‘real’’ East Enders. But in many ways, he is an East Ender, one generation removed. He came from a working-class family. Was this what all of the alcohol was about? Another cranberry vodka arrived with its wedge of lemon suspended from a green plastic toothpick. Every time a flight attendant appeared with her two wine bottles, one red, one white, he held out his glass. ‘‘I’ll take a glass of Merlot.’’ He held out his glass with determination, pronouncing ‘‘Merlot’’ to rhyme with ‘‘used car lot.’’ I began to wonder whether he planned to rent a car to go to Montsomething college. But I did not ask. Perhaps he was dealing with the stress of having to live in a higher class than the one in which he was born and raised? In many ways he symbolized success and upward mobility. But what were the costs?

BASEBALL AND SCHOOL II: M E TA P HORS OF T E A M WOR K I remember that beautiful day in the spring of our first year, when the whole high school was out at the baseball field between the school and LeBlond Park. The kids who were not actually playing were sitting either in the bleachers or on the stone steps that led down to the batting cage. One of the girls was weaving a necklace of violet flowers for Aurelia, the high-school language arts teacher, who was standing behind the umpire with her camera pointed. The kids were happy to see her camera, as she had taught them not only the importance of documenting their lives, but also that their lives and works were important to her. She had a rare kind of passion for kids and education and was known by all to squeeze writing, art, and poetry from even the most resistant of kids. One 87

deterritorialization

of the kids confided that he feared for her safety, since the balls were flying everywhere. ‘‘Even a softball can hurt, you know.’’ Leslie, our visiting dignitary of the day, who was an attorney and experienced administrator of nonprofit corporations, sat down next to Harry, our technology/math teacher, and me. He immediately switched from baseball to our IT needs. The school had received dozens of donated computers, monitors, and other pieces of hardware—the throwaways of corporate America. KB, our grant writer and original accountant, had carted them to Cincinnati State to be configured and then carted them back to the school. Her daughter set up the system and networked the computers in the small computer lab. Harry had come midyear to carry forth the technology program. He began to expound on our school’s technology needs. He sounded like an East Ender who had been trained as an engineer but schooled in urban memory; his passion for the kids, the community, and the school was extremely strong, considering that he had been in the school for such a short time. ‘‘I can see you really know what you are talking about,’’ said Leslie. Harry’s knowledge and commitment came through immediately, even though he was beginning to go back to watching the game. Luke, an instructional assistant, was there too, looking very happy to be outdoors on this clear, sunny day by the river. It was a rare day in Cincinnati, warm but not humid, and the river was sparkling in the background, a great metaphor for the mood of the day.

It is really quite amazing how the process of community incorporation works. Somehow, the more time one spends, the more welcoming and enchanting the community becomes. This is not to say that the community could not turn on you at the drop of a hat if you violate the unwritten rules. It takes a long time to learn these rules—to become schooled, so to speak. Some people never do; others appear to have always known the rules. They are somewhat like those of baseball: always keep your eye on the ball (the welfare of the community); and never cheat, or if you do, don’t get caught at it.

LIT ICIA (W ITH NICOLE BERTOLONE) Liticia, a thirteen-year-old African American middle-schooler, is tough on the outside as well as the inside. She seems to have her guard up at all times. She walks with an attitude of defiant strength. She wants to appear 88

kids in t he urban borderland

as if she could cause a great deal of damage physically and/or mentally to any possible opponent. When the protests occurred in the Over-theRhine section of Cincinnati in April 2001, she stated several times that she had participated. She seems also to have a softer side, but it is overshadowed by the need to be street-tough. She practices street life almost as an art. When Liticia switches classes, she slowly saunters from room to room, not caring if anyone tells her to get to class quicker—she looks at you dryly with indignant eyes and continues to saunter. When she finally reaches a class, she hunches over the table or sits low in her chair. She will often shut a book that someone has opened for her. Liticia rarely smiles and almost always has a blank look in her eyes, as if she is trying to maintain a cool image. Even when she is angry—and she can be very loud— she still has that calm and indignant look about her. She never hesitates to be demanding of her classmates as well as her teachers. She will easily shout, without inhibition, at anyone to ‘‘shut up’’ if what they are saying does not suit her. It does not appear to matter too much what level of authority the person holds. While most of the other girls imitate the street life they see on TV, Liticia seems to practice the real thing. The other girls talk the talk, but they have not really gotten it yet. Liticia can do it all—the talk, the walk, the way she sits around the classroom. While other girls are anxious about boundaries, Liticia does not seem to care. She does not look for a reaction when she is nasty. In fact, she seems most hesitant when asking for help with something. At these moments, she becomes very quiet. The other girls appear to look up to her, but whether it is because of her authenticity or their own fear is uncertain.

BELONGING

Frankie Frankie shares the following about his family: ‘‘My family is all on drugs; when I started smoking, they said see, a chip off the ole block—and that scared me.’’ Frankie lives with a friend and his family. He spent most of his first year in the school homeless, although he talked about his homelessness as ‘‘just always staying with people.’’ When his place to stay was stable, he would come to school clean and change his clothes regularly. When he found himself in less-stable circumstances, he would smell terrible and wear the same clothes every day. During these periods he seemed angry 89

deterritorialization

and would behave badly, acting out, fighting. He spent a lot of time in in-school suspension, where there was little academic work and lots of stigma. Frankie does various things to get attention. He paints his fingernails black, wears lots of jewelry, makes known his belief in witchcraft, pierces his tongue. He definitely stands out as a charismatic kid with energy and a vibrancy that needs direction and focus. He looks to school as his family, often visiting staff members at home. He needs a place to belong. One day in late October of the school’s second year, I called a staff member and Frankie answered the phone. He sounded very grown-up, very professional, so professional, in fact, that I thought he was a male teacher. In December 2001, the school’s parent group raised money by working booths at the Paul Brown Stadium, the major sports venue in downtown Cincinnati. A group can earn a minimum of $500 or more on most days, depending on sales. An emergency e-mail from the principal indicated that the stadium people were upset because the money came up short. Frankie had been in charge of depositing the bag of money. An emergency meeting was held. The stadium people were cool. Frankie was upset. The stadium people admitted that they had not trained the students. This was not a major incident for the school, but it was a major blow to Frankie. After the stadium incident, Frankie went through several crises. Sexual identity became such a serious issue for him that he threatened suicide. Evylyn, the school’s administrative secretary and de facto vice principal, spent a whole day counseling Frankie. Frankie managed to graduate and attend the university, claiming me as his academic mother and Dr. L as his academic father. Despite all of these supports, he dropped out of college before the end of his first year.

Yashina She is sitting in Robbie’s office—adult clothes, childlike affect. Her red leather snakeskin pantsuit fits perfectly, not too tight, not too loose. Her hair is piled high on top of her head, her makeup heavy. I think about how much time getting ready must take in the morning. Just as I walk in, June and Robbie are trying to figure out how to get her a Metropass so she can get from her boyfriend’s house to school. It is complicated; she has to take one bus to downtown Cincinnati, then walk several blocks, then transfer to a bus to East End. She is coming from some distance outside the neighborhood. Robbie suspects that her boyfriend is older and abu90

kids in t he urban borderland

sive and that it is a real struggle for her to stay in school. June promises to get her a Metropass, even if she has to pay for it. Another high-schooler wears an expensive gold locket bought for her by her ‘‘man.’’ Getting a man is important. But these girls are walking contradictions—too old to be in school, too young to be on their own. Welcome to the borderland.

Taylor Early May 2001. The context: a discussion of economic development in the East End. Many of the high-school students are expressing ambivalence about their community and about the issues posed by development. Some have been directly affected by displacement of themselves or of family members. Taylor uses rap lyrics to talk about ‘‘the war between rich and poor.’’ He acknowledges that more people have been leaving the community; he is very interested in the idea that poor people can be displaced by rich people. He talks about aspiring to be a modern-day Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Taylor is resistant to doing schoolwork, writing reluctantly and reading minimally. He did become absorbed in the Autobiography of Malcolm X; one day he literally did not take his face out of the book for several hours. He knew everything he had read and gave a detailed account of his reading. He is good at writing about what he knows. All of the kids are. Much of what they have to say is eye-opening, even shocking—drugs, racism, abortion, fights, experiences in court. The issues in the kids’ lives are real and powerful and they need to process them. Computer skills come easily to the kids and they can accomplish almost any task on the Web. Even the most difficult-to-teach students are interested in working on computers. To learn to be a student, to take on the role of student in any conventional sense, is difficult for working-class kids, yet students such as Taylor challenge the conventional definitions of a student as well as conventional definitions of school. One day, Taylor spent the entire day reading Shakespeare. He clearly wanted to learn, but he did not know where to begin, where to give or get respect and empathy. Helping kids concentrate and focus is very difficult. They are restless and distracted by one another and by what is going on around them. They constantly have antennae out that receive signals from their surroundings. When someone pulls a student out of class, or even simply enters the classroom and disrupts it for whatever reason, the whole group is thrown off task. These interruptions happen a lot. They fragment the school experience. 91

deterritorialization

Tattoos Kids like to show off their tattoos. The tattoos often get infected, though, since most of them are ‘‘hand-poked’’—that is, done with needles and dye poked under the skin by hand. Professionally done tattoos (using a machine and with the proper sterile equipment) can be very costly, but they are much safer. When the ‘‘hand-poked’’ tattoos get infected, the kids use Vaseline given to them by their moms as a salve when, in fact, antibiotics are really needed. Tattoos are part of street identity—prestige symbols, signs of belonging, signs of just ‘‘being cool.’’

Family Loyalty and Responsibility versus Fighting, Anger, and Depression Kerry says she has to go home because her mom just had tests at the doctor’s and cannot be alone. Her sister has to go to work. Another high schooler must have her cell phone on at all times, in case someone at home needs her. School rules prohibit cell phones, but exceptions must be made. Parents and kids, employees and students. When is a mother a mother, and when is she simply a staff member with professional responsibilities? There are pluses and minuses to having parents and their kids in the same building. In the midst of a chaotic middle-school day with a lot of angry talk and fits of fighting, Brandy sits in a corner and falls into a deep sleep until the bell to go home rings twenty minutes later. Is sleeping a result of exhaustion, a sign of depression, or is it the ultimate form of resistance, the best way to tune out school? Suicide threats are not uncommon, especially after major family or personal setbacks. Three sisters have a terminally ill mom and an abusive, alcoholic dad. We have kids of single parents, kids moving from one household to another as a result of divorce—weeks spent with mom, weekends with dads and girlfriends, kids dealing with moms’ boyfriends as well. Kids talk to the instructional assistants (IAs) and other staff in ways that they will not talk to teachers. In keeping with the community economic development function of the school, most IAs and staff are East Enders. Others are from working-class communities throughout the city and feel culturally close to the kids. But even IAs from the neighborhood, such as Lydia, talk about how they were raised in better circumstances than these kids, many of whom seem to be brushed aside by their parents. ‘‘At least we had two parents and a hot meal every night. These kids have 92

kids in t he urban borderland

parents who kick them out of the house and leave them homeless. The kids go to stay with friends, but that can’t last forever.’’ Can kids be part of two worlds? What are the compatibilities and incompatibilities between street smarts and book smarts? What are the relationships between freedom and obedience, control and learning? 5

B E N J WA N T S S O U P : B E F O R E E E C H S There’s something about soup that is comforting. Perhaps it is the heartiness—heartiness built from the many flavors and textures. Once it is in the pot and cooked, all warm and aromatic, it exerts a strong presence in the kitchen, welcoming and beckoning a person to pick up the ladle and try some, even if they are not very hungry and are only in need of warmth, but especially if they are both hungry and in need of warmth. Without soup simmering on the stove, the kitchen feels empty, and when kids, especially boys, come foraging for food, as they always do—even if it has only been an hour since they finished a meal—soup satisfies, and there is almost always more. Benj came over for some soup on this day. But it was not just the soup he wanted. He looked both tired and distressed, and I could not tell whether he had lost his job, had an argument with his parents, or was worried about money. Perhaps it was some combination of all three. He had talked to me about all of these in the past. ‘‘Do you know a restaurant named Ravioli’s?’’ The question surprised me because it seemed too lighthearted. It did not match the expression on his face. ‘‘No, never heard of it. What town is it in?’’ We got out the various phone directories. No Ravioli’s. There were Raimundo’s and Romeo’s. ‘‘Romeo’s,’’ Benj repeated, ‘‘maybe that was it. Raimundo’s, maybe that was it. Maybe I heard it wrong. I thought it started with an ‘R.’ ’’ ‘‘Do you want to call?’’ ‘‘No, that’s okay, maybe I heard it wrong. My neighbor told me about it at the carnival. It was very noisy.’’ ‘‘How about calling your neighbor?’’ I could not tell whether he did not want to impose, or he did not want to pursue the job, or both. I did not push. ‘‘Do you have any soup?’’ ‘‘Sure, I always have soup. It’ll just take a few minutes to heat it up.’’ Benj had just turned eighteen, the son of Gina and Vinnie. He was 93

deterritorialization

proud of his green Mustang. He had not passed English since the seventh grade. ‘‘So what have you been up to, Benj?’’ ‘‘Nothin’ really. School sucks. I don’t care about fiction; it’s not real. I can read automotive magazines for hours because I’m interested, but short stories about some lady in the woods, who cares? It just makes me want to go to sleep. I fall asleep after the first hour of summer school. I skipped last Friday and today and I’m out. They’re very strict.’’ He knows and accepts the system. Not a rebel, but certainly without a cause. ‘‘I’d rather take it slower during the school year than cram everything in my head. It makes my head feel squeezed. Last year my teacher passed me because I didn’t make trouble. I behave. I only got fifties and sixties though. I like to take things one step at a time, like when I’m reading about fixing cars, you have to be careful, do things in the right order; otherwise, things don’t work right, and you have to start over.’’ He is a thoughtful kid, nothing rushed about him, nothing impulsive— he is steady, reliable, and sweet in a still-childlike way, even though he is very large, always has been. ‘‘Math, I’m fine. I’m good with numbers—cashing out of the Mobil station, I’ve never come up short. From the time I was little, I helped out at the flea market. We made a lot of money selling those necklaces Mom made. She made rosaries too. Better than the Mobil station. They only pay for scheduled hours. No breaks. They should be cited for child labor.’’ His comment about child labor made me stop and think. It was a sophisticated comment, especially for a kid who was having trouble passing reading. It made me think less and less of the system he was in and more and more about the power of experience, positive or negative. He is a smart child; the teachers must really be uninspired, I thought. Perhaps they speak in monotones, delivering stale material twenty or thirty years old. Or perhaps they teach according to the canon—the ‘‘this is what every educated person must know’’ school of thought. Poetry does become pabulum in dull classrooms. I thought about what it would take for Benj to get through high school. A GED, perhaps? But could he ever pass the exam? ‘‘They tell you what you have to write about. Then you have to get up in front of the class and talk.’’ If they were good, creative teachers, I thought, they would give the kids the freedom to choose their own topics to write about. Benj could write volumes about cars—he could write about lots of things, actually.

94

kids in t he urban borderland

Cooking, for example. He is a great cook, loves food. He knows a lot of recipes. ‘‘You can talk,’’ I said. ‘‘You’re not tongue-tied.’’ ‘‘Sometimes I can and sometimes I can’t.’’ I wanted to say, ‘‘Benj, you can do it. You’re smart, you can go to college. You don’t have to put up with exploitation all your life. You have the support of a great set of parents who love you; a lot of kids don’t.’’ But I didn’t give him that lecture, it would have sounded too preachy. He seemed tired. He told me about lounging by the pool at a friend’s house, drinking frozen daiquiris—about being sure not to drive home drunk and spending the night at the friend’s. Benj had another friend who worked on the river, on a riverboat that serves food. Barge work can be extremely dangerous and lonely—young kids away from home for weeks, sometimes months, at a time. Barges travel all the way to Louisiana and Mississippi. There is talk about the dangers of barge work—people falling in the river, getting caught in the currents. Kids are attracted to the romance of the river, the independence it provides, and, of course, the money. I could just hear Benj’s mother: ‘‘A hundred miles downriver. Not my son. I want him in his own bed at night.’’ I wanted to ask him about his dreams. Would it be to open a restaurant? Drive a long-distance truck like his brother, Cincinnati to Newark to Detroit, New York to Texas, hauling computer mainframes? Benj had told me that his brother Eric went from 22 cents per mile to 49 cents per mile in a very short time. I asked about his sister Sheri and niece Haley in Tennessee. ‘‘Haley’s gettin’ big,’’ he offered. ‘‘What’s her husband’s name again?’’ I asked. He thought a minute. ‘‘Wayne. I guess they’re having a good time there, I don’t know. No way Wayne will come back to Cincinnati.’’ Benj’s sister Sheri works Renaissance festivals and travels throughout the country selling jewelry and acting in the productions. She calls her jewelry ‘‘gypsy jewelry.’’ Sheri herself looks like a gypsy. When I last saw her she was wearing rows and rows of thin bracelets, a long hot-pink peasant skirt, and sandals. Her hair was pulled back, and a black blouse against the skirt and bracelets made her look exotic. The family travels all over the country in an old blue van that constantly breaks down. They rely on other ‘‘Renies,’’ as people who work Renaissance festivals call themselves, to pull over and help them. One Renie can spot another instantly. Haley’s grandmother—Benj and Sheri’s mother—

95

deterritorialization

worries that Haley will never have a room of her own, a place to keep her toys. But Haley travels with her Playdoh and her dolls, and she is constantly busy inventing games and fashioning imaginary figures out of the soft colorful Playdoh. She can play for hours by herself. She has known no other life. Benj worries that Haley will never know the comfort of soup on the stove. Perhaps soup is a good metaphor for our school. It is definitely a diverse mix, but it is meant to provide a safe, comfortable, and, of course, warm place to learn. As will be seen in the following chapters, the school is constantly on the verge of boiling over or burning. That borderlands are volatile is, perhaps, an understatement, but powerful at the same time.

96

seven

CLASH ING PH ILOSOPH IES, CLASH ING PRAC T ICES Follow the Leader versus Ring around the Rosie

Just after school opened in September 2000, the principal said to me, ‘‘I assigned a high-schooler her community service today, to go and work with the younger children in the primary as punishment.’’ ‘‘Punishment?’’ I asked with some disbelief. ‘‘Yes, you know, community service.’’ ‘‘But one of the key features of the school is to have older kids work with younger ones on a regular basis, just as people of different generations teach one another informally in the community.’’ ‘‘Oh.’’ I knew then that we were trying to do too much too soon, that perhaps we had opened EECHS prematurely, without orienting teachers and administrators to the school’s vision and mission. Our original plan had envisioned a three-week teachers’ institute, during which the founding mothers would orient staff to the community and the practices we wanted to put into place. Among these practices were shared leadership, collaboration, and equal, yet complementary roles for both credentialed and uncredentialed staff members. What community leaders lacked in formal credentials they more than compensated for with their wealth of local knowledge of families, community history, and local practices, both positive and negative. Community leaders were to have functioned as the teachers during the institute. Unfortunately, the time for the teachers’ institute had passed, and the first day of school was upon us. It had taken us longer than planned to accomplish all of the steps required for opening the school, and everything was months late—in fact, we were still hiring teachers in late August. As a result, we opened the school without an orientation and without ensuring

97

deterritorialization

that everyone was ‘‘on the same page.’’ Clashes of philosophy and clashing practices were, then, to be expected. Some of these clashes were simple growing pains, but others were serious rifts—factions were formed by key stakeholders and threats were leveled against what some perceived to be the appropriate authority of the principal and others saw as a serious violation of the school’s community-based, collaborative ‘‘out-of-the-box’’ vision. It seemed that the more the principal tried to exert her authority, even if it was over something trivial, the more she encountered resistance from community staff and parents. Almost from the outset she was perceived as taking the community and its practices, ideals, and people out of the school. From draconian discipline practices to staff dress codes to faction building, she undermined the community. She also tried repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, to force Robbie to work outside of the building in an office in the Pendleton Heritage Center. Robbie refused. This attempt at deterritorialization (taking the community out of the school) didn’t work. In November 2000, just after Thanksgiving, one of the teachers in the high school wrote the following e-mail pointing out the need for an inspiring leader, not an authoritarian boss: In a conversation last week Karley referred to herself as ‘‘the boss.’’ Therein lies a great deal of the problem. . . . We all know that ‘‘bosses’’ focus on having people cooperate because of the authority of the role of boss. We need a leader, not a boss. . . . Perhaps Karley is operating with the understanding that EECHS is ‘‘her school’’ as most principals do. Perhaps she doesn’t realize that this is a community school and we are all accountable. She represents us to the local board and the state, but we don’t work for her, we work with her. There’s a big difference.

CHAOS VERSUS ORDER ‘‘I can teach in centers, or I can teach in rows.’’ The learning centers broke down after the first few weeks of school. By Halloween, the middleschoolers were back in rows. Handling freedom is difficult. How can kids be taught to handle freedom? To make choices when they have not had choices before? Teachers were accused of not controlling their kids. One said, ‘‘I do not want to control the kids; I want to teach them.’’ Teachers who did not demand obedience from kids were regarded as weak. Were we just junior wardens carrying out the mission of the chief warden? Community people worried about too much freedom in classes orga98

clashing philosophies, clashing pract ices

nized into learning centers—science, literature, social studies—where students could move freely and could choose from among many different materials to work with. But how, and with what guiding principles, were students to choose? I think of the philosopher/psychologist Erich Fromm’s classic book, Escape from Freedom. Fromm was one of the first scholars to discuss freedom as a liability; he presented situations that deprive people of structure and therefore guidance. Was a lot of the acting out, the behavior requiring disciplinary action, really an inability to handle freedom? After all, the kids had no experience with freedom in an academic setting. The older ones had been in classes that had been rigid and oppressive, where rote learning and memorizing without understanding the concepts was the rule. History was a set of facts and dates, not a subject examining the causes of and explanations for historical processes and change, not a process involving real people in real-life situations. The kids and their parents knew that our school was different, that it was designed to give kids opportunities for expression, success, and experimentation with identities, careers, and a variety of other issues. Despite these differences in structure and content, when confronted with unfamiliar practices, children, and particularly parents, reverted to the familiar conventional methods of work sheets and didactic teaching. These practices had been internalized so completely that the school’s innovations and innovators were viewed with skepticism at best and with hostility and rejection in several cases.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: THE DISCOURSE OF THE BORDERLAND A teacher reflects on her initial associations with the school, below. Her piece is really about the discourse of the borderland. For her, mixed messages and the contradictions within them are key aspects of the borderland. In this piece, some of the basic features of the school’s original out-of-the-box plan are voiced in an honest, straightforward style that is unpretentious and genuine. This teacher has done an internship in a conventional CPS school, and she understands the drawbacks of conventional structures and practices. She has a sense of the community and an intuition for culture and practice. The piece begins with passion and enthusiasm for a new and creative environment, and ends with the disillusionment that comes from recognizing that hierarchy and corporate management styles have crept in and are imposing themselves in ways that contradict and counteract individualism and creativity. The cookie-cutter, 99

deterritorialization

stamped-out, prepackaged, ready-to-heat food of the cafeteria becomes a metaphor for her teaching experience and her life at school. When I think back to the day of my initial interview for a teaching position at EECHS (my first teaching position as a certified professional), I am reminded that I got a call from one founding mother before I left my apartment. It was a question about my availability to come earlier that morning than originally scheduled. I told her that was no problem, I just needed about a half-hour to get ready and get down to the Pendleton Center. She said not to worry about dressing up, that they ‘‘were all casual’’ around there. I said, ‘‘Okay, that’s great,’’ and hung up the phone, wondering what that really meant. She sounded very open and sincere in our conversations on the phone, but what does a ‘‘casual interview’’ outfit look like? This was the beginning of the era of mixed messages. These were always unintentional, but made it difficult to know where one stood. There were the warm, family-like conversations about what we were all really there to do, which was to start a great place where the kids in the East End and the kids who had been unhappy or devalued elsewhere would want to come to learn and work. We were committed to developing an engaging, project-based curriculum that utilized Cincinnati Public’s standards, but not their pacing guides or methodology that had thus far not met the needs of our students-to-be. I remember feeling so inspired by the brainstorming sessions we had as a brand-new staff, with our administrator and several board members who were veteran teachers present to help facilitate and focus our free, big-picture thinking. We talked about how we would build on the kids’ own experiences and the river setting in which our schooling would be taking place. We talked about the importance of family and how this could manifest in intergenerational learning with parent and grandparent volunteers, as well as in older students mentoring and tutoring younger students within the curriculum. We were tossing around the idea of eating breakfast and lunch family-style, with teachers modeling table manners and discussion for students, as many pre-schools and daycares do. We were excited to have a cook from a local Cajun restaurant as our school cook who would make home-cooked meals for the students and staff. We would be a developmentally grouped school, meaning that kids of multiple ages would be working in groups together that would meet their academic and developmental needs. We would be giving proficiency tests, of course, but we could decide who we thought was ready to take which test, so that our kids would meet with a higher success rate and it would be a more meaningful measurement of their learning, not just the test they had to take because they were of a certain age. 100

clashing philosophies, clashing pract ices I was inspired. I was breathing a huge sigh of relief. I was calling my friends and family to tell them how happy I was that I found my match. After coming from an internship in a large public district where my job seemed completely centered around my students’ performance on the proficiency tests, this was a welcome change in the direction of students’ best interests. There, I was expected to post on the blackboard for my fourthgrade students each promotion standard of the district I was trying to teach at the time I was teaching it, as if reading the [written-for-teachers] description of the task would somehow enhance students’ understanding of the concept they would later be responsible for. Here, I was asked to incorporate the district and state standards into my project-based units, but not go by the pacing guide if it was not conducive to their learning. I was to meet the students where they were academically and do everything I could to draw them in using their world as a lift-off point. This went along with my philosophy of education, as well as that of the university, where I was trained to look at the whole child, the big picture, and think outside the box. I could do this. Almost immediately, there was a flip side of this community of educators that valued and fed off each other’s energy and creativity. Lunch and breakfast would be cafeteria-line style. We would order and prepare frozen school food. It came across as a very industrial, hierarchical feeling that we were employees, and not to forget that. This usually arose in staff meetings with our own administrators and/or consulting professionals, such as a veteran administrator from Cincinnati Public Schools, or a liaison between CPS and us as a charter school. I heard things like, ‘‘You might want to consider a staff uniform—it would make the decision of what to wear each day so simple, and it would really send the message that you are a unified staff.’’ Us against them: I was picturing in my mind our staff of individualistic people, who wanted to come teach at a place so they could use their individual creativity and talents to connect with their students, wearing blue-collared shirts and khakis like some kind of team of Wal-Mart greeters welcoming the neighborhood kids in the morning, singing ‘‘Kum Ba Ya.’’ I was also given copies of the Cincinnati Public discipline referral format to use when incidents occur. It has lots of check boxes, titles for categories of behaviors, and administrative actions from which to choose (which I later figured out I was to decide upon, not the administration). This paperwork replaced my original form, which was short-answer prompts for students to think about and answer, like, ‘‘Describe what happened, what was your part in it? What were others’ parts in it? How would you solve it differently next time? And how will you make it up to your classmates/teachers?’’ When we went through the human resources manual as a staff with the 101

deterritorialization director of human resources (a community leader and founding mother), the tone was one of no nonsense. There were the consequences for not following the rules, and some very vague information about our benefits package (which has since changed companies and/or plans about five times in two years). This aspect of the orientation period was very clear-cut, if not dramatically presented. The dream was starting to slip away from me. At first I felt that I had been misled or lied to about the mission, the community issues, the challenges with money and politics we would be facing. But I don’t think that is the case anymore. I think that the conflict and disappointment many of us have felt in regards to our school’s meeting our expectations is due to something more psychological.1

One wonders whether all culturally driven and humanly sensitive teaching and disciplinary techniques will someday be replaced by bureaucratic and corporate, if not downright authoritarian, practices, or whether the kind of child-centered, designed-for-learning discipline practices described above will someday take hold and become conventional.

T H E S U RV E Y : C ATA LY S T F O R PRO T E S T A N D R E SI S TA NC E Early in the winter of 2000, the principal distributed a short written survey asking which teachers would be returning for the following academic year. She viewed it as a simple questionnaire, ‘‘informational,’’ certainly not a big deal. She was upset when the feedback was mostly negative and, at best, very mixed. Some teachers simply filled out the survey and said they were coming back. Others criticized the survey and were angry that it had been distributed without any discussion of the school’s mission and structure for the following year. Discussions went on for weeks and weeks. The survey not only provided a catalyst for conflict but also became a reference point from which the borderland could be seen. That is, those teachers who did not ask questions and simply filled out the survey in the affirmative were viewed by the others as blindly loyal followers of the principal, as in-the-box teachers. Some teachers asked, ‘‘Coming back to what?’’ What would the school look like? Would the principal continue to make decisions and hand down edicts that seemed to many faculty members, especially the high-school faculty, to fly in the face of communication, collaboration, and the encouragement of productive, literate students? Would the need for order prevail over the need for kids to be productive? 102

clashing philosophies, clashing pract ices

The survey was simultaneously too simplistic, too naïve, and too demanding in its prematurity. Many teachers, especially the high-school teachers who had been meeting every weekend to work out a new curriculum, were not ready to make a decision about coming back until they understood the school’s structure and whether or not their curriculum would be supported. A K–12 school is very complicated, especially if the school occupies a single building, as ours did. The high school really needed a campus-like arrangement of space, with students having the freedom to move from one room to another. The high-school curriculum is abstract and complicated; each subject requires an expert to teach it. In our school, each teacher in a subject area had to teach grades 9–12. High school is a different educational entity than middle or primary school. With a few exceptions, the original group of high-school teachers was experienced and highly credentialed, although some of the credentials were nontraditional. They had been working very hard in their weekend meetings to design an interdisciplinary curriculum that would be exciting, fun, and meet the standards in innovative ways. The team had considered many models, from Deborah Meier’s Central Park East 2 to a school devoted to arts and technology. As unclear as many things were that first year, one thing was always clear for the high-school teachers: the curriculum should drive all activities. At the insistence of the high school staff, readers’ and writers’ workshops had been instituted across the curriculum, with kids choosing books and reading different texts to use as models for writing. To have students engaged is the most important element of the workshop. Kids who had rejected reading outright were reading everything from Othello to The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Othello was a real high point; the highschoolers went to Cincinnati State to see an actual production, and their experience was heightened by their knowledge of the history of the times. Interdisciplinary teaching became the watchword of the high school staff. The basic problem with interdisciplinary projects is that they often do not look like conventional school. There is no textbook, and kids may be working in noisy groups, moving from one classroom to another, or even resting with their heads down on their desks from an intense morning of planning and interacting with other students. People who did not understand the nature of interdisciplinary work were quick to criticize it.3 The high school became different from the rest of the school. Unconventional high school subjects, such as humanities, became targets of criticism. Attempts to explain the nature of humanities fell on deaf ears because of its unfamiliar and therefore threatening sound. From conventionally thinking people came accusations that there was not much 103

deterritorialization

going on in the classroom, that children were walking around the halls, going from one classroom to another, or sitting with their heads down on their desks. It was not a great distance from these accusations to the idea that teachers did not care. One of the aspects of progressive/alternative education most often criticized is that it creates a free-for-all. Conventional thinkers feel better when kids are sitting in rows reading standard textbooks; the outcomes of interdisciplinary, theme-based education that draws on students’ own talents and interests are hard to measure, especially in the short run when people do not know what to look for. It is difficult to understand that in theme-based curricula, students learn many things simultaneously, among these writing, critical thinking, and collaboration.

CRISIS IN THE BORDERLAND

The Pre-Board Meeting Thursday, June 7, 2001, the very end of the school’s first year, the morning before an afternoon board meeting. The phone rings early in the morning. I am awakened abruptly by Robbie, who, as always, says, ‘‘Dr. H, I need to talk to you.’’ I ask whether I can call her back, since there is something about the tone of her voice that indicates that I had better have all my wits about me. ‘‘Okay,’’ she says, ‘‘but I have a nine o’clock meeting.’’ There is an unusual tone of confrontation in her voice. She is usually flexible about her meetings. I call her back a few minutes later. A tirade seems to come out of the phone. ‘‘No one cares what we think. Three board members tried to yank me out of my office.’’ She is so upset that she barrages me with a wall of words I cannot quite put together. A face-to-face conversation would be much better. At least there might be a chance of some calm communication. We agree to meet after her meeting at nine. I did not know that there would be a large group around the table, including staff members, the principal, our grant writer, and several others. The principal had indeed convinced Robbie, Athena, and Evylyn that the high-school teachers did not care about the kids. Freedom granted became a sign of neglect. Heads down on desks and four-letter words allowed by these teachers were, all of a sudden, infractions worthy of discipline. It did not matter what kind of work the kids actually produced; no one had bothered to read the wonderfully rich multimedia portfolios that the language arts teacher and the kids had put together—one for each 104

clashing philosophies, clashing pract ices

kid. Each high-schooler had a portfolio with his or her name prominently featured on the brightly colored cover, made with collections of photos taken by teachers and kids together. The portfolios were lengthy and substantial, rich with poetry, narrative writing, photographs, and drawings. Each had a wonderful collage-like cover; no two were alike. Every time I tried to explain that what mattered was indeed what the kids had produced, that behavior was secondary to production, and that the principal’s emphasis on behavior was a smokescreen for polarizing the school’s staff against one of the most creative, committed, and innovative high-school teams I had ever seen, I was met with cold stares. When I tried to talk in these terms I was accused of not listening to the community and of defending the high school. Our grant writer pounded her fists on the table and said, ‘‘You, of all people, how can you not listen to the community?’’

The Board Meeting: Later That Afternoon The agenda for the meeting: each team—primary, middle-school, and high-school—was to present a proposal for the following academic year. The lead high-school teacher began. Because of her extremely progressive educational philosophy, she and her team were seen as enemies of the principal. No matter what she said, and even before she could speak too many sentences, she was attacked by the principal’s allies. Questions were asked long before her presentation was complete. One board member began shouting at her for no apparent reason other than that he was having trouble understanding her discourse. She was not speaking in jargon, exactly, but the sophisticated and innovative educational concepts in her proposal were not easily accessible to the layperson. Without intending to be threatening, this very unassuming and very talented teacher was shouted down. In addition to the conventional and progressive models of education, there is the corporate model. According to the corporate model the school is a hierarchy, with the principal at the top, as the boss. This model was promoted by people whose experience comes from the business world and who made statements like, ‘‘If the person is not doing the job, get rid of them.’’ Ironically, perhaps, this imposition of hierarchy came just after teams of teachers had gotten together to formulate collaboratively their plans for next year. Our grant writer had drawn up, duplicated, and distributed to the board a hierarchically arranged chart, with the principal at the top and no provision for shared leadership. This chart might have been used as the skeleton for a small corporation. 105

deterritorialization

Professor D immediately announced that she thought the organizational chart’s tiers of authority manifested an educational philosophy clearly ‘‘antithetical’’ to the mission and vision of the school as created by the founding mothers. The primary teachers misinterpreted her words as criticism of their teaching, and two immediately started crying. Emotions were running high. After the high-school proposal was presented— a proposal that was impressive in its thorough commitment to projectbased, apprenticeship-modeled, and intergenerational learning—a young board member interpreted it as a direct attack on the principal and began yelling his criticisms at the young lead high-school teacher. A university student who had worked in the school for almost the entire year asked the group to speak in less argumentative terms. Shortly after that, the meeting broke up and the post-meeting meeting began outside in the parking lot. A staff member and relative of the principal came close to assaulting the university student; other staff members had to separate the two young women.

June 14, 2001 I knew we needed to do some talking, to reconcile the conflicting models and try to come to a peaceful solution, or at least coexistence, in the urban borderland. A team-based model seemed about as far from the corporate and conventional models as one could imagine. The following is my rendering of a conversation between two board members on June 14, 2001, just seven days after the contentious board meeting. Board Member 1 is the author of the hierarchical organizational chart mentioned above. She talks about being an advocate of teams in the school, but she also thinks in a corporate, managerial style. She has long been an advocate of public schools, but she has no teaching experience herself. Board Member 2 is an experienced, out-of-the-box teacher who had been a team leader in a CPS school for many years. She worked with our school development team as a consulting teacher and was then convinced to join the board. Among other things, this conversation illustrates some of the key features of the borderland in its analysis of the conflicts taking place in the school. Board Member 1 emphasizes structure (hierarchy) and accountability. Board Member 2 focuses on instruction, teaming, communication, and nuances of meaning. The tone of the conversation is friendly and respectful. It is clear that both board members have the mission of the school firmly in mind and that patience is the word of the day. Board Member 1: ‘‘I don’t see the team-based model as incompatible with what I am suggesting.’’ 106

clashing philosophies, clashing pract ices

Board Member 2: ‘‘When you are truly team-based, there is a lot of communication.’’ Board Member 1: ‘‘We need to celebrate—identify—strengths and weaknesses. My concern is who is holding whom accountable for what?’’ Board Member 2: ‘‘There are nuances in the building. A lot of it has to do with semantics, defensiveness, and uncertainty. Those more surefooted look to be rebellious. I want to help see us create communication and support the principal in instructional areas. She would like someone else to be responsible. All of the teachers are trying to find a way to do their jobs better, communicate with children and parents. . . . Teachers are finding frustrations; there is miscommunication. If any group decides they want to do X, this become rebellious and talked down. A lot of dissension was due to communication—people have held in feelings.’’ Board Member 1: ‘‘What concerns me most is a strong feeling on the part of neighborhood folks that the high-school teachers do not respect the kids. Children are being allowed to . . . no one is giving time and there is work to do. Children are being sent out of the room rather than being held to expectations. There is a perceived lack of respect for community input. It appears that a large percentage of students are not engaged. It is a question of where do you set the boundaries. There is a feeling that their— community folks’—opinions are not being respected, including Karley.’’ Board Member 2: ‘‘Part of this can be solved by a structure to define what the expectations are. . . . We wanted to capture students who have not performed. Management of these students is an issue. I am appalled by the interactions between students and parents. We may have some personalities who have dealt with students in a more relaxed way. The only recourse has been in-school suspension or expulsion.’’ Board Member 1: ‘‘The perception is that teachers have written off some kids.’’ Board Member 2: ‘‘We are talking about a new beginning. We want a pre-start of school orientation.’’ Board Member 1: ‘‘Teachers have taken kids to the park without permission slips. Those are the kinds of things that make me go rigid.’’ Board Member 2: ‘‘We have to back up to move forward. When you use terms like ‘out-of-the-box,’ we need to look at how we back up rules and regulations.’’ Board Member 1: ‘‘No one person can manage everything. Whose responsibility is it to monitor expectations? We’ve had a year of trying to figure out where the head and the tail are.’’ Board Member 2: ‘‘We need to put some parameters in place. People forgot we need procedures for fieldtrips. We need a master calendar. There 107

deterritorialization

has to be more communication so that people are not upset or going after each other. There are things that kept people’s backs up and jaws tight. We need to broaden communication and share responsibility. Any first year is tough. Coming up with a foundation that increases communication and shares responsibility.’’ Board Member 1: ‘‘The principal says, ‘What do you want me to do?’ ’’ Board Member 2: ‘‘It is important to ask questions. We told people on the staff that we did not want a traditional school; we wanted people out-of-the-box, creative, caring, yet different. Our safest ground is to do things that we know and are comfortable doing. We have a wonderful mix of people. We adapt innovations in our comfort zone too. I don’t think people understand what they are doing or not doing. Anything we can do that restructures will be a plus for us. I see so much potential.’’ Despite our many attempts to mediate the conflicts between corporate and progressive models of education, the entire high-school team quit by the end of June. The lead teacher had prepared a wonderful job advertisement for a science teacher set on a photo of the river taken by one of the high-school students. The corporate-thinking people wanted the human resources office to receive applications and objected to the lead teacher taking over the process. For the lead teacher this was the last straw. If the high-school team could not screen their own applications and organize the interviews, then the autonomy needed to create and implement a strong high-school curriculum was, in her mind, not possible.

108

eight

ACADEM IC BORDERLANDS MICROgirls, a Math Club for Girls w i t h s t e p h a n i e jo n e s

microgirls I come to my work with working-class and working-poor girls from my own subject position: that of a white former elementary school teacher with cultural ties to rural Appalachia and predominantly white urban centers. During childhood my class status shifted between workingclass and poor. I’ve experienced the realities that poverty-stricken girls often face: winter with no heat, yearning for a telephone, and living with a tired mother who worked around the clock to make ends meet. Mathematics holds a special, but complex, place in my life. As a young girl I loved math. I listened to the teachers, followed directions, and became very successful in the calculation of formulas and complex problem solving. In fourth grade I was identified as gifted (this term is problematic for me) and placed in a special program with other ‘‘gifted’’ but middle-class students who seemed very different from me. By sixth grade I felt confident in my mathematical ability and voiced questions I had relating to the abstract problem solving we were performing in our ‘‘gifted’’ class. As a result of my persistence in asking questions and postulating alternatives, my teacher placed me on probation. I would be excluded from the special program if I did not start following directions and being ‘‘good.’’ This was the beginning of a persistent disconnect from school mathematics. —s t e p h a n i e j o n e s

In the first year of EECHS, Stephanie Jones originated MICROgirls, a math club for girls. MICROgirls was a unique entity in the school during 109

deterritorialization

its first year—unique because of its philosophy, its procedures, and its outcomes. This chapter explores various aspects of the girls’ math club (creating a name, topics of conversation and math connections, and impact on classroom achievement) that demonstrate the potential power of borderlands. The reasons MICROgirls formed part of an academic borderland when it should have been the dominant model for teaching and learning in the school tell us a great deal about the key issues for EECHS. Leadership, backgrounds of teachers, and the expectations of families and community leaders are some of the main issues. The fact that Stephanie Jones came to the school with a great deal of mathematics teaching experience and cultural capital,1 but very little power, also tells us a lot about the dominant ethos in the school.

T H E O R I G I N O F T H E N A M E ‘‘M I C R O G I R L S’’ The origin of the name ‘‘MICROgirls’’ makes a statement about the club, the girls, and how the girls changed over time within the club. When we looked back to how all this unfolded, we were shocked by the changes that took place over such a short period of time. It was just a ‘‘girls’ club’’ until January 17, 2001, when everyone decided that the club needed a name. The girls wanted to create an identifiable group recognized by others in the school. A piece of chart paper hung in the room for three weeks, and each week different girls would come in with ideas for the club’s name. G.I.G.I. stood for Girls’ Illustrated Girls’ Ideas. It was a very girly name. Other names suggested included The Math Girls Club, The Best Girls Club, The Best Club Ever, Girls Girls Girls, The Girls’ Club, and The Girls Rule Club. To Stephanie’s dismay, only one name conveyed the reason for bringing the girls together: math. During the third week, a new member joined the club (membership was open to all girls in EECHS). She asked about the chart, walked straight over to it, and wrote clearly and confidently: ‘‘MICROgirls.’’ Stephanie thanked her for her contribution, but thought to herself that the suggestion would never fly with the others. The girl was a new member, did not have much social power at that point, and was a bit younger than most of the other girls. The following week the group narrowed their choices down to two: GIGI and MICROgirls, neither name suggesting anything related to mathematics. After all the votes were counted, MICROgirls was the winning name by a landslide. Stephanie could not believe it. Actually, she was horrified. MICRO sounded small, miniscule, not quite the powerful name 110

academic borderlands

she had envisioned for a progressive girls’ math club. From that day on, each of the members was a MICROgirl. Weeks passed and everyone got used to the name. The girls wrote it on their journals and notebooks; adults and students referred to them as the MICROgirls. The girls even created a MICROgirls newsletter to let the name be known. Winter turned to spring, and Stephanie had a brainstorm that would make the not-so-large name, created by a not-so-present member, have real meaning: she introduced the notion of an acronym and suggested that perhaps MICRO could stand for something that they all believed in. The work started right away, with chart paper on the walls and girls writing down their ideas for what each letter might represent. The original suggestions were: M: Micro, Math, Mathematicians I: Interesting, Intelligent C: Creative, Caring R: Real, Radical O: Out-of-this-world, Outrageous For two weeks they left these words on the wall and thought about what MICRO should represent. Finally, a small group of girls decided that they should work together to come up with a suggestion for the group to consider. This was their suggestion: M: Mathematicians I: Intelligent C: Creative R: Radical O: On-the-ball Girls After some discussion with the group, Stephanie suggested that the name might sound more complete if ‘‘M’’ represented ‘‘Mathematically’’ instead of ‘‘Mathematicians.’’ Discussion resumed and the decision was final: 111

deterritorialization

Mathematically Intelligent Creative Radical On-the-Ball Girls Quite a ‘‘large,’’ radical, confident name for a group of girls who came to the club professing that they ‘‘hated math.’’

W H Y A G I R L S ’ M AT H CL U B ? R E A L L I F E M AT H Math intimidates a lot of people. Memories of multiplication tables, work sheets dense with rows of problems to be solved at breakneck speed, and standardized tests with mysterious word problems and diagrams that look like they came out of a strange and foreign book of puzzles are only some of the most intimidating elements from the past. We all remember teachers standing at the blackboard describing step-by-step procedures to solve these problems, mechanically, boringly, but so quickly that it is impossible to follow. It is easy to tune out or miss a step and then never catch up. Even multiplication and division can befuddle bright minds when these are taught by rote. I remember a little boy struggling with long division. He did not even understand subtraction or addition, because he had learned these as mechanical procedures. He could do addition and subtraction, for sure, but he had no conceptual understanding of either. Did he know that two plus three was the same as three plus two, but that three minus two was not the same as two minus three? More importantly, did he know why? I could see a college career evaporating right then and there for this very bright child. And what if he had been a girl? Would she have just given up and decided that math was not for girls anyway? MICROgirls was different. It was about real math, or math in real life, math in everyday life. Math matters when it comes to things like money, like mothers borrowing money from their kids, like not having enough to buy food or pay rent or pay for the telephone—never mind buy a piece of gold jewelry or a brand-new, brand-name pair of shoes or jeans. MICRO-

112

academic borderlands

girls was a kind of grassroots mathematics. It was math from the bottom up, rather than from the top down. MICROgirls started out as a girls’ club, not a math club, because the girls were uneasy about anything labeled ‘‘math.’’ ‘‘Why does it have to be a math club?’’ asked a sixth grader, obviously upset at the idea that math as she knew it might dominate an otherwise comfortable group to which she wanted to belong. So the club started as a girls’ club, led by a young second-grade teacher who, as a doctoral student doing research and advocacy in the school, was not viewed by the girls as an official teacher. She was seen as the leader of the club—older, yes, but not with the authority of a teacher. MICROgirls developed in a series of steps. The first involved establishing trust and creating a safe space in which the girls could feel comfortable speaking freely and sharing ideas, concerns, and feelings. The club meetings began with a set of friendly rituals designed to counter the competitive practices of traditional math classrooms and the hierarchical structures and authoritarian power relations established between teachers and students. The rituals focused on collaboration, openness, and problem-solving strategies. Meeting space was arranged in a circle, snacks were there for the taking, and talk was encouraged. The girls knew they could tell their stories. Discussion topics ranged from playground episodes and fights with boys, to moms, dads, and money issues at home, to teachers who were viewed by the girls as unfair in the classroom. Money and the lack of it was an important topic to the MICROgirls. The following discussion evolved at an early meeting of MICROgirls. The girls chose a popular topic—money. The discussion began with a rather superficial, almost pop-culture, discourse, after which it turned to the girls’ personal lives and thoughts about money earning, distribution, and value. (This pattern—beginning with the superficial and moving on to personal lives and insights—occurred when the girls chose their name as well.) Trina: ‘‘Let’s talk about money.’’ Karen: ‘‘Money? I spend it.’’ ?: ‘‘Money, money, money, money.’’ ?: ‘‘We know this song called, ‘Money, Money, Money.’ ’’ ?: ‘‘I just got paid.’’ (Several girls begin singing, ‘‘I just got paaiid!’’) ?: ‘‘You get paid money.’’ Karen: ‘‘You might earn money.’’ ?: ‘‘I got (inaudible) dollars for my birthday.’’

113

deterritorialization

?: ‘‘My dad sent $200.’’ ?: ‘‘Money is . . .’’ Shayna: ‘‘You earn money.’’ ?: ‘‘Allowance.’’ ?: ‘‘Doing chores.’’ Andrea: ‘‘I got two dollars cuz I cleaned the whole house.’’ Holly: ‘‘Two dollars?’’ Andrea: ‘‘Yeah, because we only have a, um, two bedroom . . . but . . .’’ ?: ‘‘Who cares how much she gets?’’ Andrea: ‘‘Yeah.’’ Andrea was the first to reveal an exact dollar amount for doing particular work. Holly responded in disbelief, after which Andrea felt she must justify the small amount of money by describing her home. Andrea then realized that she felt vulnerable because she had revealed more of herself, perhaps, than she wanted to. ?: ‘‘Why do you care?’’ ?: ‘‘Everybody ain’t rich in this world.’’ ?: ‘‘I know I’m not.’’ ?: ‘‘I’m sure everybody down here ain’t rich.’’ Karen: ‘‘I ain’t rich and I don’t even live [down here].’’ Holly: ‘‘I get twenty-five dollars.’’ (Silence) Georgia: ‘‘Ugh, stop braggin’ about it.’’ (Three girls laugh) Andrea: ‘‘Stop braggin’.’’ Holly broke an unspoken rule within this community: she placed shame upon a peer within the context of money. Trina: ‘‘Stop this thing [the tape recorder], they’re just . . . this ain’t math.’’ The conversation had turned very personal. Perhaps Trina was uncomfortable with how personal and political math had suddenly become. In conventional math classrooms, the subject matter is often presented as apolitical, factual, and, therefore, impersonal—not as political, subjective, and extremely personal. Stephanie Jones: ‘‘Andrea said something. Holly said, ‘I get twenty-five dollars,’ and Andrea said to Holly, ‘Stop braggin’ about it,’ so it’s telling me that you’re thinking something about money. What are you thinking about money, Andrea, when you tell her to stop bragging about it?’’ Andrea: ‘‘That she got more than her.’’ ?: ‘‘She’s teasin’ cuz she thinks she gets more money than her. When it

114

academic borderlands

comes down to it, she’ll get more money. She’ll get more things than . . . twenty-five dollars.’’ Andrea: ‘‘Or she could get the money . . .’’ Georgia: ‘‘It could be to save your money and not spend it all on your child.’’ Karen: ‘‘I’m a penny-pincher.’’ Stephanie Jones: ‘‘Are you? Tell us about that.’’ Karen: ‘‘My mom’ll give me a dollar or somethin’ and I’ll save it until like, I get a bunch. Until I get a bunch of money then I spend it . . . unless my mom wants to borrow my money, then I have to give it to her.’’ ?: ‘‘My mom borrows money from me . . . she borrows money from my birthday.’’ Karen: ‘‘My mom still owes me forty-one dollars.’’ Georgia: ‘‘My mom owes me twenty bucks cuz she used it to go eat at a fancy restaurant when we were in the house, we were asleep. I mean she went in my drawer and she got my money.’’ Monica: ‘‘Ms. Jones, I think money saves all of us here. For the food, for the house we live in, for the drinks we get, for the clothes we get.’’ Georgia: ‘‘I wish we lived in a world that money didn’t mean everything.’’ Stephanie Jones: ‘‘Georgia, tell us what you mean by that . . . can you scoot into our circle? You’re kind of on the outside.’’ Georgia: ‘‘Well, um . . .’’ Karen: ‘‘People say money don’t mean everything, but it really does.’’ Georgia: ‘‘When I say a world where money isn’t everything, when like you know, people rate you by your money and how much you are, like if you don’t have a lot of money, like up to a thousand or a hundred dollars . . . that’s like you’re poor. And if you like have a thousand that means you’re high-class . . . cuz see, there might be rich people that just wear clothes differently.’’ Here Georgia has articulated her understanding of class issues within the context of clothing and money earned. As time went on, clothing and physical appearance continued to be a topic of discussion within MICROgirls. The girls began to reveal the origins of their clothes: hand-me-downs, Goodwill, the Free Store. One day, Stephanie herself wore an outfit she had purchased at Goodwill, and encouraged the girls to think about the very low ‘‘cost-per-wear’’ of this outfit, much lower, of course, than the cost of wearing name brands. Using addition and division, the girls were able to calculate the cost of the clothing each time an outfit was worn. Why brand names are important to

115

deterritorialization

some people became another topic of discussion. Political issues, such as sweatshops and child labor, came up as well. MICROgirls provided an environment that encouraged working-class girls to reveal openly their experiences, their day-to-day challenges, practices, trials, and the contradictory and mixed signals from adults and peers alike. The club sought to situate mathematics in local practices and everyday experience in such a way that the girls were not forced to shed their working-class identities and adopt ungrounded, and perceived to be irrelevant, forms of book-learning. The club allowed the girls to use life experience to engage with math concepts that were critically necessary not only for survival, but also for making life choices and decisions. MICROgirls taught—in fact, institutionalized—a set of practices that were counter-hegemonic (against the power structure). Young girls were being taught to think critically about aspects of their own lives and of the larger system in which they lived. That is, MICROgirls created collaborative relationships rather than hierarchical power relations between students and teachers and was based on the belief that students have just as much to offer to the curriculum as teachers do. This kind of collaboration is rare in both conventional and nontraditional classrooms. As such, MICROgirls created another sort of borderland, one between collaborative, participatory learning and teacher-driven and -dominated classrooms. This approach to the politics of math, both in the context of the money discussion and from the analysis of clothing and costs-per-wear, demonstrates a holistic pedagogy that is really quite interdisciplinary. There are all sorts of potentials and offshoots here. For example, what if the group were to consider the issue of borrowing money for clothes—the interest rates involved, the high rates charged by credit card companies, etc.? These children hear the ads for MasterCard on television, although they know their parents do not use credit cards. Most people in the East End use cash only and view debt of any sort as something to be avoided. The feminist foundation of MICROgirls is powerful. But this is almost surpassed by the potential for working-class empowerment, especially in this digital age. That MICROgirls happened to be situated in opposition to conventional math classrooms in some instances, and in the midst of an unformulated and uncharted curriculum in others, is all the more reason to appreciate its power and critical potential for working-class girls.

116

academic borderlands

D O U B L E I M PA C T : M I C RO G I R L S I M PA C T S T H E CL A SS ROOM ; T H E CL A SS ROOM I M PA C T S M I C RO G I R L S The middle-school girls in MICROgirls fluctuated between two math classrooms throughout the year. These changes occurred as the team of teachers negotiated class compositions that would most benefit the students. Miss Austen was a language arts teacher who taught math for a while during this negotiation. When you walk into Austen’s classroom you see students lying on their stomachs working on the floor, in small groups around a table, in pairs, or alone in a corner. There is a buzz of activity, and you have to look hard to locate Austen. She seems to blend into the classroom’s activities, stopping to talk with students about their projects. Students feel comfortable and safe in this environment, and Austen works hard to meet individual needs. In an interview with Austen, Stephanie Jones asked, ‘‘Who are your best math students?’’ Austen talked about two students in the math club: Karen . . . Trina. Trina has good number sense, it just comes to her. She is so sophisticated in her thinking. Like she knows if the number of the answer is going to be bigger or smaller than the numbers in the problem . . . she knows which way to go and the methods of how to get there, and how to check her work, she checks it to see if it makes sense. And if she doesn’t know how to start she’ll try something and realize that it doesn’t work. She’s just very independent and, I don’t know . . . very savvy. She enjoys a challenge and she’ll sit and struggle with something for a long time. Karen has really started changing since she’s been going to math club. She works better, and she’s interested in how she’s doing and how . . . and her behavior is completely different in every class. And I know that, I’m glad she’s going to go with you at the end of the day, I mean she would talk about it all the time. She’s really come such a long way, though, since the beginning of the year. She was picking fights and mouthing off to people, and getting in all kinds of trouble. It was just uh, maybe right after Christmas . . . she really turned around.

Karen and Trina didn’t stay with Austen long for math, though, and they landed in a more traditional math classroom. Karen narrated her experiences in the classroom during an interview with Stephanie: Karen: ‘‘Last year I didn’t know any multiplication, and now I do and I know how to divide a little bit.’’ 117

deterritorialization

Stephanie: ‘‘How did you learn those things?’’ Karen: ‘‘Coming to the math club. It helps me a lot because she [the teacher] already thought we knew it but we don’t and she’s just makin’ us do it. But I didn’t know it.’’ All the MICROgirls became comfortable asking Stephanie to help them understand something they were doing in class, though it was never the purpose of the club to be a tutoring service—the purpose was to instill confidence in girls as math students and to facilitate their ability to make academic decisions that could change their educational experience and trajectories. Stephanie followed the girls’ lead. When they brought conventional math class work and homework into the club, she provided engaging activities to facilitate their understanding of math concepts and individual ideas. One day, for example, some of the girls were having a particularly difficult time working with circles in their math classroom. They were trying to calculate the diameter, perimeter, and area of circles using formulas that the teacher had given them. After it became clear that they did not understand their assignments, they asked Stephanie if they could work on their class work in the math club. Stephanie started with a book, Sir Cumference, that introduced concepts of circumference, radius, and diameter. After reading and discussing it, the girls were given a table full of materials: paper, rulers, tape measures, tape, glue, scissors, markers, etc. Their job was to construct a circle that had a radius of 6.5". After cutting out the circle, the girls measured its diameter and circumference. To determine the area, they cut out square inches and glued them strategically to cover the area of the circle (cutting the squares when necessary, but making sure to use the entire square somewhere on the circle). The girls determined the diameter, circumference, and area of the circle using this hands-on project and then tried the formulas to see if the calculations matched. Amazed that they did, the girls began to understand the formulas in a conceptual way and found greater success in their math classroom as a result: Trina: ‘‘Cuz it helps me with my math that I do in class.’’ Stephanie: ‘‘How?’’ Trina: ‘‘Whenever we do something on Wednesday in the club, like when we were doing that stuff, then on Thursday when I go in my class I get more right. Like if I’m taking a test on math, I might get a couple wrong, but if I go back on Thursday I get more right than I did before.’’ Shayna: ‘‘It’s real fun and it’s a lot to do with our life and we know what to do the next day in math class.’’ Karen: ‘‘I’ve been gettin’ As. At my old school I got straight Fs.’’ In the context of this borderland the girls articulated some power118

academic borderlands

ful statements that not only indicated energy and enthusiasm, but also real sophistication about math concepts and processes of learning. Karen made a particularly powerful insight: ‘‘Do you know those schools who don’t do paperwork, but other kinds of work, like go outside and see how many shapes you see, and stuff, different projects [these were all projects in the math club]? I think I learn better that way. I think I’m a visual learner.’’ For a group of girls who professed to hate math, MICROgirls had a significant impact. Impressive is how articulately and enthusiastically the girls spoke about their experiences. Patti, another member of MICROgirls, told Stephanie about her favorite part of school: ‘‘Math. Math time. Especially on Wednesdays. I like math club. Math is really fun. I love math.’’ And Karen’s statement pulls together several of the visionary purposes of MICROgirls: ‘‘I used to hide my face so the teacher wouldn’t call me. Now it’s like, call me! Pick me!’’

119

nine

M OM E N T S Collaboration and Consensus in the Borderland

BOM B T H R E AT I N T H E SC HOOL Thursday, September 13, 2001. It has been two days since the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City and the attack upon the Pentagon in Washington. Today bomb threats caused the evacuation of the Capitol and the closing, after brief reopenings, of all three of the New York City airports. There were ninety bomb threats in New York City alone; none turned out to be real. While the horrific incidents of 9/11 and its aftermath dwarf the bomb threat that occurred at our school last January, my notes about the incident take on new meaning in light of the terrorist attacks. The terrorism also raises questions about new challenges to education in a global world. The small bomb threat at the school was, in some ways, a microcosm, a small-scale version of what the entire world is now facing. Cities are particularly vulnerable. Three a.m. on a dreary winter morning, January 2001. The phone rings. It is our grant writer, who with her usual humor says that there has been a bomb threat in the school. ‘‘Bomb’’ and ‘‘bomb threat’’ has been written all over the cafeteria’s yellow concrete-block walls, as well as on the walls in the downstairs hallways, right next to the kindergarten and primary rooms. Somehow, the location of the writing, on the floor where the youngest children spend their school days, makes it feel all the more dangerous. There is a sense of vulnerability and defenselessness on that floor. The milkman first discovered the literal handwriting on the wall while making his middle-of-the-night delivery. He called Robbie, who called the board members and the principal. Before I leave home, I try to call Karley, but she does not answer. I rush to get to the school, being careful to dress warmly, since the heat 120

moments

in the cafeteria is marginal at best. I heat some coffee from the previous night and pour it into my Thermos bottle. It is very dark and very cold along the river behind the school. Robbie, who has also tried to call Karley, is the first one on the scene, since she lives very close. Athena and Evylyn arrive quickly as well. Board members from the other side of town arrive somewhat later. Some people appear in their pajamas; others have hastily gotten dressed. We are all bleary-eyed and slightly disoriented. It feels somewhat surreal to be standing in our school cafeteria in the middle of the night, but there is a real sense of unstated solidarity. We feel the weight of the children’s safety on our shoulders, and we want to make decisions by consensus, making sure everyone is in agreement. It is so cold that I keep my coat on, even though by this time Robbie has gotten the coffeepot going. We talk about how it is probably a prank, but we cannot be sure. We have to take a bomb scare seriously. After several brief but intense conversations, first with the police on the scene, then among ourselves, and then back with the police, we decide to call in the bomb squad and the bomb-sniffing dog. The consensus is that we cannot take any risks. There is still no sign of the principal, even though by now we have left many messages. This decision triggers the need for other decisions, largely because the police on the scene tell us that it might be hours before the team can get there with the dog. Should we cancel school by calling off the buses? We decide to call each parent to tell them that school has been canceled, but agree not to reveal the exact reason. We tell them there has been a problem in the building that we must look into. A cute golden retriever arrives, rather quickly in fact, sniffs the entire school, and finds nothing. We realize that we have canceled school unnecessarily. Our teachers knew nothing about the bomb threat until they arrived at seven-thirty for what they thought would be a normal school day. They were surprised to see the entire board and administrative staff in the cafeteria eating bacon and eggs. One of the primary teachers, upon learning of the threat, broke down in tears, hysterical that anyone could ‘‘want to hurt our babies.’’ She was immediately consoled. Our consulting principal, who had many years of experience running a large, inner-city high school, said that we played into the hands of the pranksters. He would have advised us to conduct business as usual. The community really came together around this incident. Consensus building was easy, given that everyone agreed that safety had to be maximized. No risks were to be taken. By the time the principal arrived, all of the important decisions had already been made.

121

deterritorialization

R E A DE RS ’ WOR K SHOP PR E S E N TAT ION , E A R LY A PR I L 2 0 0 1 We are in the cafeteria, spread out in the very large space. Athena and Robbie are on the periphery. They do not want to participate in this activity. It is too far out of the box, too much of a show for the board, they tell me later. Stephanie begins with a very articulate statement about the workshop. One teacher reads selections from our charter about educational philosophy and innovation. He comments on each selection, pointing out that just giving the right answers is not enough, that it is important to understand and go beyond the answers. Miss O, always the performance artist, addresses the board as if they were her class. We get up and select a book from the book displays she has carefully placed around the room. (A grant from Starbuck’s, written by Professor D, had provided the money for classroom libraries.) She calls us ‘‘class’’ as though we were middle-schoolers, but we take her seriously. Aurelia, using an overhead projector, puts a high-schooler’s writing on the screen, a poem in the exact style of Chaucer. It is impressive in both form and substance. She talks about how resistant the poem’s author was to the task, but it is obvious that he is thoughtful, talented, and smart, and that Aurelia has provided a venue for expression. The crowning moment is the videotape of kids curled up in corners reading or sitting in groups discussing and recommending books. Their total concentration is obvious and impressive. The second-grade class has book bins, each with kids’ names on it. The teachers are talking about how different the kids are now from how they were in October. KB sits next to me crying tears of joy, but she is not picking up on the tensions in the room. Community leaders are rolling their eyes. I am not quite sure why Robbie and Athena are so critical and negative about the presentations. Is it that they have confused the messengers and the message? They like the fact that kids are involved and reading, but they have become convinced that progressive methods are uncaring because they give kids too much freedom. Robbie later tells me that anyone can give an impressive presentation to the board. Karley sits impatiently; she looks very uncomfortable. A few minutes later she talks about scripted reading programs, the philosophical and practical antithesis of this readers’ and writers’ workshop. Some people are not communicating, and others are just plain resisting, sitting through the program, going through the motions. Has Karley convinced Robbie and Athena that conventional teaching methods, no matter how repressive, are still best? 122

moments

A parent tells me her son, having forgotten his book at school, had to be taken to the library immediately, so that he would have a book to read.

BOARD MEETING, AUGUST 1, 2001 Almost every meeting, every statement, and every event had, and continues to have, multiple dimensions, interpretations, and retellings, with great potential for conflict as well. The borderland took on a life of its own. By this I mean that people began to sense the conflicts and manipulate and take advantage of them, playing people and groups against one another. The principal was especially clever in her power plays, which pitted staff against board, teachers against teachers, and even board members against each other. In the board meeting described below, we can see that the borderland is really a matrix of cross-cutting and conflicting philosophies, practices, and tensions. These stresses were made worse by the heat of the August evening. Picture the school cafeteria at the end of a scorching day by the river. Even at 7 p.m. Don comes in with shirt soaked and face dripping. He is a large man in his thirties, and he comes in sighing. He says he is having trouble focusing. He is a parent of three children in the school, a board member, and the husband of one of the school custodians; he holds two jobs, including one at the City Department of Recreation facility next door. We used to have board meetings on Thursday afternoons at four, but in an effort to include people who were still at work at four we decided to move to evening meetings. Perhaps this was a good decision, for despite the heat I can feel real calm and a sense of ‘‘let’s get on with the business at hand’’ that does not always prevail in the late afternoons, when people are still carrying around the stresses of the day. The familiar grayish-white fiberglass lunch tables have attached benches—they are whiter if they have been bleached recently, grayer if the residue of little sticky fingers still remains on the surfaces. Sometimes we arrange them in a circle so that people can see one another; other times, people are just scattered around the room. The meetings seem to be more peaceful when people are facing one another. Our board treasurer/school accountant is chairing. Many board treasurers are figureheads who give financial reports prepared by an accountant. In our case, the treasurer is our accountant, and we pay her to keep the books. It is only her expert and creative accounting that has kept us alive financially over this first difficult year of school. The state gives us 123

deterritorialization

per-pupil allotments (about $6,000), and this amount is estimated in the fall; if enrollments drop in the winter, we must return some of the money. We have just gotten through making up the deficit to the state and have enough per month to make payroll. It has been a very tough year financially, and we are exploring a cash-flow loan from CPS to enable us to pay benefits for the next several months. Susan calls the meeting to order. The first item on the agenda is the board chair’s report. I quickly defer to Karley, who begins going through a rather lengthy list of recommendations and reports, including several involving the hiring of new teachers and enrollments. We are in the process of hiring an entirely new team of high-school teachers after the mass exodus in the spring and summer of 2001. Susan tries very hard to get through the agenda by repeating often the phrase, ‘‘Moving right along.’’ She knows that we all have a tendency to talk a lot, which could cause the already-tense meeting to drag on and on. It looked like the state of Ohio was going to cut the per-pupil allotment for schools by $1,000 per pupil. We were not sure, but we knew we had to anticipate a budget crisis of rather immense proportions. The finance committee, chaired by our corporate-thinking grant writer, had recommended the elimination of one instructional assistant position, at $20,000, and the technology position, at $35,000—a position that was previously at the core of our ideas to close the digital divide and infuse technology into the curriculum. (The July board meeting had attempted to resurrect the technology position by exploring various options for budget cuts, including a reduction in the number of as well as the amount paid to instructional assistants, a 5 percent across-the-board decrease for all staff salaries, and a volunteered-by-the-principal reduction in her salary. It should be noted with some importance that all instructional assistants had ties to other staff and board members, including founding mothers. A vote to restore the technology position failed.) In addition, our grant writer, through budgetary manipulation, had ironically succeeded in dismantling the high school, which she had originally vehemently defended as the most important part of our school— another contradiction. It was at the high-school level that the greatest reduction in dropout would occur, since many, if not most, of the high-schoolers were coming back to school after they had dropped out, in many cases two or three years earlier. Contradictions, contradictions. By her own admission KB said repeatedly that she did not ‘‘do education.’’ Yet she wielded enormous power as the chair of the finance committee. The principal had convinced her, like Robbie and Athena, that the highschool teachers did not care about the kids because they allowed certain 124

moments

behaviors. All of this happened rather quickly in an environment in which credentialed people were fighting among themselves, and uncredentialed people were constantly seeking legitimacy from any source, from anyone who would listen. But here we are in August. The entire high-school team has quit, and the principal is recommending new high-school hires, one English, one math, and one science, and two new middle-school hires in social studies and math. The proposed middle-school teachers are inexperienced, but the high-school teachers are experienced and multifaceted. The English teacher is fluent in German, and the science teacher, who is the son of the grant writer, coaches football on Saturdays. The principal reports in an upbeat way that the ‘‘Hit the Streets’’ enrollment drive was a success. She names the people involved and thanks them with grace. The personnel committee report is given, listing off the recommendations and allowing for a bit of discussion, but at this point people just want to leave, so they quickly pass the policies about vacation, sick leave, personal leave, etc.

W H AT H AV E W E L E A R N E D ? Originally, we academics involved in the EECHS as board members, activists, and researchers imagined the creation of hybrid spaces in the school, spaces where kids could remain working-class kids and at the same time engage in a school curriculum that would be culturally sensitive and comfortable. We wanted to teach kids what they needed to know in order to maximize life choices. In a similar vein, we imagined hybrid spaces 1 for adults. Neighborhood leaders would work in the school but remain authentic, working-class people. But instead of hybrid spaces, an urban borderland has emerged, a place where urban agents—school staff, kids, and parents—come into the school building and maintain their original identities and philosophies. These identities and philosophies clash. Uncredentialed community people clash with credentialed professionals over definitions of school, discipline practices, celebrations, and curriculum—but even agreement about curriculum as a priority in the school is difficult at best. Power struggles seem to replace the collaborative working styles that the founding mothers used to develop the school. Insiders clash with outsiders, especially over issues of class—that is, dress, discipline, curriculum, space, field trips, books, etc. The sale of flowers for Valentine’s Day, an idea initiated by the principal, did not take 125

deterritorialization

into account the fact that many children could not afford the one-dollar price of a single flower. In-the-box administrators, teachers, and board members clash with out-of-the-box teachers and board members. Institutionalizing in-school suspension (an isolation room defined as a punishment space) is the first step toward all-too-frequent expulsions, complete with expulsion hearings and hearing officers. Suspensions and expulsions run counter to what the founding mothers saw as the fundamental mission of the school: to keep kids in school. Children sit precariously between school (book learning) and community (common sense and street smarts). Many come to school regularly; many do not; all are testing their identities. The kids are constantly ambivalent about street smarts versus book learning. Class issues are evident as a critical aspect of the borderland. Middle-class notions of order and behavior and conventional notions of discipline clash with the celebration of working-class and community practices. These clashes manifest themselves as conflicts over appropriate language and behavior: using the vernacular to encourage expression and creativity conflicts with insisting on ‘‘proper’’ language and behavior and inhibiting or creating resistance to creative expression. Questions of school policies are also constantly being raised. The conflict seems to be between those who advocate homogeneous, overarching school policies and procedures versus those who recognize that different age groups require different structures and practices. Do we want a hierarchically organized school, with those at the top controlling policies, or do we want buy-in and collaboration from all of the stakeholders, staff, students, parents, and board? Our school mission includes using students’ experiences as starting points and embedding educational practice in experience and existing community practices. But what kinds of community practices were we talking about, and how could a teacher from outside the working class understand these practices sufficiently to base curriculum on them? The opposition is between a school driven by a strong, well-developed, wellorganized, interdisciplinary, integrated, culturally sensitive curriculum, versus a school driven by rules of behavior. Mediating borderland conflicts will take time.

126

ten

N E G O T I AT I N G T H E BORDERLAND

Conflict in the community school borderland had escalated to the point where some negotiations had to be carried out. Dropout rates have always been extraordinarily high; eighth grade is a common stopping point. But the turnover rate for kids in our school was quickly becoming dramatic. In EECHS’s second year, only 50–60 percent of students returned, and attendance rates in the high school were still very unstable. For many people in working-class communities, schools represent and cater to middleand upper-class interests and generally ensure that working-class kids get working-class jobs.1 At EECHS, where the principal supported middleclass practices, especially in matters of discipline, these conflicts were exacerbated. Understandably, then, the alliance between the principal and community leaders proved to be only temporary. The conflicts between community and school—specifically community leaders such as Robbie, Athena, and Evylyn, on the one hand, and the principal, Karley, on the other—worked in a cyclical fashion, escalating to a crescendo at some moments and then calming down, usually through mediation efforts by the board. But the same conflicts would escalate again and again, often in the form of confrontations. Karley and Robbie came to a standoff just before Thanksgiving 2001. Karley was bursting with frustration and anger. She wanted Robbie out of the building. A group of board members discussed various options. Bobby, a community board member and relative of Robbie’s by marriage, stated quite strongly that we needed to hear from Robbie before any recommendations were decided upon. Following Bobby’s suggestion, the board met on a Saturday, from noon to five. Robbie’s sister, Linda May, and Linda May’s son, Andy, both board

129

reterritorialization

members, were at the meeting; mother and son did not agree on many issues. Linda May is smart, rational, and thoughtful; she is clearly sophisticated about issues of power, control, conflict, and problem solving. Andy is the opposite: he is also smart, but he is emotional, impulsive, and unsophisticated about the issues of conflict and problem solving. He has a tendency to dig in his heels and escalate conflict in situations that are already tense—he had done so during the spring board meeting when teams of teachers presented curriculum proposals. Since he did not graduate from high school and had only recently earned a GED, Andy was perceived by teachers and other professionals as unqualified to comment on matters of curriculum and educational policy. Linda May was also worried that there was so much bad feeling between Robbie and Andy that their family would never be the same. (Andy was convinced that Robbie should have been ‘‘placed on several weeks of vacation without pay.’’ He was not speaking with his aunt. It should be noted that Robbie and Andy once had a very close relationship—he had been her favorite nephew since his birth twenty-six years ago, and he had adopted many of her idiosyncrasies, including her work ethic and her open, emotional style.) Both Andy and Robbie are gay. His position as a community person on the board was very important. He grew up in the East End and now lives in a working-class community on the west side of town. Robbie publicly justified her view of Andy as a non-community person because of where he lived. In reality, his loss of community status was connected to his rather inexplicable loyalty to Karley, whom Robbie and other community staff members viewed as betraying the original mission of the school and, therefore, the community. Although Andy grew up in the East End, his experiences in the corporate world and his adoption of corporate styles of thinking had completely reversed his close relationship with his aunt. Unlike Robbie, Andy aspired to upward mobility. The background of the situation is this. Karley had sent out an e-mail in large, red, bold letters pleading with the board to evict Robbie from the building and exile her to the Pendleton Heritage Center. She painted Robbie as a troublemaker and a morale-smasher.

I M AGE S OF C ON FL IC T A N D M E D I AT ION The board decided that the board president and the consulting principal should talk with Robbie, but not have her evicted from the building. On the Thursday after Thanksgiving, in an effort to keep the peace, Jenel, the

130

negotiating the borderland

board president, and Dr. L, the consulting principal, talked to Robbie, indicating that they felt her pain but that she must send parents to Karley. She could not offer her opinions about decisions made in the school. Jenel pointed to her own situation; she had worked in the same school for twenty-seven years and had taught the parents and, in some instances, the grandparents of her students. She was trusted in the community, just like Robbie. But EECHS has a principal who should be the one speaking to parents. Jenel used vivid metaphors to describe this conflict and talked about coals burning in the school whose embers turned into fires every time Robbie or Karley talked about the other. Karley and Robbie each agreed not to talk about the other unless both were present. Later, when I asked Robbie how she felt about the meetings, she said that she and Karley had a ‘‘truce’’ but they did not trust one another. Her voice sounded resigned, not the usual fiery Robbie. ‘‘I guess I should just go in the office and do my job. Fewer people will be at my door now.’’

P OW E R S T RU G GL E S , FAU LT L I N E S , A N D T R A N S F OR M AT ION S OF T H E BOR DE R L A N D Robbie’s sister Linda May was not happy with the principal; neither was Bobby, another community board member. The principal had taken the key to the pop machine away from Robbie, with murmurings that money was missing. The community people read the principal’s act as punishment because of the fact that community folks had been going to talk with Robbie about school problems when they found the principal to be inaccessible. Bobby was convinced that parents and other community members should be able to talk to someone when the principal cannot be reached. Accusations of theft are one of the main ways of dividing people in poor communities—a typical urban event. People in power accuse people without power of theft. Depending on who is doing the accusing, community leaders can be wiped out of the picture—in this case, the school’s life. Robbie had experienced these kinds of accusations before, from a developer who wanted her out of her strong leadership position in the Community Council. But Robbie was sophisticated. She tried her best to stay calm through all of the turmoil. She rarely let Karley get the best of her. June, Athena, and Evylyn supported her and counseled her to keep quiet—a very difficult thing for Robbie.

131

reterritorialization

January 10, 2002 Robbie had become anxious and agitated. After the winter holidays, she missed the first three days of school because of illness. Her doctor had given her Prozac and her heart was still racing. Karley persisted in her attempts to discredit and fire Robbie. She held a ‘‘disciplinary hearing’’ for Robbie, who had spontaneously organized a New Year’s Eve party in the school without asking permission. But the school had no policies about using the building, and after fighting for permission to lease it and spending two years planning the school, Robbie saw herself as having some rights to use it. How can someone be punished for violating a nonexistent rule? ‘‘It was not planned,’’ Robbie told me. ‘‘It came up at the spur of the moment. I have been in and out of the building so many times, I didn’t even think about it. They were only relatives on Charlie’s [her brother’s] side who came to the party. Only eleven people attended. We just wanted to watch the ball drop, so I took the TV out of Carrie’s first-grade room and put it back when we were done.’’ Robbie, unlike the principal, viewed the school building much like East Enders view the river, that is, as common property, public, community common space that must, of course, be respected, but that can be used and shared by all members of the community. Outsiders are viewed by East Enders as ‘‘poachers’’—people who take over community space (e.g., riverbanks and ball fields) without even recognizing that the spaces ‘‘belong’’ to the community. The principal, on the other hand, who was still viewed by East Enders as an outsider, saw herself as in charge of and responsible for the space, and, therefore, in control of it. Formally and legally, the principal’s view makes sense; informally, and in the context of community practices, Robbie’s view is justifiable.2 As we saw in the struggle for permission to lease the building, the representatives of the power structure have their own views and ways of doing things. In this instance, and in many others, the principal represented the power structure. When school reopened in January, the principal took pains to inform everyone that there had been cups and glasses all over the place and the party had not been cleaned up. This criticism did not compute; Robbie would have left our precious school in an improved condition. She is very fastidious. When she cuts cheese into cubes, they are always the same size—perfectly measured out. When she cuts vegetables it is the same, and when she sets out food, she always cleans up completely. Dr. L, Karley, Athena, Robbie, Jenel, and I met in Karley’s office. Karley looked very tired. Her exhaustion appeared to be cumulative, as 132

negotiating the borderland

though it had built up in her over many weeks—but this was early January, a week after the holiday break. She did not smile at all. Robbie told us that Winn, the cook and a member of a strongly entrenched East End family, had also had a party in the school, on the Sunday before Christmas. He claimed that he had spoken to Karley in advance, and she indicated that there would be no problem with his using the building. Robbie, in fact, was the one who let him in. She lent him her keys, and by doing so became certain that having family gatherings in a building she had gone in and out of freely for almost two years was permitted. Karley denied having granted permission. Robbie then pointed out that Winn wanted to stay out of things, but if Robbie’s job were on the line he would come forward and state his understanding that permission had been granted. East Enders do stick together. Karley then tried to accuse Robbie of inappropriately spending school money to buy things for a special Christmas store in the school for kids. The fact was that Robbie, with the help of the parents’ groups, had paid back all of the money to the school.

Athena, Lydia, and Karley, Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2002: More Drama Referring to her daughter, Lydia, Athena reports the following in a very upset tone of voice: ‘‘It’s a mess; Karley’s got this thing against Lydia. It’s all because of Luke. She writes up Lydia for being late, but not Luke. You’ve got to be fair with everyone. She went into Lydia’s class and said bad things in front of students. Karley went off on her in front of the kids. Lydia wrote Karley a letter of complaint and she [Karley] discussed the letter in front of the whole staff. As long as you do things that are illegal, I’m going to tell you. She’s got her little clan. She doesn’t touch them.’’ Athena says that the clan includes Karley’s friends and relatives, most of whom are concentrated in the primary grades. As a former kindergarten teacher, Karley naturally bonded with the primary teachers in the school. She also hired most of them, unlike many of the other teachers, who were hired before she was. Athena continues in a very upset tone: ‘‘She’s such a power freak, and she has problems with East End people. Lydia was there when Karley told Winn he could use the building over the Christmas break, but then she [Karley] turned around and said she did not grant permission. She wants to do everyone’s job except her own. My favorite expression of hers is, ‘You can’t teach what you don’t know. You can’t lead where you won’t go.’ Well, I’ll tell you, she ain’t goin’ anywhere near where she needs to be.’’ 133

reterritorialization

Karley had made copies of Lydia’s letter, which was carefully handwritten. She handed copies out rather widely in the school, claiming quite adamantly that an IA had no right to criticize the principal. The letter illustrates some aspects of the borderland that are quite striking—especially contradictions about professionalism and appropriate communication. January 2002 I would like to let you know how your actions in my classroom made me feel today. Your professionalism was very low-class! The way you handled the situation in my class today without any explanation from me as to why, as you put it, the kids were not productive today. Instead you made it seem like I was not capable of conducting a classroom. All of the students witnessed this unfortunate incident, which was not called for, and then to have the students question me about your attitude and if you are always this, in their words, nasty toward me. Do you honestly think the students can respect a staff member if another does not? The students had one ½ hour free time in my class. Compared to the free time they have in other classes, and not to mention some of the conduct that goes on in those classes, that goes unnoticed all the time. I wonder why? Well I do truly believe if you are going to be professional, be professional about all situations. Today was not professional. This is not an ongoing everyday thing in my class, where the students don’t have an assignment, and the proof is in the pudding. I have stacks on top of stacks of work they get from me. It’s not my fault the students were held over in another class for a ½ hour before they were released to come to my class. It’s not much time to get an assignment started. Also as far as giving and receiving respect I don’t feel as if I was respected today as a staff member or as an adult. Also I am just curious as to how many other class instructors would have received the same treatment as me? Cc to Human Resources Director

The Intervention Team (with Robin Lee and Lionel Brown) The establishment of the ‘‘Intervention Team’’ and School Wellness Center in school year 2001–2002 represented a powerful way for East Enders (school staff, parents, and students) to negotiate the borderland. Formally, the team focuses on school health and wellness through an ‘‘interdisciplinary intervention team for students and families experiencing behavior and health problems.’’ These words come from a report to the funders of the health and wellness program. The report continues, ‘‘The Interdisciplinary Intervention Team, representing health and nursing, educa134

negotiating the borderland

tional specialists, teachers, anthropologists, social workers, counselors, school administrators, community leaders, parents and community mentors. The team meets weekly to discuss students at risk for having health and/or academic problems.’’ Simply put, by working with families this team began to rescue kids who needed help. School health, from the Intervention Team’s perspective, must happen within the context of the community. The team is interdisciplinary, holistic, and constantly mindful of both the formal and the informal health systems. Informal systems include community leaders, parents, grandparents, teachers, and the kids themselves. Formal health-care systems— everything from the local, federally funded community health center to private practitioners, health maintenance organizations (HMOs), clinics, and hospitals—are often resisted by both parents and kids. There are many reasons for this resistance: cost, access, invasion of privacy, fear of losing children to foster care. In the community setting there is always a team of people to do the intervening, or at least to arrange programs for the kids in culturally sensitive, holistic ways that attempt to treat the whole child in family and community contexts. ‘‘Interdisciplinary’’ and ‘‘intervention’’ are intimidating and complicated words. We knew that the real strengths of the school resided in the community. Community staff members know the kids and their families. Kids trust Robbie, Evylyn, Athena, Lydia, June, and other community people. So do parents. Local knowledge is very important. The Intervention Team must be understood as a counter-hegemonic,3 grassroots movement that utilizes local knowledge and practices in the school. The Intervention Team is not only a safety net for kids, but also the forum where the most important school issues are discussed and the platform for community leaders to speak their minds. No topic is taboo, and the recurring and overarching theme has been to lament the power of credentialed people over community leaders whose funds of local, practical knowledge are crucial to the success of students and the school itself. This local knowledge is problematic, however: first, it is subjugated 4 or simply unknown to exist by many of the teachers. The very existence and positioning of school as an institution in a post-industrial society subjugates local knowledge. Second, local knowledge is considered by certain credentialed people to be ‘‘nonacademic knowledge’’ and thus not central to the school’s mission—particularly that of the high school, which requires specialized, credentialed knowledge. Third, some view local knowledge, however subjugated, as a control mechanism that gives organic intellectuals (grassroots leaders employed in the school) power over decisionmaking processes. When academic issues are separated from the domain 135

reterritorialization

of local knowledge and taken out of the hands of organic intellectuals, a situation considered desirable for academic success, organic intellectuals feel a loss of control that engenders conflict among staff members in the school. The Intervention Team provides an arena and context within which such conflict is played out. Constant references are made by all staff, academic and nonacademic, to Intervention Team meetings, even those that have occurred in the relatively distant past (a month or more previously). These constant references have the effect of keeping conflicts brewing and preventing issues from being resolved. For kids, the work of the Intervention Team is very important. Despite the caring atmosphere in the school and the alternative educational structures and practices, each week there is a long list of students in need of some form of intervention. These interventions include mentoring, social services, and special course schedules that accommodate illness, working, motherhood, fatherhood, and difficult home situations. The interpretations of kids’ needs are different for the members of the Intervention Team than they are for school staff, as are the interpretations of appropriate solutions (interventions) and those who can carry them out. The original design of the Intervention Team was to work collaboratively in the spirit of the school’s charter. With support from academics and health professionals, the initial work was led by the community leaders working in the school, who know the kids and their families and have built trust over the generations. This work cannot be done by credentialed outsiders, no matter how talented. Local knowledge takes a long time to acquire, especially family histories—everything from knowing who is who in the community, to who can most effectively facilitate the education of kids, to who, by contrast, might represent danger. What does the family and community safety net look like and how does it change with time? Each day the kids stay in the building or on the grounds for as long as they can. ‘‘We can’t get rid of them,’’ says Athena. Some of the interventions were relatively easy. An eighteen-year-old pregnant student wanted to figure out a way to continue her education. Since she came from a supportive East End family, her interest in going to college after graduation was certainly not out of the question. Evylyn discussed a program that provides support for students such as Diana to facilitate their continued education. Many cases brought before the Intervention Team are very difficult, because of medical reasons, psychosocial issues, economic issues, and combinations of all of these. A sixteen-year-old East End child, whom we will call Annie, was dying of liver failure. Her parents were resigned to it and told me, ‘‘We didn’t think we’d have her this long.’’ During the 2002– 136

negotiating the borderland

2003 school year, she moved in and out of the hospital, accompanied by her loyal younger cousin, also a high-school student in the school, who had spent many nights next to Annie’s hospital bed. At this point, all the Intervention Team could do for Annie was to arrange for an air conditioner to be given to the family since, given the large, extended family supporting her, it was clear that any visits or communication from the school at this terminal stage would be intrusive. Amazingly, at the eleventh hour Annie underwent a liver transplant. Following the operation she was schooled at home while her immune system became stronger. She returned to school in September 2003. Initially, she was reported to the Intervention Team as sleeping in class and distracted. Was she reacting to medication? Some weeks she attended school only sporadically, or she would attend some classes and not others. When she became the topic of an Intervention Team meeting in November 2003, it became clear not only that her class attendance had been sporadic at best, but also that no one had contacted her parents about her truancy. Her aunt, a school case manager who also sat on the Intervention Team, became enraged at the teachers’ inattention. Athena, as a founding mother with several grandchildren in the school, followed suit and began screaming at the high-school representative on the team, a practical arts teacher who was new to the school. ‘‘What are these kids doing with cell phones and headphones, sleeping with their heads down on the desks, picking boogers out of their noses?’’ The teacher, who seemed shocked and offended by both the impassioned, loud tone and the crudeness of the language, burst into tears. ‘‘You’re going to lose all of your teachers in December,’’ she declared, barely getting the words out. Her tears necessitated an intervention on the part of Robbie, who instantly put her arm around the young teacher and told her not to take Athena’s words personally. What does this example tell us? First, it tells us that Intervention Team discussions provide mirrors into the school’s practices, mirrors that community leaders use to reflect on the school as a whole. Why had no one on the high-school team called Annie’s mother? The practical arts teacher exploded in frustration: ‘‘Give me some solutions. If she doesn’t want to come to class, what can we do for her?’’ The fact that no one had called Annie’s mother communicated to the founding mothers on the Intervention Team that no one cared, or, at best, that this child had fallen through the cracks. In the aftermath, there were different readings of the discourse in this particular meeting. The high-school academic dean was convinced that one of her teachers had been verbally abused and subjected to ‘‘unprofessional’’ behavior by Athena, who happened to be the human resources 137

reterritorialization

director. While Athena admitted that she had exploded, she considered chaos and neglect to be running rampant in the high school. On any given day, 40 percent of the high-school students were reported absent. The high-school case manager was supposed to call the parents of absent students. He spent many days, though, in court supporting kids who had had charges pressed against them. Consequently, parents often did not get called. Athena was incensed that the teachers did not make any efforts to bring the kids back by calling the parents themselves. Among the many contentious issues in the subtext here are matters of teacher accountability. In a community school, teachers are responsible for serving the community’s families. To ignore truancy is tantamount to slapping the community in the face. Robbie, who knew Athena better than anyone else in the room, thought Athena was just venting her frustrations. Her hopes for the kids were not being realized. While Athena’s ideas about education are more in line with conservative, hegemonic, sit-at-your-desk-and-be-quiet experiences like her own, she was not about to give up the founding mothers’ ethos of caring. To her, allowing kids to walk around, with or without headphones, is anti-school and anti-children—the antithesis of school and raising kids to be good citizens, in fact. The anthropological reading of the above scenario seems to indicate multiple layers of hybridity 5 and contradiction. I read Athena’s outburst (‘‘explosion,’’ in her words) as frustration and anger about cultural loss and damage—the outburst was about what she saw as an erosion of respect for children in particular and East Enders in general. It should be noted here that just before the outburst of the teacher above, another teacher in the high school had exhibited some extremely classist and ethnocentric behavior, showing disrespect for poor children by telling them that they would never amount to anything. Similarly, a third teacher was heard referring to an East End child as stupid. Because of these teachers, Athena’s criticism of the high school seemed warranted. It did not matter to Athena that Annie is a white child. She is an East End child. That Athena held the position of human resources director but was worried about high-school kids (a domain that was formally outside of her job description) showed that, in typical East End style, she ignored the boundaries of her job. She thought and acted as a lifelong community member and founding mother of the school. In summary, intervention is a strong word. It implies entry into a situation, into people’s lives, into their ‘‘business,’’ to use the vernacular. We are talking about the lives of kids and the lives of families—kids who cannot behave, who for one reason or another do not attend or cannot 138

negotiating the borderland

cope with school—with life, really. Some kids cannot assume even the very basics of food, shelter, and clothing. Some have moms who buy cigarettes and booze instead of food. The Intervention Team looks at kids with chronic problems—liver disorders, ADHD, epilepsy, diabetes. Families with terminally ill parents and grandparents receive help. Often the intervention takes the form of a confrontation—a supportive confrontation, but an ultimatum nonetheless: ‘‘treatment or else’’ is the clear and strong message. How can intervention achieve positive results in a community and a school that are distrustful of power structures, whether the structure is a school, a wellness center, a clinic, or a hospital? Informal and formal structures must be brought together, but how? The kids who come before the Intervention Team find themselves in multiple borderlands: psychological, medical, cultural, academic, and combinations of these. Tom and Mark, below, may be typical. At the same time, their uniquenesses are clear.

Tom Explosive outbreaks and potential violence. Probably expulsion. The middle-school team is exhausted. Tom was yelled at by a teacher in front of his peers. The Intervention Team agrees that staff needs professional development around issues of conflict resolution. Dr. L: ‘‘Tom is on the edge and needs daily contact, preferably with a male, since all of his caregivers are female.’’ Tom’s mother, who herself has cancer, is taking care of her own mother. Three of Tom’s mother’s siblings have cancer. Robbie emphasizes that the mother will not accept help outside the extended family. She realizes that her son Tom needs help. Goals for Tom: place him in an alternative learning center; continue our intervention; obtain a mentor for Tom.

Mark Mark is a twelve-year-old African American boy who has been in a foster family since August 2001, along with two of his five siblings. Prior to that he lived with his abusive father. He is a small child, immature and very bright. Mark was referred to the Intervention Team for two reasons. The first was his physical and explosive behavior on the school bus, including shooting rubber bands and paper, refusing to obey the bus driver, attacking another student, and using offensive, pornographic language in front 139

reterritorialization

of a female student who herself had experienced abuse. He had also referred other children to a pornographic website. He admitted that he had a problem with his behavior. The second reason was his failure to return borrowed money to another student. He had borrowed the money for soft drinks from a student who then said he felt intimidated by Mark. Robbie described Mark as very smart, with a ‘‘hair-trigger’’ temper. During most of the meeting, Mark’s foster parents quietly seethed, listening as Robbie and Dr. L went on at great length. Finally, Julia, the foster mom, said, ‘‘It’s his ‘real’ parents. All of his history seems to be ignored.’’ Robbie replied, ‘‘We are not ignoring it; we don’t know it.’’ Mark’s history unfolded as follows: the father, who had abused both the mother and the children in his family, had been diagnosed with an explosive disorder. At one point he duct-taped Mark to a pole and whipped him with an extension chord. Mark talked about how his dad taught him how to beg and take his clothes through the mud. He conned a young man out of $15. Julia said, ‘‘His [biological] father’s idea of sex education was porn.’’ The foster parents’ goal was to give him a sense of stability. The foster father, a professional, said, ‘‘I just don’t know where I am. We give kids money as needed. Mark does see a psychiatrist weekly.’’ Plan: to mesh Mark’s intellectual and social skills. Weekly homework progress report. Principal to arrange a job so that Mark can work off his debt.

Many meetings of the Intervention Team felt incomplete. There were days when we dealt with only one or two children, or talked about only one or two cases, when in fact there were twenty or more children on Evylyn’s list. We felt frustrated by this reality; we wanted more time to meet and more staff in the school to do the follow-up on our cases. Evylyn, lifelong East Ender, parent, and school coordinator, is the spirit behind the Intervention Team. She listens intently to every word of every discussion. She is the person who keeps lists of students needing help and follows up by talking to people, whether they are community people or people in social service agencies. She would probably never admit to managing the cases, setting priorities—in short, to leading the team—but she does lead the team, with skill and unconditional caring. The professionals on the team, a seasoned consulting principal, a nurse with years of experience working in third-world countries in international public health, student nurses, anthropologists, advocates—all take their cues from Evylyn. She opens up and is forthright in sharing her thoughts about kids and 140

negotiating the borderland

their families (it seems dehumanizing to refer to people as ‘‘cases’’) when the group is small. She takes in every detail of every case and considers each fact presented to see what adds up and what does not. When the details do not add up, she imagines different scenarios. Evylyn’s is a Sherlock Holmes style of speculation, as though she is the school detective— an experienced sleuth of family dynamics in a community with a diaspora of anxieties mostly triggered by poverty, neglect, substance abuse, anger, and depression. Evylyn is an activist of the best sort; she takes situations in hand. When she sees that a kid cannot handle being in school but very much wants to learn, she makes sure that the child gets a computer to use at home; she arranges for teachers to provide schoolwork and then connects the child to the school through both the Internet and the phone. She applies her local knowledge by thinking carefully and acting decisively. With reference to Annie’s situation, Evylyn solicited help from board members. She asked for help in dealing with Athena’s language. ‘‘I have talked to her and it doesn’t do any good,’’ she pleaded. ‘‘I need your help.’’ The board responded, ‘‘We’ll talk about it and get back to you.’’ Evylyn smiled with relief. I thought about Athena’s authenticity as an East Ender. Yes, her language is unpolished, but this is the way people talk in the East End. Athena gets upset when she thinks an injustice has been done to a child, especially anytime a child is denied respect and attention. But as the school coordinator, Evylyn mediates between teachers and school staff; she tries to get each to compromise, to bend, to get closer to ‘‘being on the same page.’’ She knows how fragile and vulnerable East Enders are in the face of powerful, credentialed people. A great number of outsiders impact the school—everyone from the public school board to the daily visitors, reporters, volunteers, and university students who come into the school. Evylyn spends enormous amounts of time on the phone following up on referrals, talking to grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, and community members—constantly checking up on people. She knows every kid, every family, every complicated issue, whether the families and kids are East Enders or not. She is trustworthy and knows how to preserve confidences and confidentiality. What Evylyn does not know about a kid or a family, Robbie does. As the community organizer, she knows the families and their histories. Kids and parents confide in her. She grew up with many of the grandparents. The Intervention Team meets once a week for two hours; it should meet every day. Evylyn brings a list that can have as many as twenty-five students on it, from primary to high-school students. Often we spend an hour or more on a single student. 141

reterritorialization

‘‘D O I N G W H A T E V E R I T T A K E S’’ ‘‘Doing whatever it takes’’ is not just a phrase or a way of thinking. It is a way of living that is practiced in East End every day and is taught to children. It is the essential characteristic of ensuring that what is needed is provided, whether what is needed is food, a roof, a listening ear, a set of social services, or all of the above. Most importantly, ‘‘doing whatever it takes’’ is counter-hegemonic; the Intervention Team provides a context in which counter-hegemonic community voices can be heard and implemented in practice. Athena’s ‘‘explosion’’ can be understood as a form of doing whatever it takes to make the school work for the kids, on the one hand, and aligning school practices with her memory, or rather, memories of school on the other. On some level, though, she realizes that exactly replicating her memories of school in the Highlands building would be impossible for many reasons. When she was a child, East Enders had to attend high school elsewhere because the Highlands school only went up to the eighth grade. Keeping all children in the community for their schooling has presented many new challenges.

Anita and Elley Anita is a very talented middle-schooler with an eating disorder. She confesses to being disgusted by food and afraid of being fat. Unfortunately, her writing journal got out of her hands and was read by several people in the school, including several staff members. The invasion of her inner life was especially devastating for such a gifted student, who had decided to write instead of hurting herself. After the incident with her journal, she stopped coming to school. Anita’s sister Elley is depressed and self-abusive; she routinely ‘‘cuts on herself.’’ Elley feels that she is not being listened to, that people will not let her forget her past, that kids in the school pick on her. She told a middleschool teacher, ‘‘We came here because nobody would make fun of you here.’’ During the 2001–2002 school year, Anita and Elley’s mom’s terminal cancer was in remission, but in July 2002 she passed away, leaving many questions about the future of the children. Mom had often covered for the girls and arranged medical excuses when they missed school. The father is trying to cope. He has told Elley that when she turns eighteen he is kicking her out of the house. Her level of anxiety is quite high, and her father is not allowing her to see her previous counselor. Her main support right now is a school staff person, an anthropologist who fol142

negotiating the borderland

lows up along with Evylyn, and with whom Elley has established a close relationship. This relationship keeps her in school.

Chip Chip is small for his age of fourteen. He comes in with his mom, stepfather, and little brother, age ten, who is himself often in trouble and is enjoying witnessing his older brother on the hot seat. There is manifest tension among the family members. Mom aggressively pressures Chip to sit up straight and look at people when they talk to him. Stepfather looks smug but does not say anything, and little brother takes it all in. When Dr. L asks a question of Chip, Mom answers for him. Chip has a stormy expression and looks down at his own knees. He is an angry young ninth-grader, picked up by the cops and held for two days for possessing a gun on school property. It turned out to be a BB gun, but there are concerns from the Intervention Team that this toy gun might someday change into a real one. Athena speaks to Chip from her heart: ‘‘We want you to be here, to stay in school,’’ she says. His angry expression fades and he begins to relax, then to smile. If a teacher had said the same thing, it would not have carried the same meaning. It would have been interpreted as patronizing manipulation. Hegemony comes in many forms, some more subtle and insidious than others. Even teachers who do not mean to exert power are often thought by kids and families to be doing so. They not only represent authority; they usually originate from higher social classes and are ‘‘read’’ as representatives of an elite, ‘‘uppity,’’ powerful system. Community leaders, such as Athena, play extremely important parts in the lives of kids, precisely because they do not carry hegemonic baggage.

It is not in Evylyn’s or Robbie’s job description to work sixteen-hour days or spend much of the evening on the phone. They are not paid for every extra thing that they do. Once someone requests extra pay, especially an East Ender, it becomes clear that to define one’s job narrowly and request extra pay for anything outside of or beyond the job description is a violation of the East End way that says, ‘‘Do whatever it takes.’’ The culture of the East End community is integrated into the school charter, but it has not been fully integrated into the actual curriculum, organizational structure, or daily school patterns. There exists a seemingly unsolvable clash of class, economics, and insensitivity to culture and cultural knowledge. 143

reterritorialization

Householding is a technical term meaning provisioning. In the East End, householding operates as a non-hegemonic (counter-hegemonic) unconditional and informal system of ‘‘doing whatever it takes’’ that involves provisioning the group psychologically and otherwise. It is carried out by employed community leaders within the school and in their homes. For example, Robbie, her partner, June, and Athena feed, and sometimes house, children in need. Actions of householding within the school are seen as an ‘‘evading’’ or ‘‘out of order’’ from one’s ‘‘real’’ job, because householding does not fit within the parameters of a hegemonic, corporately framed ‘‘job description.’’ In this context, job descriptions can be forms of economic and bureaucratic ethnocentrism. In East End parlance, this means that the authors of the job descriptions do not have a clue how the community really works or do not care. Hegemonic representatives employed in the school and on the board guard (and hinder) flexibility in each individual’s behaviors and actions, including those of people who are not ‘‘real East Enders’’ but who practice East End identity and ‘‘community.’’ Flexibility and generosity are East End cultural ideals, but the decrease in flexibility imposed by the hegemonic representatives continually limits the implementation of the school charter. This is an area of both aggravation and motivation: aggravation because the urban hegemony now has both external and internal forces acting on a community-built structure; motivation because hegemonic forces continually initiate resistance to cultural loss and damage. To summarize the Intervention Team’s importance and impact—we had to be very careful to keep intimate information about the lives of kids under close control. Information shared in Intervention Team meetings was not to leave the room. Behavior and health are not so simple, though, when you think about them holistically in the context of the community. What do they mean? How do they translate to the everyday lives of children and families? The team’s vision, at the moment, is to find support for the wellness center, so that it can facilitate direct access to clinicians and social services. Kids should not be shunted around the bureaucracy of the urban social service system. The wellness center staff should coordinate care. I have observed the Intervention Team for three years. There are no power struggles, only hard work and worry. Evylyn and Robbie are the experts in community ways of being and doing. On the team, people problem-solve, brainstorm, and struggle to figure out ways to think about the kids and the staff—growing the school to make it better and better. But to think about things is not sufficient; the real task at hand for the Intervention Team is to come up with concrete plans for kids and fami144

negotiating the borderland

lies. This must be done collaboratively with families, and families can be difficult to work with. There are many strong people on the team, and agreement can be difficult at times. Rita Lash is bold, blunt, and tells things as they are. There is nothing timid about her. She is an ardent defender of community autonomy. She is task-oriented and energetic. Those of us who participated in the school development process and considered ourselves founding mothers were used to hashing things out, to saying things bluntly without beating around the bush or using too many words. We had too much work to do to be inefficient or waste people’s time. The Intervention Team is an island of caring and sensitivity in a sea of conventionality and discipline. It took several months before we could convince Karley to attend team meetings. She needed to see that placing a child in ‘‘in-school suspension,’’ or ‘‘out-of-school suspension’’ for that matter, was not necessarily helpful to the child or the family. We also wanted to make sure that families were not given conflicting signals by the principal on the one hand and the team on the other. Homeschooling worked for some kids, but for many it did not. As one teacher put it: ‘‘Who would homeschool the child, the alcoholic father or the terminally ill mother?’’ The team needed to know each family’s situation before making referrals or recommendations. At one point the team talked about an ‘‘in-school homeschool,’’ a special space in the school that would replicate home for students who needed to work in a safe, quiet, comfortable environment where they could have privacy and individualized attention. The Intervention Team has become an institution in and of itself with its own language, customs, and rules that are designed to create safety nets where few existed before. The team dealt with a range of kids and issues. Kids at every level of the school came to our attention, from primary-school kids who could not settle down and concentrate to older kids with multiple and complex problems. Without articulating it as such, our team was dealing with the fallout from several parts of the borderland: home, school, and the street, which was the most important and powerful.

145

eleven

D E T E R R I T O R I A L I Z AT I O N , C R I S I S M A N A G E M E N T, AND T HE BEGINN INGS OF R E T E R R I T O R I A L I Z AT I O N w i t h l io n e l b row n a n d robe rta l e e

By the end of the second year, schisms within our own ranks, aided and abetted by a group of dissident parents, required rethinking and reorganization of the school. A largely personal power struggle with one key and charismatic colleague, combined with dissatisfaction on the part of some parents who sought a more directly parent-controlled school, shook us to our roots. Only the steady support of the district, the backing of the vast majority of parents, and the existence of alternative choices for the dissatisfied, cut our losses and made this brief rebellion a blip in our history. (In subsequent years other schools like ours have all, we’ve discovered, experienced similar moments. Crises are part of the life of such institutions and are too often covered up rather than learned from.) —d e b o r a h m e i e r, The Power of Their Ideas

JUNE 2002: SEVEN EAST ENDERS LET GO; BORDERLAND REDEFINED ONCE AGAIN The month of June seems to invite crises. In June 2001, conflict between different elements in the school resulted in the dismantling and subsequent exit of the entire high-school team. Clashes in educational philosophy, practices, and control of the school were all issues. East Enders sided with the principal and against the high-school teachers, even though they knew that some fine educational talent would be sacrificed. In June 2002, tensions again are running high. This time, though, the tensions are between the East Enders employed in the school and the principal—more specifically, the principal and her clique, which includes 146

crisis management

other staff along with a few board members. Several of the staff and board members in this clique are related to the principal or to one another. Among the East Enders without renewed contracts, five are related to board members and/or founding mothers. To make matters worse, there are also kin ties between members of the opposing factions. All of this translates not only to a divided staff and a divided board, but also to a real crisis of trust within the school and between the school and the community. On Monday, June 3, 2002, seven East End employees of the school received written notices of nonrenewal of their positions: four instructional assistants, two cafeteria workers, and one custodian. In the East End, nonrenewal of a contract equals being fired. As Robbie put it, ‘‘In the East End, people do not know anything about nonrenewal of positions. A person is either hired or fired.’’ The principal’s staff evaluations had been uneven at best—unclear criteria inconsistently applied, and sporadic classroom visitations, with some classes visited only briefly, some not at all, and others for lengthy periods. The East Enders on the personnel committee were not informed of the meetings leading to the nonrenewals, and, in addition, the evidence presented on individuals’ negative evaluations appeared to be inconsistent and unreliable. The reason given for the exclusion of East Enders from these particular personnel committee meetings had to do with confidentiality (the East Enders on the personnel committee were also employed as staff and were related to the staff members being considered for nonrenewal). The fact that no reasons were given for these nonrenewals made matters even worse in the community. East Enders felt betrayed and wronged by the very people they had trusted to run the school in the best interests of the children and the community. The decision to ‘‘fire’’ seven East Enders rocked the community. Taking so many community members out of the school took the community out of the school—in effect deterritorializing it by turning it into an ordinary, conventional school. The word that ‘‘they fired all of the East Enders’’ spread instantly through the neighborhood. From the park all the way down to Sites gas station and convenience store, East Enders were getting angry. Parents lamented the loss of the IAs. ‘‘What are we going to tell the children?’’ The IAs were close to the children—accessible adults, friends, and confidants. They were not teachers, exactly, but people who did teach with some regularity, taking over for absent teachers, filling in and doing whatever needed to be done, functioning as basketball coaches, breaking up fights, drying tears, and wiping noses. When children were hungry or homeless or both, they came to the homes of IAs and were welcomed. The kids knew exactly where safety and empathy could be found. 147

reterritorialization

On June 5, 2002, the afternoon of the board meeting, the personnel committee met with the IAs. Robbie and Athena were there, encouraging and supporting the IAs, who wanted to speak to the committee, but with the other IAs present, and with Robbie and Athena there as well. Three of the board members insisted on meeting with the IAs individually, since they claimed that the board had voted on this arrangement. Actually, it had been the personnel committee (minus its East End members) who had voted on this arrangement. The consulting principal, Dr. L, urged that we talk to the IAs regardless of format, as long as the meeting was peaceful and politeness could be maintained. Finally, after several hours of waiting in a very hot and humid cafeteria, and an attempted phone vote from the board to get permission to meet with the group, the board members present agreed to allow the IAs to give their testimonials in the presence of their peers and their elders. Dr. L had succeeded in convincing these board members that this was not the time to stand on formalities, procedures, and rigid formats. He knew also that listening to the IAs in the afternoon would make for a much more peaceful board meeting that evening. (Throughout the entire process of school development and operation, the founding mothers and the board had struggled with the boundaries between formality and informality, formal procedures and community practices. More than anything else, these struggles defined the shifts in the borderland.) In a very deliberate and gently forceful effort to restore calm to the group, Dr. L strategically invoked family metaphors, so common for East Enders, in his introduction to the meeting. He clearly wanted to begin rebuilding the trust that had been eroded as a result of the nonrenewals. He knew quite well that this would not be an easy task. He was right. As June, a primary IA, put it, ‘‘If this is the way you treat family, then Lord help you. I have a family,’’ she said, alluding to her dying sixteenyear-old niece, a close cousin of Ronnie-Ann, her daughter. Ronnie-Ann had spent many nights in the hospital with either her cousin or her grandfather, June’s father, who was also hospitalized nearby. June knew about family all right, and, at that moment, the school did not feel at all like a family to her. She talked about feeding the kids when they were hungry, taking them into her home when they had nowhere else to go. Lydia talked about kids confiding in her and about coaching basketball, driving kids home at ten o’clock at night, and then being tired the next day in school. Both June and Lydia talked about breaking up fights when there was no one else to do it—and getting hurt in the process. Luke, who was also not renewed, was extremely polite and calm; he thanked the board for listening. 148

crisis management

It became immediately apparent that ‘‘the decision’’ not to renew the contracts of East Enders had been a drastic mistake. The task at hand was to reorganize, to create alternatives, new positions, put back the pieces, perhaps in a different order or structure, but put them back nonetheless. How could we have a community school without this set of talented, dedicated, community people? The parents were right—how could we explain ‘‘the firing’’ to the kids? The board meeting did indeed turn out to be peaceful, and so was the executive session following the open board meeting. Several parents came to protest ‘‘the firings.’’ With one exception, they all spoke positively about their kids’ experiences in the school; the mother of a highschool student with cerebral palsy was quite passionate about what the school, especially the staff members in question, had done for her child. Several motions passed, including one to recruit a parent onto the board and a board member into the parent group. (Our school’s bylaws state that a majority of board members must be East Enders; we have had trouble fulfilling this provision, mostly for reasons of parents’ time availability. Many work at least one, and in some cases, two jobs, leaving little time for voluntary activities.) June and Luke attended the board meeting; neither spoke. Because of the sudden timing of the ‘‘nonrenewals,’’ the board agreed at the executive session to extend benefits to people who had not been renewed for the length of their signed contracts, roughly until mid-August or early September. Board members talked about alternative structures, and the possibility of a home health worker. Training was offered by Rita Lash, an experienced public health nurse and a University of Cincinnati Nursing College faculty member. Also, Dr. L offered training to four case managers, counselor/advisors who worked with teachers, kids, and families. These training opportunities greatly relieved the anxieties and tensions for community parents, leaders, and nonrenewed employees. Dr. L and I spent many nights on the phone strategizing about alternatives and thinking about options and new structures. He is a man of great experience and wisdom, sophisticated about politics, communities, and the politics of community. He is also revered throughout Greater Cincinnati as a leader who truly supports all dimensions and levels of education. Everywhere he goes, he is greeted by parents and children alike as the mentor who ‘‘kept me or my child in school’’ or ‘‘made a difference’’ in the community. Concomitantly, Athena and Robbie held the group of IAs together. Long hours of talking, childcare, cooking went into preventing people from finding other jobs and exiting from the school project. We decided to meet on Friday morning, June 7, at the Pendleton Heritage 149

reterritorialization

Center, to lay out some options and hear additional concerns from those who had been ‘‘let go.’’ This time, all of the nonrenewed people agreed to meet with the board individually. The whole board was present, and the tone, carefully set by Dr. L, was much more peaceful.

Friday Morning, June 7, 2002, 8:30 a.m. Board Meeting We wait some time for our board chair to arrive. First we make coffee, and then we make small talk about the history of schools in the East End— which school closed when, how many grades the original neighborhood schools, Highlands, Lincoln, and Fulton, had. These schools all closed more than twenty years ago—in fact, Highlands was the last to close. One board member’s mother went to school there. Bobby, a longtime East Ender, went to the Lincoln school, which is now an office complex. But soon the small talk grows too stilted, too forced, and we know the IAs are waiting outside on Eastern Avenue. We sit in the conference room of the Pendleton Heritage Center, with the Heritage Exhibit lining the walls. The Heritage Exhibit consists of historic family photos arranged into panels, with titles indicating the major themes of East End life: Family, Work, People, and Churches. Several of us in the room were involved in the struggle to acquire the Pendleton building and to raise the funds to support the exhibit. The Pendleton conference room feels much more comfortable than any room in the school building. The PHC is a community building. It is owned by the community, not leased, and the fact that it belongs to the community makes a great difference. There is a permanency to it, a solidity that is rooted in past experience—memories, both good and bad. Since we worked long hours in the Pendleton to develop the school and succeeded, the building carries positive associations in this very tense situation. Dr. L opens the meeting with a solemn and pained expression. He begins by thanking the board for getting together and evokes a spiritual tone. He recaps the entire history of the school development process, including many of the important points of the first two years of the school’s existence: The crisis we are dealing with at present—I spent a lot of quiet time reflecting on all that is at stake. I not only spent quiet time, I said a prayer about what to say and how to say it. What is in front of us is important to the sustainability of the school. It is important to think about two years from today.

150

crisis management What is most important is the school. All of you came together to fight the establishment. You did that because of your love, the deep sense of history, the people sitting here, the school, the children, and the community.

He repeats: I do want to thank the board. I spent a considerable amount of time thinking, reflecting. What is important is the school, all the work that went into developing it. The history that is represented in this room.

There is a picture on one panel of Linda May, a board member, sitting next to her mother as a little girl; there are pictures of past and present ministers, church choirs, and church buildings. Dr. L continues, emphasizing community over individuals. The whole is greater than the parts. While individuals’ memories select from this history, all lifelong East Enders share some aspects of this history. We have here a deep-seated sense of love and commitment to the community and the longevity of the dream that has become a reality. The focus on individuals needs to be taken away. It is a board, not personalities. What is in the best interest of the school? Move personalities out of the way. It is critical that the board operate in unity. We arrive at a consensus of what that means. Consensus is far stronger than votes. We must move onto one page. We may be on four corners of that page.

In a very careful choice of words, Dr. L clearly redefines the ‘‘firings’’ as the ‘‘nonrenewal of positions.’’ This is the beginning of the reterritorialization process. That is, he is starting to put community people, and thus the community, back in the school. All agree that there are concerns about individuals that have been nonrenewed. We need to move forward. Action taken on Monday was nonrenewal of positions. The board did not speak of firing of individuals, but a nonrenewal of positions. Not firing individuals, but a nonrenewal of positions allows the board opportunity for deliberation, to adopt a position of flexibility.

He is clearly redefining the situation here, and muddying the clear intent of a segment of the personnel committee to indeed fire individuals. He emphasizes that what we need to do is new and untried, but also urgent.

151

reterritorialization What guides deliberation are the budget, enrollment, and recruitment. In what climate will recruitment go forward? How do people perform a particular job description? We have concerns about attendance and concerns about attitude. Attitude is a nebulous term, job performance is concrete. You can measure performance, you can quantify it. My attitude may be perceived as negative, but in my heart I am committed. The other concern I have heard is backbiting. It’s a concern. People say things about what they think to be real at that point. We have to look at perceptions. We have groups. The only thing I can hang my hat on is numbers. The other things, it’s a matter of perception. It is important that we do the right thing. We can look in the mirror and face others and be comfortable. The East End school has only been in operation two years. It does not have years, history, and infrastructure. It is still struggling with policy. The mission of the school needs to change. It is the newness of the school, and we are a small school. We are wrestling with enrollment and budget. As a board we have not arrived at standards and policies. We have to accept some responsibility for how people behave. We are formulating as we go along. The perception in the community of the decision will make an impact on enrollments. Will people from outside bring in people from outside?— the union, the media. There is no fairness with the media.1 We often think in terms of the battle that we’re in. Do I stand to fight today, or do I stand to decide whether I will fight tomorrow? The urgency of this situation is looming in my mind. The longer it drags out, the longer it drags out. Decisions must be perceived as fair and humane by the community. Otherwise, the peace that was in the board meeting [of Wednesday, June 5] will not prevail. We could be consumed with this all summer. Healing is very important. We do not need others brought in—I’ve been in strikes—when you have a divided group, it would damage beyond repair— the only way to heal—what is going to represent the healing? The whole school came together on family and community. How can we rebuild the family? What are the options?

Dr. L is clear that taking East Enders out of the school by not renewing contracts was a very bad decision. What he does not say is plain in everyone’s mind: that a community school, as stated in the mission and the charter of the school, must have community staff members at the center of it. Most destructive would be to stand by the decision that has been taken. We can restore positions and give opportunity to apply, or we can have alterna152

crisis management tive assignments, training, and staff development based on potential skills and assign a stated period of probation that would last a semester and deal with concerns that can be measured.

One idea might be to have Dr. L and Rita ask for an extension of the training at least until January—with options for employment after that. Otherwise, the training would not be worth it. He returns to the importance of unity and consensus, confessing his inability to sleep for a few days. We must stand as a unit, saying the same thing, and move forward. I have not slept since Sunday, as most of you have not slept. People must do the right thing. We have a responsibility to train and develop and have, as Dean Johnson says, a ‘‘come to Jesus meeting.’’ The consequences were far more destructive and devastating. It would have been better to have reached a compromise and then deal with people individually. We need flexibility and compromise. Consensus will lead to the longevity of the school.

Jenel, the chair of the board, responds to Dr. L: ‘‘I appreciate your thoughts. I am not on the fence. There are things that go beyond this action—dynamics of community, cliques. There was a volatile situation in the school even without this situation. Talking about livelihood—these are the things that tear a school down.’’ The meeting proceeds, with the nonrenewed people coming in one by one. Dr. L gives essentially the same speech to each person. He voices the concerns of the board, puts the school first, and acknowledges that the atmosphere in the school has not been peaceful. Without calling it such, Dr. L is describing a borderland of conflict and backbiting. He does not attribute blame to anyone, but he acknowledges the difficulties and struggles involved in working in such an environment. He sits at the head of the large conference room table with board cochair Andy, whom he has asked to move up beside him. Andy has been very difficult to deal with on this issue of nonrenewed employees. Dr. L wants literally to bring Andy’s thinking around and confers importance upon him by positioning him at a prominent place at the table. There is a vacant chair just to Dr. L’s right for the nonrenewed employees, who come in one at a time. Other board members are seated around the table.

153

reterritorialization

June June is first. Born and raised in an activist East End family, she has seen many struggles. As a two-year instructional assistant in the primary grades, teaching character education, like all of the IAs, she helps out where needed: in the cafeteria, as a substitute for an absent teacher, as a friend, surrogate mom, and support to all. Her face is tense and held in a locked position. It looks as straight as her long blond hair. Despite the stress, she looks younger than her forty years. She places a tape recorder in front of her. It is not clear whether or not it is on. Dr. L begins a bit awkwardly, asking first whether she would like to be called by her first or last name. He asks everyone this question. He talks first about the many reasons for nonrenewal of positions—budgetary, etc. Clearly June is not convinced. He then moves on to organizational issues in the school, to attendance and the school’s mission, and then to performance. Again, Dr. L takes a solemn, ritualistic tone—he has clearly been through the drill many times, but this time seems to carry more weight and meaning, and more is at stake. What do we need to do and how to organize so that people are working in peace and harmony with one another? How do we have consistency of people working together? The board has heard about the existence of factions and groups. Attitude is another issue. Everyone has to work in the school. Attitudes need to support the mission of the school. Benefits have been extended to the life of the contract. We are looking at structures and organization. There are some opportunities this summer through case management and through the wellness program looking to develop a community health worker. Are there talents of yours that you would like us to consider? You were an IA; are there other skills you have that may not have been considered?

June: ‘‘I taught character education in the building. Just to be evaluated as a teacher’s assistant doesn’t seem to be fair. When Karley asked me to do something, I did it.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘Is there anything that you think you could offer?’’ June: ‘‘I work well with kids.’’ Board chair: ‘‘There may become opportunities for other positions. We are not doubting or criticizing your performance.’’ June exits, still with her original rigid expression, but having made her point about wanting to work with kids. 154

crisis management

Lydia Lydia is Athena’s daughter and Luke’s partner. In her mid-thirties, smart, attractive, and stylish, she is a high-school IA and the girls’ basketball coach. She talks with passion about going to high-school girls’ homes to do their hair for the prom, identifying with the girls as a role model, East Ender, and future teacher. She was born and raised in the East End. She is the mother of three children. Dr. L’s discourse and tone with Lydia are somewhat different than with June—clearer in some ways, more stern and forceful in others. Perhaps Dr. L has in his mind the letter Lydia wrote the principal in which she accused the principal of a lack of professionalism, among other things. Criticism of the principal by a school employee, especially in this form, might be conventionally construed as insubordination. In the context of the East End Community Heritage School though, the daughter of a founding mother is certainly encouraged to make her voice heard. Dr. L: ‘‘The board and the principal are still looking at the operation of the school for next year. The action that took place was a nonrenewal action of a position, not a firing or dismissal of individuals. . . . The board and principal are concerned about what do we put in place to eliminate conflict and backbiting. . . . ‘‘The board would like to hear from you about strong points you have not been able to carry out.’’ Lydia: ‘‘These are hard questions. Each day is different; each child is different. I’ve bent over backwards—to cover classes. Who was there, the IAs. We were teachers, counselors, parents. I used all of my strong points. I give 110 percent.’’ The interaction is short and to the point. She speaks somewhat defensively, but remains positive and strong.

Luke Luke is an African American man in his late thirties; he is wearing a coral T-shirt with a necklace. He smiles as he folds his hands gently in front of him. He is dignified. He talks about his mother, the mayor of Woodlawn, a small community just northeast of Cincinnati. He describes how she raised him, how he spent a difficult two years in college playing football in California and in the Mormon city of Salt Lake, where African Americans are ‘‘invisible.’’ Luke: ‘‘I am educated and willing enough to do what is asked of me, handle difficult situations and go above and beyond my duties. I’ve tried to 155

reterritorialization

grow with the school. The kids have grown with me at the middle school. We end with a hug. Sometimes parents say, ‘Mr. Luke, I wish you would smack him upside the head.’ I have dedicated myself. The majority of kids have flourished.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘There are some possibilities developing for the summer. The wellness program is developing for summer. I will be looking at the possibility of supervising and training three case managers. Rita Lash looks to develop a community health person. As the board looks at how it is going to do business next year we will proceed.’’ Dr. L describes Luke’s handling of an incident in the school last year. A middle-schooler had spit on him twice. But Luke remained calm, persisted in trying to help the child, met with the parents, and maintained a positive attitude. He was able to do this because of his prior upbringing, training, and experience. Luke emphasizes his heritage. He is very thoughtful and philosophical.

Greg Greg is a self-proclaimed clergyman. For two years he has been in charge of ISS (in-school suspension), a holding tank of sorts for kids who cannot function in the classroom or who otherwise are unable to comply with school rules. Greg: ‘‘I like to see the lightbulbs light up when a kid understands. I am one of the most professional people in the building. I give the kids respect and the staff respect. I’ve come up the rough side of the mountain. Whether it’s power or ego-tripping, it came wrong. If you don’t communicate and don’t see what’s going on. You have to live and treat people with respect. It’s hard to talk about one thing and do another. A mistake that should not have happened. If it’s not done correctly, vengeance is mine, thus say the Lord. He’ll live and die by his word. We’re trying to figure this out; that’s why we’re sitting here. I’ve done a lot of praying. Common sense goes a lot further than any education will ever go. My mom had four kids. Three out of four are college graduates. I preach, I play gospel music. Did I teach someone? The Lord will provide.’’ The meeting ended on this spiritual note.

As I left the meeting, Athena and Robbie were standing in the parking lot with June, Luke, Lydia, and Greg. Athena asked when Dr. L and I could meet with the four IAs. I assured her we could set up a meeting. There were lots of touchy issues to be worked out. How would the new training 156

crisis management

happen? What about the longevity of the positions? Could they last for the entire school year? How would we pay for the alternative positions? What would we tell the parents about the alternative positions and shared leadership? As I drove out of the Pendleton’s parking lot, strong feelings came over me—the same feelings of power and emotion I feel after seeing a compelling play. At least for the moment, we had regained some trust in the community and we had restored jobs. There was hesitancy, too; an enormous amount of work still had to be done.

CASE MANAGERS

June 17, 2002 What is a case manager? We academics on the board plus the consulting principal meet this Monday afternoon to hear more about the concept and to refine it. Dr. L: ‘‘This is the broadest possible collaborative work that involves tracking the progress of the child in school and at home. Case managers must be in daily and nightly communication with the home. Case managers should carry pagers and keep open communication with parents and set up group activities for the child. They set up conflict resolution strategies and work on ‘social management.’ The watchwords are collaboration, teamwork, and partnership.’’ Dr. L has agreed to train case managers and the principal. It is clear, though, that when Dr. L says that the principal must buy in and accept the training of the four nonrenewed IAs as case managers, he is projecting on Karley his own sense of what it means to be a principal. His sense is one of dedicated rationality—well-thought-out policies, procedures, and rules that everyone agrees upon. I wonder whether consensus about these very important issues is possible. Rita Lash: ‘‘In community health, we see the family as the unit of service. It gets back to counseling and case management.’’ In what is clearly a brilliant statement of what needs to be done, Dr. L summarizes the situation: ‘‘In the past two years, I have tried to help Karley to understand the bigger picture, to work with staff. There is a gaping hole in her experience to lead a non-traditional school. The board asked her to do an impossible job. Karley needs the training too. I will work with the board, staff, and Karley to shape and translate the vision and mission into practice, to revisit the mission and move the mission from paper 157

reterritorialization

to practice. The healing part is that we need to get trust and willingness to work together.’’

Introduction to Case Management: June 19, Cincinnati State Cincinnati State, a two-year technical college, is located just down the hill from the University of Cincinnati (UC). It is a much less intimidating place than the big university—just one main building, with an enormous automotive training and repair facility at one end, a library in the center, and lots of classroom spaces—and it is much more comfortable than UC for so-called ‘‘non-traditional’’ students, that is, anyone who did not enter college right out of high school. We meet in the library, a two-story, friendly space, before moving to a classroom on the second floor. Present are Dr. L, Luke, Lydia, June, Greg, Jessica (a nursing student), Horacio (our school nurse), Robbie, Athena, Dr. H, and Rita Lash. Everyone has come early. I interpret the early arrivals as signs of enthusiasm for the new structures and programs, as well as indications of trust that something positive will indeed come of the crisis. Dr. L begins by asking everyone to help rearrange the tables into a U shape and then proceeds with introductions; we go around the table. As is fitting for a community whose dominant metaphor is family, family emerges as the prevailing theme. Luke talks about looking forward to a family reunion in Shreveport, Louisiana. He will be one of fifty-seven people on a bus from Cincinnati to Shreveport. Rita Lash talks about going to visit her daughter in Tunisia. Athena talks about spending time with her grandchildren. Dr. L: ‘‘I wanted you to have a clear sense of what the training would look like.’’ He begins with the concept of case management, pulls out four white loose-leaf binders, and passes them to the four case managers in training. In the binder is a form entitled ‘‘Academic Social Intervention Plan,’’ which is basically a progress report sheet, a daily review that goes home with the child. The purpose is to monitor the child daily and engage the family with what the child is doing. Each child will have an individualized profile. Dr. L speaks as someone who has been through many trials with many kids and many families. His patience and determination are clear; he is intensely serious in a caring and deliberate way. There is, again, a sense of spirituality to his approach. His respect for the group is reciprocal. Dr. L emphasizes the concepts of partnership and collaboration—that

158

crisis management

is, the importance of case managers collaborating with the other people on the child’s intervention team: teachers, administrators, social service people, family, and community members who affect the child’s life. The idea is to build a complete picture of the child. Community members have a longstanding history with children and families. Most important is the perspective of the parent; we want the family and Johnny [the prototypical student] to open up and feel comfortable to present his perspective. The next step is to construct a plan of action: that is, to hear from the Intervention Team what will help the child move forward. We may need a representative from the community, someone the family respects, such as a minister or a friend. We want to find one unique person that provides the glue. The plan has to be one that you, the case manager, can, in fact, manage. We would need you to go out beyond the school, talk to the physician and others, to craft the holistic plan for Johnny. We need to see clear indications that Johnny is moving forward. Academically, case managers need to observe Johnny in class. Is he engaged and participating? How are his test scores? Socially, if fighting has occurred, we record it. Can Johnny go for two weeks without fighting? We also look at attendance. What is the evidence that Johnny is moving forward? The progress report sheet is the daily record. It is important that the progress report sheet goes home. Our plan for the summer is to set up focus groups working with children on character building—what it means to be respectful and law-abiding. There has to be community buy-in so they know what the word of the week is. A student court that models real court is very important.

Dr. L introduces Mr. S, an experienced case manager. He is an African American man in his late forties or early fifties. Mr. S: ‘‘You’re going to be bridging all sorts of gaps. That kid has to have total confidence in you. Make sure that their parents and guardians know you. The progress report is very important. You have to make people do it. You get copies of those things. You have to stay on top of things. As the student’s case manager, you must be with the student at court. Keep the student supported and on task even when they are doing better. Make sure you are seen by that student every day. Keep the parents involved. Don’t do everything for them.’’ The focus then shifts to Rita Lash, who is coordinating the health and wellness program based at the school. In her usual friendly and collaborative style, which validates local knowledge, she begins by saying, ‘‘We’re

159

reterritorialization

going to make up our activities together. I have an outline. Everybody here has different knowledges about health. Our health assessment of the community will focus on assets mapping. In school health nursing, our primary unit of intervention is the family. Health and wellness will be participative. Community health is nonlinear. Is life always linear? No. It’s intuitive. What’s an East Ender?’’ Robbie: ‘‘I’m talking about heritage and where your heart is. Being an East Ender is commitment to the neighborhood.’’ Athena: ‘‘It’s a comfort zone.’’ Robbie: ‘‘We were lucky enough to be born in the East End.’’ Luke: ‘‘It’s not a place by the river taken over by realtors. It’s a family centered place, a relaxed place to go. It’s a shared dream of what the East End can become.’’ Robbie: ‘‘How proactive can this wellness center be as far as the city is concerned?’’ Rita Lash: ‘‘It can be extremely proactive.’’ Rita also emphasizes how interconnected the case managers are with health and wellness. Horacio, our school nurse, attests to the fact that case managers played a big part in Project Succeed, a program for high-risk kids that folded a few years ago. Since the program operated in the Highlands building, and since Dr. L was in charge of the program, there are some automatic links between it and EECHS. At the post-meeting meeting, that is, the gathering in the parking lot, the four new case managers express their anxieties about Karley’s cooperation with the whole program. Would she sabotage everything they were trying to do with the kids? How could they trust her? Would she trust them? These are all very important questions. One thing is clear: case managers make so much sense for our school that they seem inevitable. In fact, Robbie has commented several times that we should have opened the school with case managers in place. Whether or not we would have the funds to bring everyone back remained to be seen on this June morning.

A few days later, on June 24, the executive board met for the purpose of setting goals for the 2002–2003 school year. The meeting was arranged to get everyone on the same page, especially with regard to case managers and their relationship to the original mission of the school as set forth by the founding mothers. After some consultation with Dr. L, the following agenda was e-mailed by the board president to all board members in advance of the meeting: 160

crisis management Board Meeting Agenda Discussion of the averted crisis: Where are we now Suggested direction Establish big picture goals for 2002–2003 A joint facilitated discussion for consensus of where we are and where we need to go Discussion with the principal (set aside appraisal), begin to establish performance goals related to the big picture goals Next Steps Old Business New Business Things to Consider as Possible Big Picture Goals Improved Academic Achievement Improved Self Discipline/Staff and Students Improved Professionalism: Attendance, attitude, cooperation, and team spirit Improved Leadership of the school—shared, inclusive, and communitybased Improved Parent and Community Involvement How to establish healing, build trust and a sense of family How to assure the operation of the school matches the mission set forth by the Founding Mothers How to build a cohesive and unified board How to build a cohesive working relationship with the principal by this unified board

The above agenda represents an enormous amount of work; it is both a summary of past issues and a forward-thinking document of future work to be done.

On Friday, June 28, 2002, several days after the executive board meeting, the principal sent an e-mail to the entire board and staff that had been downloaded from the Internet about something called ‘‘Founder’s Syndrome.’’ The essence of this three-page, single-spaced e-mail was the following: founders of nonprofit organizations often hold onto an old and unrealistic view of an organization and represent a ‘‘pattern of negative 161

reterritorialization

or undesirable behavior on the part of the founders of a non-profit organization.’’ The term syndrome, of course, denotes pathology. Once again, Karley was attempting to extract key people from the school—another effort of deterritorialization. Founding mothers, especially community founding mothers such as Robbie and Athena, were critical to the function of the school. Our grant writer handled our politics with the school board. The other founding mothers provided additional support, including research, evaluation, and teacher training. To take the founding mothers out of the school would completely change its mission and charter. Perhaps this was exactly what Karley wanted. The executive board meeting had been tense, but our consulting principal and board chair felt that feelings had been aired and the board was ready to move forward. The principal clearly had seen things differently. For her, case managers from the community meant a loss of control. Robbie’s take on the e-mail was, ‘‘If she can get rid of all of us [founding mothers, read, community advocates] then she doesn’t have to bring back the [community-based] case managers.’’ Jenel, the chair of the board, wanted very much to confront the principal to ask about her intentions in sending the Founder’s Syndrome e-mail. As I thought more and more about Founder’s Syndrome, I became increasingly distressed and outraged. Our school was not some small-scale, fly-by-night community nonprofit organization. It had been a long time in the making. Moreover, it was built on a solid research base, a set of trusting relationships, and collaborative partnerships between community leaders, professors, and advocates of public education. We had already lost one of the founding mothers, Dr. D, to another urban school in a diverse, largely white Appalachian community on the west side of town. EECHS is a community school, and two of the founding mothers are community leaders who have spent their whole lives in the East End. Three of the would-be case managers are related either by blood or practical kinship to Athena and/or Robbie, and the fourth has a very close relationship to Athena through their church. Was it these relationships that the principal was setting out to eliminate from the school? Case managers are community people who intensify and strengthen community practices by committing the school to community families. They personify community strengths, and their training makes them action-oriented; that is, they are capable of carrying out plans that bring kids back into the strong community fold. They provide the kids with the skills to give back to the community, so that they perhaps might even become EECHS teachers themselves. Becoming schooled in urban memory and putting memory into practice is their job. They know what works 162

crisis management

and what does not. They know how to help the kids and their families combine common sense and book learning and use one to strengthen the other. Karley, on the other hand, seemed to be chipping away at community practices, and especially at memory. Robbie thought that memory might disappear. To get rid of the founders was to suggest an erasure of memory—in effect, to create a school that was a tabula rasa, a blank slate, in the sense that community and historical contexts would be diminished to mere details. Karley seemed to want to transform the school into something other than the mission and vision as put forth by the founding mothers, to deny community, to render the school unfamiliar and ungrounded—in short, to fashion a deterritorialized school without urban memory.

163

t w e lv e

B O R D E R L A N D S , FA C T I O N S , AND INVERT ED IMAGINED C OM M U N I T I E S

The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility. Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea, which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion. —p a u l o f r e i r e, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

The pedagogy of the oppressed, which is the pedagogy of people engaged in the fight for their own liberation, has its roots here. And those who recognize, or begin to recognize, themselves as oppressed must be among the developers of this pedagogy. No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption. The pedagogy of the oppressed, animated by authentic, humanist (not humanitarian) generosity, presents itself as a pedagogy of humankind. Pedagogy which begins with the egoistic interests of the oppressors (an egoism cloaked in the false generosity of paternalism) and makes the oppressed the objects of its humanitarianism, itself maintains and embodies oppression. It is an instrument of dehumanization. This is why, as we affirmed earlier, the pedagogy of the oppressed cannot be developed or practiced by the oppressors. It would be a contradiction in terms if

164

borderlands, factions, and imagined communities

the oppressors not only defended but actually implemented a liberating education. —Ibid.

E V E N I N G , J U LY 16 , 2 0 0 2 Two meetings: first a finance committee meeting, then a wellness/case manager meeting. The members of the finance committee debate the decision to give up the school’s leased office space in the Pendleton Heritage Center (PHC). Robbie and I have both worked for ten years on the Pendleton project and feel that supporting it is an important symbolic as well as financial gesture. East Enders know of the many attempts of outsiders to divide and conquer the community; they know that sticking together is important. It is unclear how the decision to abandon the Pendleton space was made in the first place; input from the community was not sought. The wellness committee meeting is only the second for the group. The goal of this meeting is to begin to lay out a plan for a community health assessment. Robbie constructs a beautiful map on bright yellow paper. Her usual humor is evident—in the middle of the map, in the section marked ‘‘the park,’’ she has placed a sticker with a dog peeing on a tree.

THE BORDERLAND REVEALS ITSELF During the ongoing discussion of case managers and community health workers, Karley was offered two other jobs in the school district. She sent Robbie an instant message discussing the main topics of the day. In the conversation, she acknowledges the conflicts and tensions that make up the complex borderland: teaching, teachers, kids, proficiency test scores, and relationships among staff and board, especially administrative staff. Memory comes into play in an important way—powerfully, in fact, and Karley realizes it. Both Karley and Robbie are candid but guarded, and there are many ironies. The conversation begins with Karley complimenting Robbie on her map of the community, but the real issue has to do with the exit of the school from the PHC. Robbie does not want to break ties with her former and, at this point, most successful project. They share their inabilities to

165

reterritorialization

understand the decisions made by the board, and Karley says that she is leaning very heavily on faith to guide her own decision-making. After having been offered two other jobs, she has decided to remain at EECHS, but she is not really sure she has made the right decision. Robbie concurs that prayer helps her to let go of hard feelings and proceeds to question Karley about how she landed a new job. Karley, however, stays focused on her own relationships with the board and her feelings about her proposals being constantly rejected. She does address Robbie’s rather detailed questions about the nature of her new offer and reveals that it would have been only a one-year contract. Robbie maintains a friendly and casual tone throughout the conversation, whereas Karley seems quite intent upon steering Robbie to her side by discussing support for Pendleton Heritage Center projects for community residents. Karley returns constantly to the topic of her role as principal and to her struggles to try to please the various constituencies. ‘‘Somebody is always gonna be mad.’’ She is resigned to this inevitability and goes on at some length about her good intentions, then returns to some of the practical tasks at hand, such as enrollment flyers. There is a musical quality to the conversation in that multiple themes are introduced, elaborated somewhat, then stopped, then picked up again. Robbie returns to the move out of the Pendleton and gently lectures Karley about treating her colleagues fairly and respectfully by consulting people about the move: ‘‘Not asking anyone’s opinion on the move was again not the right way to do things.’’ Karley agrees that consultation would have been good after Robbie, adopting the tone of a willing servant of the school, quickly adds, ‘‘Flyers are no problem.’’ She then moves on to the need to stop the fighting— in effect to neutralize the borderland by trying to ‘‘come to a common ground.’’ She asks, ‘‘Does where Athena’s office is impact test scores? Is our renting a space gonna help students pass their tests?’’ Robbie then proceeds to discuss how these issues affect morale and, in turn, the success of the kids. She is adopting a holistic, community-based perspective and is trying to teach this way of thinking to Karley. Shared goals are very important to Robbie, and she tries to convince Karley, who repeatedly returns to her familiar refrains about the success of the kids, that school staff have other agendas or are simply uncertain about where they are going—‘‘what they want to be when they grow up,’’ as Robbie puts it. Karley acknowledges that Robbie may be referring to her, and Robbie nicely dodges the issue. Karley sees things in psychological terms and mentions the possibility of having a long retreat-like meeting to ‘‘get it all off our chest’’ and ‘‘clear

166

borderlands, factions, and imagined communities

the air.’’ Robbie, however, is skeptical and says, ‘‘It may clear the air for the moment but as we all know things said are not easily forgotten and when would the fog start drifting again? Not to beat a dead horse but I really want to move forward one day at a time and think positive, not dwell on what can not be changed or words that can not be taken back.’’ Ironically, after all of her battles with Robbie, Karley confides in her. When Karley, who has a penchant for clichés, says, ‘‘Life is too short,’’ Robbie responds, ‘‘And sometimes memories are too long.’’ Karley then acknowledges with emphasis that Robbie’s statement is ‘‘very powerful.’’ Unfortunately, Karley does not even begin to understand how important Robbie’s and Athena’s memories really are. Memories shape everything they think and do. Their memories also create additional borderlands, as the gap grows between Robbie’s and Athena’s memories of school and the everyday realities they experience under Karley’s leadership. The concept of the borderland raises issues about the nature of community—East End community, school community, the city, and cities generally. Within these the concept also raises questions about the relationships between different kinds of communities: imagined,1 real, and combinations of the two. The school can be thought of as an ‘‘inverted’’ imagined community. That is, unlike most imagined communities, which result from a diaspora, a spreading out of people of common origin from a community or nation of origin, the inverted imagined community school represents a funneling in of people from different place-based communities with different interests (including class interests), motivations, philosophies, and beliefs (about children, family, and community, especially). Although the school is contained within a building, it is not a community with a territorial base. Both imagined and inverted imagined communities are deterritorialized. In reality, cities themselves are becoming inverted imagined communities, seething with ethnic, racial, and class diversity but contained in the sense that people bump right up against one another and the economic disparities are visible for all to see. An important contradiction, or irony, is manifested here. EECHS is a school within a community that takes the form of a deterritorialized, ‘‘inverted’’ imagined community whose diverse residents have extremely strong place identification. Place identification, in turn, is really a metaphor for class. So another way to understand the dynamics is to see the school as an urban place where different class interests come together and conflict. The class dynamics are complicated and must be dissected carefully. We have a school structure, itself hierarchical, placed within a community that is for the most part, but

167

reterritorialization

with some variation, homogeneously working-class, with the traditional leveling mechanisms. School success is an avenue for upward mobility in this and most other countries, so that dynamic also exists. Within the school itself, there are staff members who view their work in terms of the personal prestige and power it confers, including job mobility. Karley talks a lot about kids, test scores, and collaboration, but this talk is just that, talk—words that tell people, especially the board, what Karley thinks they want to hear. There are other staff members, especially the lower-paid ones, who see their work as a community calling. These differences are at the root of the factions in the school; they define clearly the features of the borderland. Those members of the principal’s faction who claim authenticity as East Enders but who have, in fact, violated every tenet held to be important in the community are more strongly criticized by community leaders and residents than the principal herself. These expatriate East Enders are viewed as disloyal to their own community, as somehow self-serving and climbing. Their loyalties to the principal are considered misguided and mistaken—a forsaking of East End community and identity. Curiously, Robbie’s nephew is steadfastly loyal to Karley. East Enders have great difficulty accepting this relationship, since it seems to be a kind of expatriatism. Andy has, in effect, abandoned his homeland and his family and defected from the East End. His disloyalty is accentuated by the fact that for years he was his aunt’s protégé and favorite friend and confidant. Now he supports an outsider who has generated constant conflict with his aunt for more than two years. Andy claims authenticity as an East Ender, but he also identifies with someone whose conventional philosophy of education is aligned with a system that historically has failed East Enders. To argue that different communities within the school line up either behind the principal or against her is, in reality, too simple. That the school is situated within a concrete, face-to-face community, with its own practices and leaders, provides much of the complexity and richness of the whole project. As the school evolves, community practices and the concerns of the leaders employed there intensify as these practices and expectations clash with a struggling staff and an underdeveloped curriculum. The implications for theorizing the city are substantial. If the city is seen as a receptacle (much like the school building) into which diverse cultural groups flow, then the city (without essentializing it) can be understood also as an inverted imagined community. It is deterritorialized in the same sense as the school—also with place-attached stakeholders and outsiders (immigrants). There is a definite build-up of pressure in these

168

borderlands, factions, and imagined communities

urban borderlands—not just tensions among groups, but power dynamics between individuals as they jockey for control of the urban landscape. As of this writing, the community is in the process of taking back (reterritorializing) the school. The board is looking at a restructuring plan that will create shared leadership consistent with the goals and original mission of the founding mothers.

169

t hirt een

TA K I N G B A C K T H E S C H O O L

ANOTHER CRISIS Christmas break 2002, year three of the school. Working with Karley is becoming increasingly difficult. Indeed, it is becoming intolerable. Her inconsistent behavior, inability to follow through on any project, and, most importantly, lack of respect for the community and its leaders employed in the school have caused Evylyn, Athena, and Robbie to announce to a small group of board members that unless some quick and substantial changes are made in school structure and decision making they, the triumvirate of community leadership known as the EECHS administrative staff, will resign. Their threatened resignation is indeed a crisis of major proportions, for of the people who are absolutely essential to the very existence of the school, Robbie, Athena, and Evylyn are critical. They are the community heart and soul in the school, every day and many nights. They represent the community and the sustainability of the whole project. For the administrative staff to exit would be tantamount not just to taking the community out of the school and once again deterritorializing it, but to erasing and eliminating the community from the school. Urban communities without urban people are empty. On Sunday, January 5, 2003, in an attempt to construct a plan for dealing with this crisis, Jenel, our board president, now in her second year, brings Evylyn, Athena, and Robbie together with the consulting principal, Dr. L. Jenel sets the tone for the meeting by saying, ‘‘Dr. H and I have been the sounding boards for Evylyn, Robbie, and Athena.’’ Jenel wants to make it clear that the gathering belongs to and is at the request of the three community leaders, not the three board members present.

170

taking back t he school

Robbie: ‘‘What upset me the most in the last month is Karley’s complete disregard for what the board has to say. She waited a week, had three assemblies [one for each level of the school]. She announced that I would be upset with her and went ahead and said that the school wasn’t going to be there next year. ‘‘Kids confronted me in the cafeteria anxiously asking are we not having school next year? The last month has been the worst I’ve ever seen it. She doesn’t have respect. I want to save the school.’’ Athena: ‘‘Her pitting one staff member against the other [rolling her eyes]. You see, she has this clique; she lied about the raise. I told all staff that. She blames everything on someone else. She disrespects us—all of us. I don’t know why she held a counseling meeting when you [looking at Dr. L] were not here.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘I said to Karley that I did not want my student to meet with the teachers unless I was there.’’ Athena: ‘‘We can’t keep going the way we’ve been. She has been sending kids home for ten days. These kids need to be in school. She won’t meet with our administrative team.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘She was to apologize for the mishap about her evaluation meeting.’’ (Karley had sent a very arrogant e-mail to Jenel after missing an evaluation meeting that had been set up clearly and weeks in advance.) Jenel: ‘‘Nothing remotely apologetic ever happened. I have termed where we are now as a crisis.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘It is at a point where Karley is going to have to understand that the climate that has been created can’t go on—what is going on is not healthy for the school or for her. Does she know where things are? Is she willing to work with this to turn it around?’’ Jenel: ‘‘She does not listen to me or you. No one can tell her anything. She claims to have discussed things with the board that she has not. ‘‘I am seeing a very large void here. You have to be open to learn [with frustration in her voice]. No matter how we try to help her and broaden her understanding of community, etc. . . . she cannot take that information and internalize it.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘This is a critical point in the development of the school. We have to bring the factions together.’’ Jenel: ‘‘We need you in there. We have a quality administrative staff. To bring us through these critical months, we need a presence that shows calm and stability. When you are in the building, it’s ‘different.’ Everyone is on task. We are at a crisis. We have to think about plans for next year. It’s bigger than Karley. We need to look at the entire staff. We need staff

171

reterritorialization

to speak about themselves. To talk about some of the things that impede or help them do their jobs. New people have fallen into the mess. We need to ask people: if you are committed, what is your level of commitment?’’ Dr. L: ‘‘Yes, you have thrown quite a bit at me. I appreciate the compliments. I do what I do because I believe in children. I want to see people succeed. ‘‘I will try to follow through with what you just suggested. If there can be some technical assistance, we can pull through. We need a comprehensive plan for the next few years.’’ Dr. L proceeded immediately to create a management team, consisting of Robbie, Evylyn, and Athena. Even before the creation of this team, but especially with its formal creation, Robbie, Athena, and Evylyn experienced changed identities. These changes are complicated. From a global perspective, changes in the identities of working-class leaders mirror changes in cities created by processes of globalization: initial loss of autonomy and control and potential, and actual loss of a sense of place (deterritorialization, in global parlance). But these losses appeared to be temporary. Community leaders took on positive, albeit stressful, hybrid identities in the process of ‘‘taking back’’ the school. To be simultaneously a manager and a grandmother, friend and confidant, disciplinarian and counselor proved difficult; all these roles required juggling and balancing. Robbie, Athena, and Evylyn were reversing an oppressive and problematic (indeed, many times chaotic) series of school practices. By taking on the roles of organic intellectuals, the new management team, with the help of board members, researchers, and advocates, was returning the school to its original mission as a community-driven, place-based school with shared leadership, project-based, hands-on learning, and a division of labor (dividing of tasks) among staff that recognized the importance of local knowledge, talents, histories, memories, and practices. Taking back the school was precarious, however. On Monday, February 3, 2003, there was a rumor in the school that KB, the corporatethinking grant writer, was planning to take on an important leadership position in the 2003–2004 school year. The management team immediately threatened to quit. It turned out that upon realizing Karley’s plan to leave, the charter school manager had suggested to KB in passing that she might want to consider taking on a leadership role. Jenel immediately noted that this was an inappropriate suggestion on the charter school manager’s part, and that the board would explore the needs of the school and the options for leadership for the next school year. KB had never intended to take him up on his idea.

172

taking back t he school

GLOBAL, URBAN BORDERLANDS: S U M M AT ION S In her much cited and often reprinted article ‘‘Whose City Is It? Globalization and the Formation of New Claims,’’ Saskia Sassen makes several points that solidify the themes of this project. First, she defines the city as a diverse global borderland: ‘‘Cities are the terrain where people from many different countries are most likely to meet and a multiplicity of cultures come together.’’ Second, she writes about ‘‘the unmooring of identities from what have been traditional sources of identity, such as the nation or the village,’’ saying further that ‘‘this unmooring in the process of identity formation engenders new notions of community, of membership, and of entitlement.’’ 1 EECHS and its many stakeholders have been shaped and reshaped as a result of the crises, transformations, and transitions that have taken place. In essence, Sassen’s model can be used to understand how, even though grassroots leaders initiated and carried through the school development process, the establishment of a new community charter school gave outsiders strong claims on the community and on the identities of its leaders. The claims of the outsiders in the school were very much like the claims of global multinationals and their representatives on cities. These outsiders take over and reshape the landscape and everyday life practices of ordinary people. As practices change, so do identities. If we think of the school as a microcosm of the global city, then the identity formation processes within the school are both reflections and products of larger globalization processes. During the initial school development phase, community leaders worked collaboratively, sharing leadership with researchers and activists to shape the charter and work on securing the building for lease. As a development team, we faced the power structure united and committed to bringing ideas into reality. There were definitely difficulties along the way, but having a common goal and, for some, a common foe—or at least common obstacle to overcome—in the form of the Cincinnati Public Schools Board of Education, definitely knit the group together. As soon as the Cincinnati School Board passed the charter and granted permission to lease and we hired a person to lead the school, the power relations and dynamics shifted. We suddenly found a version of the urban power structure existing within our building, not to mention the almost instant creation of a hierarchical structure we had never dreamed would come about. Community leaders and parents found themselves at the bottom of the ladder. Crises, struggles, and factions emerged in an urban borderland right in the school building. To authentic East Enders, the 173

reterritorialization

principal represented the hegemonic system, both globally and locally. Perceived as heavy-handed, authoritarian, often unreasonable, and insensitive to community concerns, the principal seemed to practice a certain brand of colonialism that attempted to mold people—especially kids, but also faculty and staff—in a certain corporate, middle-class image. Ultimately, the principal was viewed in the community as out to destroy whatever identities people had originally held. Ironically, these identities were confirmed and strengthened in the process. In fairness, I should note that Karley was inexperienced and had been trained by a very conventional, in-the-box mentor. That she saw the school from the outset as belonging to her and not to the community is not beyond understanding in this context. Negotiating conflict was one aspect of our work, but in fact the negotiations, which were always long, contentious, and exhausting, were also initial efforts to return the school to its original mission. Saskia Sassen says, ‘‘The space constituted by the global grid of cities . . . is a space that is both place centered in that it is embedded in particular and strategic locations; and it is transterritorial because it connects sites that are not geographically proximate yet are intensely connected to each other.’’ 2 This is a perfect description of EECHS. The school was designed to be place-centered, indeed, rooted in the East End community, but in reality it draws kids from working-class neighborhoods all over the city. These neighborhoods are connected to one another by extended kin ties, demographic displacement patterns, and the fact that Cincinnati is a small, global city, where everyone, including community leaders and activists, knows everyone else. Just as globalization molds the city into a place with new economic and political potentialities, so is the school a space that houses these new potentialities. The school is a major site of economic development, but not necessarily of the market-based sort. As long as the building belongs to the school district, it is off the market. Unless it is declared surplus by the school system and put up for bid—an unlikely prospect as long as it is chartered under CPS—developers cannot buy it. As a community charter school, however, it provides potential for other sorts of economic development: jobs for current community residents, and future jobs for the children educated. The school is, therefore, a strategic space for the formation of new identities and communities that parallel transnational identities and communities both within and outside of the East End.

174

fourt een

T R A N S F O R M I N G A N D C YC L I N G B O R D E R L A N D S O F C OM M U N I T Y, C U LT U R E , A N D C L A S S w i t h hol ly w i n woo d , ja n i c e gl a spi e , a n d l io n e l b row n

To be poor in the United States today is to be always at risk, the object of scorn and shame. —bell hooks, Where We Stand: Class Matters

‘‘It is at the level of the individual life that the cultural effects of social inequality are most apparent.’’ 1 As Simon During so clearly points out, cultural studies, as the engaged study of contemporary culture, is influential for all of our work in the East End and in urban anthropology generally. Cultural studies examines working-class culture and the ways in which everyday culture affects individual lives. In many ways, cultural studies is the study of subjugated, ‘‘local,’’ knowledges. It is counter-hegemonic.2 Seeing Manhattan from the 110th floor of the World Trade Center. Beneath the haze stirred up by the winds, the urban island, a sea in the middle of the sea, lifts up the skyscrapers over Wall Street, sinks down at Greenwich, then rises again to the crests of Midtown, quietly passes over Central Park and finally undulates off into the distance beyond Harlem. A wave of verticals. Its agitation is momentarily arrested by vision. The gigantic mass is immobilized before the eyes. It is transformed into a texturology in which extremes coincide—extremes of ambition and degradation, brutal oppositions of races and styles, contrasts between yesterday’s buildings, already transformed into trash cans, and today’s urban irruptions that block out its space. Unlike Rome, New York has never learned the art of growing old by playing on all its pasts. Its present invents itself, from hour to hour, in the act of throwing away its previous accomplishments and challenging the

175

reterritorialization future. A city composed of paroxysmal places in monumental reliefs. The spectator can read in it a universe that is constantly exploding. . . . The World Trade Center is only the most monumental figure of Western urban development. The atopia-utopia of optical knowledge has long had the ambition of surmounting and articulating the contradictions arising from urban agglomeration. It is a question of managing a growth of human agglomeration or accumulation. ‘‘The city is a huge monastery,’’ said Erasmus. Perspective vision and prospective vision constitute the twofold projection of an opaque past and an uncertain future onto a surface that can be dealt with. . . . . . . The language of power is in itself ‘‘urbanizing,’’ but the city is left prey to contradictory movements that counterbalance and combine themselves outside the reach of panoptic power. The city becomes the dominant theme in political legends, but it is no longer a field of programmed and regulated operations. Beneath the discourses that ideologize the city, the ruses and combinations of powers that have no readable identity proliferate; without points where one can take hold of them, without rational transparency, they are impossible to administer.3

Like the ‘‘extremes of ambition and degradation, brutal oppositions of races and styles’’ Michel de Certeau describes above, extremes emerge again and again in the school. The school is the surface on which the past, memories, and the future are constantly renegotiated and disseminated throughout the community, only to be renegotiated once again. Race can be read as a code for class, since for many East Enders race is acknowledged but ties to class and place, especially long, shared histories in the community, blur lines of race in ways that outsiders might find difficult to understand. The extremes represent new borderlands, on either side of which are conflict and dissonance. Borderlands are difficult, if not impossible, to administer precisely, because the universe that constitutes the school is constantly exploding. In the school’s third year (2003), the extremes were even more numerous and subtle than before. Karley had been fired, and academic deans (the new term for instructional leader) had been hired to create and implement curriculum and, presumably, to model best teaching practices. The two half-time deans in the lower school, both white males, had recently retired from teaching and administration. Rather than spend time in the classroom supporting teachers, however, these men tested the kids. They administered batteries of tests to determine intelligence and degrees and kinds of learning disabilities, emotional disturbances, and mental disorders. Evylyn referred to the testing as ‘‘pimping our kids,’’ since kids 176

t r a n sf o r m i ng a n d c ycl i ng bo r de rl a n d s

with special-education diagnoses produce greater state subsidies. One day (February 13, 2004), the deans appeared with a group of special ed researchers, to ‘‘turn our kids into guinea pigs,’’ as Evylyn angrily and succinctly put it. In the high school, Aurelia, a young, passionate, out-of-the-box teacher, much loved by the community, was hired as academic dean. Unfortunately, there were many important community and school principles and practices that she did not understand. For example, she did not appreciate how important it was to attend to details of budget and safety when arranging field trips and Valentine’s Day dances, ordering art supplies, and a whole host of other issues. She also did not know how to use the help that the management team was more than willing to provide. Not lost on the management team was the inherent contradiction in Aurelia’s creating and fiercely defending a separate high school with separate activities, logos, T-shirts, and social activities, and then accusing Robbie, in a rather aggressive attack, of not including the high school in a roller-skating excursion for K–8 students, who had earned the trip by fundraising for the school. An angry exchange between Robbie and Aurelia occurred just after the high school had orchestrated a ski trip to a local slope without telling the management team and without securing permission slips from parents. (One of the worst things anyone can do is to cause parents to worry about where their kids are.) To make matters worse, a photo of two high-school girls on the ski trip was placed in the high-school report to the board at its February 2004 annual meeting; this was read as a deliberate slap in the face to the community-driven management team. Aurelia also appeared to have abdicated a large part of her leadership role in the high school to two teachers, both of whom were new to the school. One turned out to be entirely without teaching credentials, although she had strong ties to the East End as a resident. Her dispositions meshed with those of East End families, and she had real sensitivity to working-class culture. The other teacher, while certified and skilled in the classroom, appeared to lack sensitivity to community practices; he projected the opinion that the best future for the kids was to be found in success outside of the community. For example, he did not understand the importance of family and family responsibilities and tended to encourage students to view family as less important than success in school and work. From the community’s perspective, all of these facts point to letting the kids down, a situation the community and the board will not tolerate. Attempting to administer this set of contradictions and complexities seemed almost impossible. 177

reterritorialization

The board, staff, and consulting principal had spent a great deal of time putting the academic deans in place, but whether the structure was not clearly defined or the people who took on these roles simply were not right, the academic deans were not effective. Evylyn, Robbie, and Athena continued to report their lack of fit in the school and the community. On February 12, 2004, the young East End father of a first-grade girl withdrew her from the school because she could not read. He realized that she was a victim of the chaotic situation in the school. As a non-reading, poor, urban child her circumstances would only get worse. He remembers my picking him up outside of People’s Middle School after he had been suspended for simply asking too many questions. As a person who had dropped out of school in the seventh grade, he knew what it meant to be deprived of an education, and he would not tolerate it. As Robbie presented the news of the withdrawal of his child to the management team, tears rolled down her cheeks. Once again, less than a month before the proficiency tests were to be administered, this urban microcosm was about to explode. There was much drama in these borderlands, incidents very much like those of the school’s first year.

MORE BORDERLANDS Athena cloistered herself along the windows of the school’s main office and had a special partition constructed, ostensibly to give privacy and protect the confidentiality of personnel records, for which she is responsible as human resources director. Robbie dubbed it ‘‘the Berlin wall.’’ The wall is a self-proclaimed border that Athena uses to define her space and her contact with staff and visitors. How the border is used depends on Athena’s mood. If she is feeling good and upbeat, the border is open, and people can come around, peek behind it, and enter the space. If she is aggravated, frustrated, or angry, the border is closed. Everyone knows the rules, even though they are not written or spoken. The school assistant, who holds a master’s degree, acts as a gatekeeper for Athena. When people ask if Ms. Athena is there, the assistant either smiles, nods, and indicates that it is fine to go back, or grimaces and indicates that crossing the border is risky. Athena is aware that her border is guarded and that she controls access—just like in her own home. When Athena emerges abruptly, to discipline a child, for example, she feels she has the right and responsibility to do so, even though the action is beyond her official job description. She not only creates her own borders; 178

t r a n sf o r m i ng a n d c ycl i ng bo r de rl a n d s

she crosses them at will. She is not obligated to deal with kids, but, as a founding mother, she feels an obligation to protect the kids and the school. It is very difficult for her to refrain from providing guidance. She is influential. Everyone calls her ‘‘Mom.’’ Robbie set up her ‘‘office’’ in a large classroom, with spaces for games, quiet spaces for kids kicked out of class, and space for tutoring and touching base with student employees. She carefully orchestrates comfortable spaces for community children. Robbie has had to move around a lot, and with her typical humor she describes herself as the ‘‘garbage barge’’ that nobody wants. Wherever she ends up, she always constructs a homelike space complete with pictures of her grandkids, a coffeepot, cups, and things everyone is looking for. One can cross her threshold any time. Her borders are open, as long as a person respects the community. Discipline is also not in Robbie’s job description, but she constantly cajoles kids with humor and respect, calling them ‘‘Mr.’’ or ‘‘Miss.’’ The formal modes of address convey respect and humor simultaneously. Giving kids pride in their identity is Robbie’s main agenda. Kids constantly ask Robbie why she calls people Mr. or Miss, and she responds that it is for respect. One day, after the kids asked about this, Robbie turned and called someone by her first name. When the kids asked why, she replied, ‘‘Because she’s my daughter.’’ When someone tries to attack her ‘‘daughter,’’ she makes it clear that the person must come to ‘‘Mom’’ first. Respect is a complicated matter, with multiple meanings in multiple contexts.4 Evylyn supports Robbie and Athena’s individual styles. She understands why Athena needs a wall and why Robbie must replicate home wherever she is. Wearing many hats (school coordinator, business manager, East End mother), Evylyn takes her job as the school’s main administrator very seriously and constantly looks for ways to improve things, but she does not take on formal teaching roles. She feels responsible for everything; as an East Ender who has obtained a college degree, she must negotiate her individual borderland with that of the school. She supports students who seek post-secondary education in the hope that they will give back to the community. It is as though she has students on a rubber band that is elastic enough for growth and fulfillment but that is still around her wrist. She ‘‘adopts’’ kids once they have succeeded in graduating or are getting close—all the students, as she says, are ‘‘our babies.’’

The management team had been able to administer the school during this time with a great deal of aplomb and peacefulness, but academics and 179

reterritorialization

curriculum were other matters entirely. Because of conflicts over the first three years, matters of curriculum had received little, if any, attention. The management team could run the everyday operations of the school, but there needed to be an injection of academic training as well. It was time to make some major changes in structure and practice that would both create a climate more consistent with the original aims of the charter and also encourage and enhance student achievement.

ACADEMIC DEANS Since the board had already rejected the idea of a conventional principal and was firmly committed to running the school on a model of shared leadership, it took the following steps. Rather than hire another instructional leader (that is, one person to manage curriculum for all levels of the school), the board decided to hire two academic deans, one for the upper (7–12), or high school, and one for the lower (K–8), or primary and middle school.5 The overlap in 7–8 was intentionally targeted at the vulnerable age when, historically, East End and many other urban children dropped out of school. The board saw the two academic deans as ‘‘joined at the hip.’’ This phrase meant that the two academic deans, would, in effect, function as one instructional leader without having to be labeled with this cumbersome term. It also meant that they would work collaboratively, ideally consulting one another on a regular basis. All major academic decisions would be collaboratively made, with the school’s charter setting the framework. The main tasks for the academic deans, set by the board, were to mentor teachers, coordinate curriculum in line with state standards, model best teaching practices, and help teachers assess student strengths and weaknesses so that teaching would be targeted at bringing students up to grade level and beyond. So that the deans could focus on academic matters, they would operate within the following structure: they would be supported by the management team, which would take care of all administrative matters and the day-to-day operations of the school. In order for this structure to work, the new academic deans needed to be culturally sensitive to the community and aware of the importance of the management team. The division of labor in the school would have to be clearly recognized as administrative versus academic. The management team would take care of all of the administrative tasks in order to free the academic deans up so that they could be in the classrooms, spend time supporting teachers, and meet with the various instructional teams at the primary, middle-school, and 180

t r a n sf o r m i ng a n d c ycl i ng bo r de rl a n d s

high-school levels. In return, the deans would be expected to respect the members of the management team, and coordination would occur weekly, with deans taking relatively passive roles. We had many applicants for the academic dean positions. Some had PhDs; others came from corporate backgrounds; others seemed to lack academic credentials entirely. A short list and reference checks revealed some interesting and problematic issues. One person was said to exhibit disdain for children; another seemed to talk too fast and too loosely—he had a penchant for telling inappropriate jokes, a fact acknowledged by several of his references. Aurelia, the upper-school dean, came to us rather easily and naturally: she had been the lead teacher in the high school during the school’s first year, and she returned after having held several temporary and unsatisfactory teaching posts. The timing was perfect; she was ready to take charge of the high-school curriculum and help hire teachers. Since only two highschool teachers remained from the previous year, this became a substantial effort. Middle and primary teachers were needed as well, and Aurelia took on the task of hiring two retired educators, who agreed to share the job of lower-school academic dean. All in all we hired three academic deans, one full-time and two half-time.

F A C I N G H I S T O RY A N D O U R S E L V E S Before the ink had dried on her contract, Aurelia requested professional development funds to send teachers to a humanities and social science training institute called ‘‘Facing History,’’ which takes an interdisciplinary, innovative approach to middle- and high-school social studies and humanities. ‘‘Facing History’’ uses information about the Holocaust to show how human behavior, identity, and hybridity are created and utilized. Teachers learn how to take students through a series of hands-on curricular activities. The idea is for students to learn a logic of historical critique. Curricular materials, including films, books, and articles, are provided by ‘‘Facing History’’ to help develop activities that foster discussions of identity: we and they; case studies; judgment, memory, and legacy; and choosing to participate. Teachers then use this learned logic to enable students to understand the effects of their roles and choices in groups, how they consciously and unconsciously promote ‘‘we’’ and ‘‘they’’ separation, and how to behave to promote a future of social justice. Unfortunately, as thought-provoking as the institute was for those who 181

reterritorialization

attended, the teachers have not used the materials or curriculum to any great extent. With the exception of ‘‘Facing History,’’ curriculum and program planning had to be subordinated to teacher hiring and professional development during the first part of the summer of 2003. Many issues came up along the way: hiring teachers, credentialed and uncredentialed, salaries, and inequities. Did all the teachers deserve to be paid teachers’ salaries? Toward the end of the summer, however, teachers did attend workshops and training sessions. During this time, most of the staff went on a ‘‘field trip’’ to Indiana to visit a school that had been recognized as a model, especially because of its incorporation of the Multiple Intelligences theory, which holds that people have multiple ways of being intelligent, often with a strength in one area more than the others. The trip was intended as a team effort to nurture school-wide unification. Some of the teachers drove together, some alone, and the rest traveled in the school van. Most of the high-school teachers were in the van, and Aurelia used this time to prepare for, and, following the tour, to debrief the experience.6 Of the ideas that were presented that day, Aurelia was encouraged by the Multiple Intelligences curriculum and the idea of pods—times during the school day when students attend a class of their choosing that is based on a teacher interest. The teacher leads the group in the interest; the groups are of multiple ages and grades, unlike the rest of the day. Pods are intended to encourage the strongest multiple intelligence, provide selfesteem and responsibility building, and provide for teacher and student respect. On the way back from Indiana, Aurelia debriefed the visit with the other high-school teachers and the case manager, who were sitting toward the front of the van. In the back were the primary-school case manager, community health worker, school cook, and school secretary. As the debriefing went on, Aurelia noted some of the learned ideas and her own about how to engage students in their studies. These ideas included sending kids outside to draw what they saw and then having them write a story about it, or photograph it, or write a poem; or talking about what they saw in terms of varied curriculum like biology, social studies, math, etc. One of the people in the back of the van noted that Robbie had been conducting these exact activities during the 2003 summer school, long before the trip to Indiana. What was a newfound way of teaching kids in the eyes of a certified teacher was a natural way of teaching to an East End leader. One labeled it Multiple Intelligences, the other common sense. The hope in bringing these ideas to EECHS was that our students would find an environment that was based more on their own choices, 182

t r a n sf o r m i ng a n d c ycl i ng bo r de rl a n d s

thus causing an increase in attendance, proficiency test scores, and selfesteem. For the school staff, this idea would be a common thread that students would be held to, because it was based on choice. The trip itself was supposed to encourage staff unity, which it did in some ways, but it did not have the desired impact of making one big team. Non-‘‘certificated’’ community leaders were not seen as creators of educational models, and thus were not consulted for curriculum input. In many ways, old borders continued to flourish, and new ones were established. As a result of the focus on teacher hiring, the school year opened in September 2003 with a great many new teachers, especially in the high school, and very little resolved curriculum. Curricular issues were magnified by the fact that each student, in the high school especially, needed an individualized learning plan. In order to accommodate these student needs, the school purchased Plato, an online curriculum and assessment system. Plato also made possible an evening high school, coordinated by a former member of the daytime high-school teaching staff.

G O I N G B A C K WA R D — W E A R E N O T M O V I N G F O RWA R D The following ‘‘from the heart’’ conversation among two board members and the three members of the leadership team occurred on November 24, 2003, three days before Thanksgiving. The situation precipitating the meeting included the following: The two lower-school deans, both of whom came from a state-sponsored charter school called Destiny, had been testing the EECHS students. The deans had also been recruiting kids from Destiny, a school that had received a great deal of negative press for mismanagement, both financial and educational. Major practical, as well as philosophical, schisms in the school came through in this conversation, including the very definition of school itself. Evylyn: ‘‘We are going backward from where we were—not living up to our charter. Enrollment, referrals from Destiny are turning us into a special-ed school. Kids are roaming the halls. They are disrespectful to staff. Because there is nothing expected of these children, they are using rude language. Special ed numbers are skyrocketing. I don’t know if they are labeling the kids. Almost sixty special ed kids, and most of them are in the high school. ‘‘The teachers are not getting help from the lower-school academic deans. They are not in the classroom. They are worried about policies that are not really their concern. 183

reterritorialization

‘‘There is no morale, everybody is mad at one another. We almost have teachers mad at administration.’’ Jenel: ‘‘When I returned in August, I tried to find out if we were implementing the things we had talked about last year. I am constantly repeating. We have been through this over and over. Asking for permission slips.’’ (Small details, such as obtaining parent permission slips, have been ignored frequently at the high-school level, causing great concern among the members of the management team, who realize the responsibilities, legal and otherwise, of taking kids out of the building.) Evylyn: ‘‘It doesn’t click. We are not telling them to do things just because we feel like it. Please explain why we are not a state charter. We must be in compliance. We are not Destiny. We have to argue with them constantly. We should not have to be arguing with these people, these issues.’’ Jenel: ‘‘They have gotten away with it [at Destiny] and they are using these tactics here. There is a lack of respect for the people sitting in this room. They are not in the classroom.’’ Evylyn: ‘‘They are doing everything but what they are supposed to be doing. I gave Jenel the fourth-grade proficiency.’’ Jenel: ‘‘It was poor. These are being used to guide improvements.’’ Evylyn: ‘‘I went to the hospital once a week to bring the student with asthma his work.’’ Jenel: ‘‘The dean has pushed students ahead. The lower-school academic deans are not modeling.’’ Robbie: ‘‘Peggy Hammer tested at 59 IQ. I think this is wrong. They have told the mother, and she is very upset that they have labeled the child.’’ Evylyn: ‘‘Teachers from Destiny are calling to remove kids from Destiny. These are ‘infecting’ what we have already tried to accomplish.’’ Evylyn: ‘‘It is pitting some of our students against the Destiny students.’’ Jenel: ‘‘I have sat in classrooms which our own academic deans have not been in. From the beginning, it has been explained, we need help, modeling for teachers so that they can work with children appropriately.’’ Athena: ‘‘This is not a school for kids with special needs. [The dean] has no respect for us at all. Our charter doesn’t mean anything to the deans in the lower school. They feel that any child can succeed if the kid is on medicine.’’ Jenel: ‘‘If you are not in the classrooms, what are you doing here?’’ Robbie: ‘‘To make our lives hell.’’

184

t r a n sf o r m i ng a n d c ycl i ng bo r de rl a n d s

Jenel: ‘‘I’ve tried to discuss how they can help one another. My principal supported me in the classroom.’’ Athena: ‘‘There’s no flexibility. They sent Leticia Baric into my office crying. We are not the typical white male–dominated place. We are not a special ed, MRDD [mentally retarded/developmentally disabled] school. I was hurt when I got through walkin’ around. They were sleeping, with Walkman radios. Somebody threw chemicals on Mr. K. I’m not havin’ it. Aurelia gets cussed out.’’ Robbie: ‘‘The lower-school deans criticize every middle-school teacher. They are always ready to jump a teacher.’’ Jenel: ‘‘The only person meeting with teams is Aurelia. They [the lower-school academic deans] are not. During team meetings there should be discussion of academic strategies, how to improve student achievement. Teachers must have models to have an agenda. Do we need a statement from the board about expectations? ‘‘The two [lower-school] deans have not yet been in classrooms; they have not evaluated teachers. I have also talked about timeframes, mentoring, modeling, professional development . . . ‘‘The only thing they take pride in is how many students they have tested.’’ Robbie: ‘‘We are not equipped to handle this kind of child.’’ She mentions a recently admitted child from Destiny. Jenel: ‘‘The lack of willingness to get involved, to roll up their sleeves and pitch in. They did not go through writing a lesson plan. The lesson plan must reflect the curriculum that you are teaching.’’ (She is referring to a professional development session that occurred a few weeks previously, during which lesson plans were described and talked about, but teachers were not taken through the actual process of developing a lesson plan.) ‘‘We need to meet with the two lower-school deans. Explain it to them. Allow them a chance to say what they need to say about the job descriptions. ‘‘In the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, four board members will be observing in the school.’’ Athena: ‘‘The deans need to get the idea of being an administrator out of their minds, and they refuse to accept it.’’ These two men could not seem to incorporate advice or suggestions from anyone, including educators on the board. They were used to being in charge within hierarchical structures of authority. By over-testing the kids, the deans created a proliferation of problems without offering solu-

185

reterritorialization

tions. Testing, for the kids, created stress, frustration, and even anger toward the person administering the tests. The management team remains vigilant and active, however. Board members use their experience in schools to solve problems and then to try different solutions, always in collaboration with the management team and the consulting principal.

T U R N I N G AWAY F R O M W H A T YO U A R E D O I N G December 3, 2002. The two lower-school academic deans, Jenel, Dr. L, and I meet. This meeting is the follow-up to the pre-Thanksgiving meeting described above. Dr. L addresses the two lower-school deans. Dr. L: ‘‘Turn away from what you are doing. I urge you think in terms of what kind of school you want to have—the kind of work that is going on in the classroom, the kind of teacher rapport, the kind of work in the classroom, re in-service. That is where I want us to start the conversation this morning. I want to end up with a total agreement that that is where we want to focus our work. We want to stop many of the things that we have done in the past and focus on curriculum and instruction for the students. That we meet after the first of the year, that we would meet and talk about where we are, in the brief time that we agree to do what we are going to do.’’ Dean l: ‘‘One of the things I have come in and looked at is the charter that has been totally ignored for almost four years. . . . How do you reconcile what you wrote, with what is being done? I immediately began to look at every student who had been retained. What were their problems and how can we provide permanent solutions, e.g., the P. family, teachers screaming about the same kids over and over. We had P. kids into the bipolar clinic. . . . Mark is quite bright, but has a learning disability. I have actually taken the kids to the clinic. Until you begin to look at solutions, that’s what’s interfering with the instructional process. We have been here three months.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘This is where we are in disagreement. We are concerned with what you are doing with the child . . .’’ Dean 1: ‘‘You are never going to get at the underlying problem.’’ Jenel: ‘‘There is a lot of behavior of adults that is professional and nonprofessional. Reports come to us and we have either asked for patience or asked for forgiveness. If there is not a sense of community built in this school, where people are supporting one another . . . We hoped to impact 186

t r a n sf o r m i ng a n d c ycl i ng bo r de rl a n d s

behavior by helping teachers come up with better strategies. To show that there is more than one person vested in the classroom. Academic deans would be in the classrooms not as a threat, but to help them. For example, to show teachers how they can work with small groups of children. This was our vision. We looked at test scores, we looked at our accountability plan. The board members are looking at lesson plans. We need the teachers to document what they are teaching. We did not saddle the teachers. We looked at academic deans to teach a class; we need models . . .’’ Dean 1: ‘‘I agree with you 100 percent. It should be every team meeting, not just on a monthly basis.’’ Jenel: ‘‘We envisioned more of the modeling. When reality smacks them [teachers] in the face, we need some demonstration.’’ Dean 1: ‘‘I wish we had had this conversation earlier. My philosophy is, light a candle; don’t curse the darkness. A lot of acting-out behavior is instructional. I was trying to look at what kinds of problems. When it comes to instruction, that is my area of expertise.’’ (There is a curious contradiction here. Dean 1 says that testing should be emphasized to get at the root of the problem and provide permanent solutions. This is done at the expense of attention to instruction. Yet he goes on to say, ‘‘A lot of acting-out behavior is instructional.’’) Dr. L: ‘‘That is why you were hired.’’ Jenel: ‘‘They [the teachers] can talk the talk, but they cannot walk the walk. They need coaching and mentoring. We need coaches for the teachers. We are desperate for our teachers to be able to deal differently with students.’’ Dean 1: ‘‘Issues of attendance impact everything. I firmly believe that everything you have done . . . staff development needs to happen in the classroom.’’ Dean 2: ‘‘[Dean 1] and I have different strengths. He is more the classroom. I have more experience dealing with parents.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘I do want to stress that we are coming back at the first of the year.’’ Jenel: ‘‘Have you observed classrooms?’’ Dean 1: ‘‘I have observed in the broad sense, not in the specific sense. I have a framework of where we have in-service needs: differentiated learning.’’ RH: ‘‘Not a special ed school, do not label.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘The point that is made here is that we have to be extremely careful about the kids that we admit to the school.’’ Dean 1: ‘‘Can we have a subcommittee of the board to review a process on admission?’’ 187

reterritorialization

Dean 2: ‘‘We have a kid who needs a personal assistant.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘I am not opposed to looking at the total picture.’’ Dean 1: ‘‘We need a mechanism to communicate.’’ Jenel: ‘‘KB asked that the deans and the management team submit goals and what they have accomplished. Deans submit on Thursday to the board meeting.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘We have to be very careful about an open forum. We have discussed where we want to go. The discipline portion has to go away, and you have to spend more time on the academic structure of the school.’’ Jenel: ‘‘You need to build a rapport with teachers.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘Need to go into the classroom.’’ Dr. L: ‘‘On January 14 I expect to see how many classroom observations we have made. What assistance you have given the teachers, teacher evaluations you have made, and lesson plans. So we can talk about strengths and weaknesses. Standard-based education.’’ The January 14 meeting did not happen. It appeared that few efforts were being made by the deans to help the teachers work with the kids on the problems identified by the tests. Instructional modeling seemed to be lost in the mechanism of educational testing. We realized that an attempt to fire these two experienced school administrators would work against the unified front that we needed to present to the press, the school board, and the community at large. The environment seemed positive for the renewal of our contract, but the new ‘‘copycat’’ CPS school was receiving a lot of press, and there were all sorts of rumors to the effect that once the new CPS school came online, our school would close. There was also a great deal of confusion in the greater community of Cincinnati as to exactly what the differences were between the new school and ours, especially since we had almost identical names. (The new school was called the East End Community School.) A February 2004 article in City Beat, an avant-garde throwaway with a large circulation, featured the new community school and emphasized the substantial cost of this multifunctional complex. A discussion of collaboration and partnership with the new school was initiated in our next board meeting. ‘‘We are not going anywhere,’’ said Robbie, when asked about the new school. The school is moving forward, albeit as an urban borderland that must be negotiated constantly. Case managers negotiate the borderland for kids in ways that we could not even imagine. June, Lydia, and Luke are still working in the school, performing essential tasks, always beyond the call of duty. Along with Robbie, Athena, and Evylyn, the case managers are at the heart of the school and the community. Luke and June field calls in 188

t r a n sf o r m i ng a n d c ycl i ng bo r de rl a n d s

the middle of the night, on weekends, and on holidays. They always respond to these calls; kids trust them. Innovative strategies are in place to help students achieve academic success, social responsibility, and family involvement. An online, alternative evening curriculum (also used for some day students, who combine online and in-class courses), a childdevelopment training program, and a knitting club that teaches skills through crafts are only a few of the many positives. Our grant writer negotiates the CPS borderland, drafting letters to the superintendent that are proper and polite. On March 4, 2004, one board member said, ‘‘They’ll probably give us a one-year contract for next year. Let’s buy the building and tell them to go to hell.’’ The school did get a one-year contract.

189

THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

EPILOGUE Reinventing Urban Memory

One of modernity’s permanent laments concerns the loss of a better past, the memory of living in a securely circumscribed place, with a sense of stable boundaries and a place-bound culture with its regular flow of time and a core of permanent relations. Perhaps such days have always been a dream rather than a reality, a phantasmagoria of loss generated by modernity itself rather than by its prehistory. But the dream does have staying power, and what I have called the culture of memory may well be, at least in part, its contemporary incarnation. The issue, however, is not the loss of some golden age of stability and permanence. The issue is rather the attempt, as we face the very real processes of timespace compression, to secure some continuity within time, to provide some extension of lived space within which we can breathe and move. —a n d r e a s h u y s s e n, ‘‘Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia’’

Memories create borderlands—images of how things always were, both positive and negative. Positive images of how things were become ideals about how things should be, ideals, for example, about a peaceful and ordered school where teachers and parents know and trust one another because the teachers have taught most of the parents, and, in some instances, the grandparents. Such ideals can clash with the realities of the present, in which a diverse group of insiders and outsiders have been placed in a single old and familiar building and asked to work together. Ideals can also clash with externally imposed rules about discipline and about who has control, creating hostility toward the outsiders and rules themselves, or, at the very least, ambivalence about whether such rules

191

epilogue

are necessary for creating and maintaining order in the school. These dynamics become especially contentious if it appears that the rules are being applied differently or inappropriately to different staff members, children, or families. To community founding mothers, school looks and feels different from the past. School is both better and worse—better because a dream has become reality, worse because school has reoriented and reconfigured all of the memories. Founding mothers and East Enders now work within new structures that are threatening in their unfamiliarity and their privileging of credentials and book learning over common sense and street smarts. At the same time, the old practices of hard work are still in place, and the school demands enormous amounts of time and energy away from family and community, yet all in the name of community and family. Memories come in both long- and short-term versions. Robbie has had her dream for a long time. It is connected to her own memories of school and community and to her ideals about how school should be. In 1992, I was amazed to come across Robbie’s writing about school, the Highlands building, and what should go on inside those four walls. For Robbie, school means a lot of things. Social justice comes first and foremost. School should be a safe haven of tolerance. ‘‘Along with the need for children to know of their heritage there is a still stronger need for them to know that there is no place in this world that prejudice, intolerance, or violence is acceptable,’’ she wrote on May 13, 1992. Speaking as a gay, working-class person, Robbie was talking about race, class, and gender. She also wrote of the importance of place, of rootedness in the community, of having a sense of belonging—‘‘a quality education and an appreciation of what we have right here.’’ The theme of betterment is important to Robbie: ‘‘The dream for a school leads into my dream for a better life for the children of the East End.’’ This does not mean moving up and out, but ‘‘bringing a neighborhood closer together.’’ Here there is a sense of giving back. Robbie’s fear is that she will not be alive when it happens. When she walked into Highlands for the first time in years, Robbie instantly felt a flood of memories and feelings of dissonance, exaltation, and dread. It was the same old building, but it was different because she was different, a person with a GED (she dropped out herself at the age of sixteen), no longer a child, but still Peter Pan, not wanting ever to grow up. She has always referred to herself that way. Athena somehow has more maturity, even though she and Robbie are almost exactly the same age. It is not because Athena has had an easier

192

epilogue

life materially. She has not. But her life has been more in the mainstream. She has her husband, family, church, and the stability of the Hoff neighborhood. Robbie has moved many times in her life; she even moved out of the neighborhood temporarily so that her daughter could attend an excellent suburban high school. She knows herself what it feels like to be an outsider. Athena has always lived in the same house with her children, her family, and, now, her grandchildren. Athena’s daughter works in our school. Robbie’s daughter, on the other hand, has watched her mother fight the fights. She supports Robbie and nurtures her own children, but she does not join Robbie. She keeps her distance. Of what does urban memory consist? Urban memory of school consists of everyday things, done in school, after school, and at home: fathers and mothers going off to work, the spaces in the school, the old drugstore and variety store, penny candy and other things bought in no longer existing establishments. Free lunch tickets and a lack of designer clothes were markers of class in Robbie’s old high school. We did not want these to be issues in EECHS. The memory of the punishment chair in the corner of Robbie’s childhood kitchen is particularly strong in her mind. Her brother had to sit in it until their dad came home from work, even when he had to work overtime. The picture of Charlie reading in that chair went into the exhibit at the Pendleton Heritage Center for all to see. Even though Robbie protests that for her, reading was always a pleasure, and that her love of books was what made her seek the best of schools for her adopted daughter and for her granddaughters, I cannot help but think that the association of reading and punishment had to have impacted East End kids of Robbie’s generation. Surely she is the exception. Class memories come in many forms. The fact that East End kids have to use their imaginations with the everyday things around them encourages resourcefulness and creativity in ways that more privileged kids will never know. Improvising sleds out of chairs, trash can lids, trays, and other household items played a big part in Robbie’s childhood. She has always had plenty of imagination. Memories of race are less delightful. Dorothy remembers not being able to get a secretarial job after high school because ‘‘they’’ were not hiring black secretaries in the 1930s. Would Dorothy have finished high school had she known this? She worked her whole life as a domestic, as have many other East End women, black and white, to this day. Her hard work contributed to her son’s success, however. He has worked forty years as a parole officer, and his wife, also African American, is a teacher.

193

epilogue

In the fall of 2004, Miss Dorothy, as everyone calls her, gave up her independence and reluctantly moved in with her son and daughter-in-law. The Pendleton Heritage Center Exhibit, worked on diligently by Robbie, Dorothy, and other community leaders, now hangs in the old Pendleton carbarn. It clearly features church over school. Family and community function well in spite of school, not because of it. Perhaps church teaches more about life than school. Church attendance carries into adulthood; school attendance is more fleeting, especially for East End kids, who mostly drop out at the ages of twelve and thirteen. Modeling school on church—without the religious part, of course—might make it more of a keystone of the community, a more enduring part of people’s lives, and thus encourage lifelong learning. Memories are not always positive, though. Many East End women have memories of abuse, often by a trusted community man. Danger and violence are realities to be dealt with. Such memories create fears in mothers and grandmothers for their daughters and granddaughters and their friends. Anything that even remotely resembles a sexual overture, including teasing or just talking, is considered ‘‘messing.’’ Adult women work desperately to control these kinds of memories and fears. Safety is number one. Choosing an alternative lifestyle is one form of control that also comes out of memory. Robbie remembers her two aunts, who lived together. She remembers them as strong, competent women with good jobs, a house in the country, and healthy retirement pensions. She probably learned more from these two women than she ever learned in school. She struggled with her own identity, through bouts of drinking and moments of self-doubt. Robbie ‘‘reads’’ school through these memories.

M E M O RY A S A S P E C I A L F O R M OF LOCAL KNOWLEDGE Accessible memory has no unmediated essence, either as subjective experience or as objective fact, but is always in the act of being made.1

In many ways memory validates Robbie as an authentic East Ender. She knows the history and background of almost all community people, places, and events. She can explain to newcomers, young and old, the contexts of their present (current) experiences. A young school nurse went to the monthly Community Council meeting to initiate a lead screening program for children in the school. She was told by the developers, who now

194

epilogue

control the Community Council, that such screening had already been done. It had not been, of course. Robbie shares with others her knowledge of and history with these developers, especially their consistent rejection of anything that might not directly serve their interests. She remembers the time that a bathtub with someone in it fell from the second to the first floor in an apartment owned by these same developers. (I share this memory with her—luckily, no one was underneath.) The nurse’s jaw practically fell through the floor, and she smiled in amazement as she listened. Robbie then shared the nickname the local kids had given the developer with signature license plates that said ‘‘BB’’: Big Bertha. Humor has always been Robbie’s strength; her timing is perfect, and she welcomes newcomers so that she can share her memory-filled local knowledge. In the context of the East End, memory is a special form of local knowledge. Robbie’s memories are almost always tied to community experiences. These experiences, in turn, give Robbie a sense of agency; it is her repertoire of memories and experiences that makes Robbie such an effective activist, whether in the school or in the community at large. For her there is little difference. Activism not only keeps memories alive; it literally reinvents memories in new forms. Through putting memory to work in the present, experiences from the past become reshaped and revitalized. Robbie’s stepdaughter, a middle-schooler, has to deal with her own emerging womanhood and prove that she is attractive, straight, confident. She knows she comes from a strong family, one of the largest and longestlived in the community. The Young Marines have her marching through the cafeteria, but her head is down, her body is bent, her face frowns. She is struggling with the Young Marines because for her the group represents a psychological borderland, one she has had to cross and deal with all of her young life. She is scared of the leaders, who bark orders at her, scared of their authoritarian ways; yet she relishes the attention and structure. She is also pleased with the safety and comfort the school provides, even though every once in a while her mother threatens to take her out of EECHS and put her in another school, one in which her parents are not employees and founding mothers. For other kids, especially Frankie, who could be the archetype student for EECHS, it is difficult to predict what the future will hold. If Frankie can equilibrate psychologically, create a support system for himself, and acquire the skills he needs to be productive, he could be a leader and role model for other kids.

195

epilogue

T H E ‘‘U R B A N’’ I N U R B A N M E M O R Y : T H E OR I Z I N G T H E C I T Y T H RO U G H THE SCHOOL ‘‘Welcome to the big city.’’ This is what Karley said as she handed me the handwritten letter from Lydia, the neighborhood IA who was irate at being criticized by the principal in front of the kids. Lydia’s anger, arrogance, and passion are strong reminders of the kids’ energies. She is young and beautiful, a mother times three. She has a glow that makes all kids comfortable; they confide in her and identify with her spirit. She is like her mother, Athena, only taller and more striking. Her empathy for the kids is genuine. She talks about growing up with hot meals at night. The kids watch her admiringly. They admire her even more now that she and Luke are a couple. His past does not matter, his former marriage or hers; the kids see them as a happy couple, sexual, grown-ups. They are idolized; the liaison between the social studies and math teachers in the high school is also the subject of much talk. These relationships are more real to the kids than the abstractions of book learning. Relationships, positive or negative, are familiar, part of kids’ everyday life and experience. Adulthood starts early, earlier each year. Primary-school girls walk around in short skirts and brief tops that are too tight. How is the school a microcosm of the city? How can we use understandings of the dynamics of an urban community school to ‘‘theorize the city,’’ to borrow Setha Low’s words? What kinds of nuances are revealed by Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of the borderland? How can we find patterns and explanations without reifying or essentializing either the school or the city, without drawing arbitrary boundaries around either, and without making assumptions that privilege one group over another or make judgments or predictions that turn out to be unwarranted or presumptuous? The borderland concept does allow for understanding the city as a fluid, contested, and changing process, rather than as a type or category.2 As such, the idea of a school or a city as a changing process based on everyday practices and experiences is consistent with the ways I have previously written about the urban East End community.3 One dynamic involves insider East Enders as agents who resist outsiders. Another is an unusual kind of class warfare in the form of those who want to impose conventional, middle-class school values on working-class kids.4 Inexperience on many fronts figures importantly— from a completely inexperienced principal, to inexperienced teachers, instructional assistants, and staff members. Combine this inexperience with 196

epilogue

long family histories of early school-leaving, and you have the formula for a multidimensional borderland. Add to the equation poverty, substance abuse, domestic violence, and high rates of divorce, and other dimensions of the urban borderland emerge. Problems of poverty, neglect, displacement, and homelessness are increasing as the post–September 11 economy worsens. Schooling and learning take place in multiple sites, just as the city is composed of many discrete neighborhoods. The community and the family are as much learning sites as the school, if not more so. But when things go terribly wrong at home, when there is no support, threatening boyfriends, drug abusing parents, and/or alcoholic and abusive fathers, depression can be so intense for kids that they become self-destructive and dangerous to themselves and to others. The school can become an arena where these problems are exaggerated, or it can become a safe haven. Kids must not feel burdened by their pasts. At the same time, eliminating the past for kids is very problematic, especially in a small community where everyone knows everyone else’s business. Family histories connect people to place and to one another. The need for on-site clinical/wellness counseling is compelling and must be accompanied by as much tutoring as possible, so that kids who are already behind in school do not become hopelessly lost and then at risk of dropping out, or worse, ‘‘a statistic,’’ as our consulting principal says. Unstable housing situations add to the complexity of issues with which kids must deal. When families are evicted for failure to pay rent and utility bills, and then move to the other side of town to a homeless shelter, kids’ schooling is disrupted. Even if kids do land in another school, they must start from scratch—making new friends and adapting to new classroom routines. When resources are stretched to the breaking point, families might move back to the country, where relatives still live on family land. This return migration is analogous to the return migration of immigrants to their home country of origin. In fact, it is often unclear whether ruralto-urban migrants are really sojourners (temporary dwellers) in cities who had every intention of moving back home as soon as possible.

M IXING OF CULT URES In the East End, the cultures of country and city represent a cultural mix, what Néstor García Canclini has called hybrid cultures. Gloria Anzaldúa’s writings about borderlands, especially her essay ‘‘La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness,’’ describe the agents in the 197

epilogue

school. Almost everyone in the school is a mestizo or hybrid of sorts, that is, a mixture of several cultures, classes, and communities. Anzaldúa writes about ‘‘the consciousness of the borderlands’’ and the struggle of borders: ‘‘Like all people, we perceive the version of reality that our culture communicates. Like others having or living in more than one culture, we get multiple, often opposing messages. The coming together of two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference causes un choque, a cultural collision.’’ 5 The principal in the first two years, Karley, can be understood as a cultural mestiza. She grew up in a working-class community and educated herself into a middle-class, even upper-middle-class lifestyle. She lives in a new house, drives an SUV, wears trendy clothes, and speaks mostly standard English, spiced with idioms from black and popular culture. ‘‘You go, girl’’ is a common phrase for her. She is in her late thirties and is the mother of two small children, who are often watched by her grandmother or another relative from her community of origin. She has a large, extended family support system that includes the family of her ex-husband, a solidly working-class man who cooks in a local restaurant chain. Her level of stress is high and escalating. She seems uncomfortable with matters academic and favors administrative and disciplinary issues and tasks. The latter are easier to control. Although she was hired as the instructional leader, to guide and help shape culturally sensitive curriculum in a community context, she shies away from curriculum and from members of the community. The distinction between input and criticism is often lost on her, such that constant conflicts and crises emerge that match the tensions in the city at large: class conflicts, cultural conflicts, and combinations of these. Yet the tensions in the school are not racial; they are really between insiders (East Enders and/or working-class people who identify as such) and outsiders (people who either are or aspire to be ‘‘uppity,’’ as East Enders would say), and also between conventional and progressive educators. The dissonance (stress) for a corporate-thinking person attached to formal rules and regulations who must function within a community in which informality is probably the only rule is exacerbated by the conflict between top-down management strategy and collaborative models of working. But dissonance is an experience of borderlands and part of being a cultural mestiza. Robbie is also a cultural mestiza, but of a very different sort. She operates with a GED in a world of professionals. Yet she knows the rhythms of the community and has an uncanny way of anticipating and solving

198

epilogue

sensitive and highly nuanced issues in working-class families, especially working-class kids. She works easily with professionals who appreciate her; she intimidates those who are less skilled in working with community people. What she considers common sense must be learned by even the most credentialed. Her wealth of local knowledge gives her a kind of authenticity that is daunting and threatening to those who reject attachment to working-class identity in favor of upward mobility. Athena and Evylyn exhibit variations on these themes. When she becomes impassioned, Athena can be much more intimidating than Robbie. Evylyn is never intimidating, but is always powerful.

FLUIDITY The school’s population is fluid and reflects the movements of people in and out of the community and the city. In the high school, particularly, approximately 60 percent of the students who were in the school during the first year did not return for the second year. Some were expelled; some left with the exodus of the original high-school teaching team. Still others simply dropped out. These patterns were repeated in the third and fourth years as well. The expelled kids are in limbo, disaffected from school, but they are still very much a part of the streets and the community. In cities, people move in, out, and around—out to the country, around to another neighborhood. School employees bring members of their own family networks into the school, just as rural/urban migrants have brought members of networks into communities in cities. The lining up of ‘‘clans,’’ as one founding mother calls the kinship groups, is part of the borderland. People take sides and engage in exclusionary practices.6 Just as the city is a set of communities organized around class, cultural, and kin ties, so is the school.7 Ironically, the lack of clear-cut urban boundaries makes the school both exciting and difficult—a borderland without boundaries.8 The fact that EECHS is really three schools in one, three local structures of primary, middle, and high school, makes unity problematic. High-school kids are adults; they need to create and buy in to the rules. Smaller children are more docile, but they too must have a voice in decisions about structures. Middle-school students are just that, in between—not adults, but not children either. These local school structures are, of course, affected by larger structures at the regional and state levels; these also change constantly. State

199

epilogue

educational policies and dollars are in a constant state of flux, as are national debates over educational policy, charter schools, and school vouchers. When enrollment rises or falls, the school budget is affected. Different school cultures are constantly being generated by different constituencies in the school; many different school cultures coexist in the same building. When crises occur, two things can happen: either the cultures coalesce to deal with the crisis, as with the bomb threat, or the crisis separates and divides already disparate cultures by creating conflicts and even greater cultural differences and distances. Some groups are consistent, though, such as the Intervention Team, which leaves aside philosophical and personal difference in favor of helping kids. The kids themselves are complicated and lead many lives. The image that captures their situation best is the collage. Common sense, book learning, and street smarts all figure importantly in these collages . . .

P OW E R BROK E R I N G : A N U RBA N PROC E SS Examining the role of advocates and consultants in the school is important when theorizing the city. Advocates are power brokers, and power brokering is a major, if not the most important, urban process. Conflicts are about power, and conflict mediation negotiates power relationships. It is striking that within the school there are constant conflicts between hegemonic authority and the community. These conflicts take many forms: principal against staff, teachers against students. The mediators, luckily, are many: the consulting principal, the board chair, the school nurse and her team of nurses, the Intervention Team—a combination of trained professionals and trusted community leaders. Class dynamics in the school reflect class dynamics in the city and the region. Is it possible to provide education that prioritizes social justice, or are class lines drawn such that inequalities not only are reproduced, but also accentuated? In many ways, the school resembles urban communities more generally, complete with internal networks, class divisions and conflicts, and an informal system of favors and alliances. ‘‘Upper’’ and ‘‘Lower’’ East End are divided by class and race. ‘‘Upper’’ is poorer, less politically engaged, and much less diverse than ‘‘Lower.’’ These dynamics play out in the school on a daily basis.9 In sum, Anzaldúa’s concept of the borderland accommodates the dynamics of shifting identity formation processes that are constantly at work in this very fluid, inconsistent, and contested school setting. These dynamics are multilayered, shifting back and forth and up and down in a kind 200

epilogue

of multidimensional dialectic. The resulting matrix is both complex and fluid—it is difficult to grasp precisely because it is changing constantly. School is an urban space full of contradictions—a vulnerable space subject to vandalism, invasion, and bomb threats. But it is also a key symbol of hard work and respect—a safe place for kids who are struggling against enormous odds.

POSTSCRIPT As this book goes to press in 2005, EECHS is in its fifth year. Ms. G (who began as consulting teacher, board member, and then board cochair) is functioning as the instructional leader. New curricular structures are in place that are closely tied to the state standards. The wellness center is staffed by an experienced nurse-practitioner. The computer labs are staffed by tutors. In Saskia Sassen’s terms, the school has, at least to some degree, become reterritorialized. Robbie, Athena, and Evylyn are still playing major roles in running the school. They work in collaboration with Ms. G, the instructional leader, and with Dr. L, the consulting principal, and they are working on establishing structures and rules that provide order and opportunity for kids: jobs, vocations, and college, mostly. Whether these new structures contribute, in Paulo Freire’s terms, to a ‘‘pedagogy of the oppressed’’ remains to be seen.

201

THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

NOT ES

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 1. For more on organic intellectuals, see Gramsci (1971). 2. bell hooks (who prefers not to capitalize her name) writes about the intersections of race, class, and gender in numerous books, including Where We Stand: Class Matters (hooks 2000). 3. Geertz (1983). See also Geertz 1996. 4. See Halperin (1998, 1999, 2002). 5. Eventually, charter schools will influence practices in larger public school systems. EECHS already has, and as such represents a model for urban schools and urban communities nationally. (Another East End community school, which copied our charter and our name, broke ground in fall 2003.) In 1991, the first charter school law was passed by the state of Missouri. Many other states followed soon thereafter. In the 1999–2000 school year, nearly 1,800 charter schools were in operation in the United States, most of them in cities. 6. See Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983) and Anderson (1983).

PROL OG U E 1. Solnit 2000. 2. Halperin (1999). 3. See Sassen (1998, 2001); Appadurai (2001). 4. See Hemmings’s work on the ‘‘Youth Culture of Hostility’’ (2000a, 2000b, 2003). 5. In the 2002–2003 school year of our school, a practical arts teacher in the high school was discovered to be missing credentials altogether. As one of the strongest teachers in the upper school, and one of the strongest supporters to kids and teachers alike, the idea of changing her status as a teacher or reducing her salary was anathema to the new academic dean. At the same time, there were

203

not es t o pages 6 –44 others with higher credentials working for much less money ($1,000–$15,000 less) at equally arduous and important jobs. This is only one example of the many inconsistencies and contradictions evident in the school incentive pay for staff. Perfect attendance is another inconsistency. Presumably, extra pay was given for perfect attendance, but the system did not take into account the fact that those perfect attenders were leaving the building for several hours at a time on many days. Such inconsistencies created ongoing conflict and resentment in the school and added to the perception that some people were privileged, and others were not. 6. Anzaldúa (1987); Alvarez (1995); Sassen (1998). 7. Sassen (1998). 8. Willis (1981 [1977]). 9. Halperin (1998). 10. As mentioned, our team has been part of several successful projects: a new federally funded community health center, a heritage center and exhibit, and now, a community public charter school. For fuller descriptions and analyses of these projects, see Halperin (1998). 11. Bourdieu (1977). 12. Alvarez (1995). 13. Clifford Geertz (1983) captures much of what any East Ender can tell you about common sense. 14. See also Geertz (1983) and Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and doxa (1977). 15. Bourgois (1995). 16. Low (1995); García Canclini (1997); Ellin (1996); Smart (1998).

1. LIT ERAC Y, SCHOOL, AND IDENT IT Y IN AN U RBA N , WOR K I N G - CL A SS C OM M U N I T Y 1. Bourgois (1995: 20–21).

2. FOUNDING MOTHERS AND THE CREAT ION OF T HE CHART ER 1. This expression is said often, usually with tongue in cheek, but is virtually never carried out. 2. In 1967, as part of the ‘‘war on poverty,’’ the Appalachian Regional Commission designated certain counties, from the rural South north to New York State, as Appalachian counties. This was an arbitrary, federal designation. 3. Meier (1995: 21). 4. See my chapter on informal economy in Practicing Community (1998) and also Halperin (1994). 5. Cf. Halperin (1990) for similar usage of ‘‘deep’’ and ‘‘shallow’’ in relation to rural areas. 6. The fact that the return of the Highlands building to the community was part of the East End Riverfront Community Development Plan passed by the City

204

no t e s t o page s 48 – 110 of Cincinnati in the spring of 1992 had no effect whatsoever on the Cincinnati School Board’s decision. The city government and the school board are two entirely separate entities.

3. THE POLITICS OF THE CHARTER A N D T H E P OL I T I C S O F S PAC E 1. CPS paid instructional assistants $11,000 per year. We paid $22,000 in the first year. Wages have gone up since then. 2. Memories of the planning processes of the early nineties surface immediately. Robbie and many other East Enders clearly remembered having to put ‘‘the people’’ back in the plan of the early nineties—a plan that had also been shaped by architects and engineers.

6. KIDS IN THE URBAN BORDERLAND 1. Limbo has been described in the history of anthropology as liminality and has been associated with rites of passage (Van Gennep 1960). Here the situation of limbo is more than psychological. It reflects for the kids the conflicts of culture and is therefore a critical aspect of the borderland. 2. Giroux (1998); Hemmings (2000a; 2000b; 2002; 2003). 3. Sizer and Sizer (1999); Weis and Fine (2000). 4. I thank Tasha Turner Bicknell for helping with this narration. 5. See García Canclini (1995), especially his introductory chapter, ‘‘Entrance.’’ For kids, entering school is like entering modernity.

7. CLASHING PHILOSOPHIES, CLASHING PRACTICES 1. Austen Reilley is the author of this narration. 2. Deborah Meier started a school in Harlem in the 1960s and is one of the great innovative thinkers of the twentieth century. 3. The difference between conventional, orderly school and interdisciplinary, project-based learning environments is not unlike the difference between a manicured, homogenous, suburban community and a bustling city with an informal street economy and a global corporate base.

8. ACADEMIC BORDERLANDS 1. For discussion of ‘‘cultural capital,’’ see Bourdieu (1977).

205

n o t e s t o pa g e s 125 – 1 7 9 9. MOMENTS 1. García Canclini (1997).

10. NEGOT IAT ING T HE BORDERLAND 1. Willis (1981). 2. The importance of ‘‘common property’’ cannot be underestimated in the East End. Many spaces, indoors and outdoors, belong simultaneously to everyone and no one. See Bonnie McCay. 3. See Gramsci (1971) on hegemony and counter-hegemony. 4. Foucault (1981) discussed subjugated knowledge. 5. García Canclini (1995) discusses layers of hybridity.

11 . DE T E R R I T OR I A L I Z AT ION , C R I SI S M A N A G E M E N T, A N D T H E B E G I N N I N G S OF RET ERR ITOR IALIZAT ION 1. Dr. L and I, along with other board members, spent quite a few hours worrying about whether or not the press or the Ohio Federation of Teachers Union would be brought into the meeting by someone.

12. BORDERLANDS, FAC T IONS, AND INVERTED IMAGINED COMMUNIT IES 1. See Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1983).

13. TAK ING BACK T HE SCHOOL 1. Sassen (2000: 73–74). 2. Ibid.: 75.

14 . T R A N S F OR M I N G A N D C YCL I N G BOR DE R L A N D S OF COMMUN IT Y, CULT URE, AND CLASS 1. During (1993: 2). 2. During says of Gramsci: ‘‘For him, hegemonic forces constantly alter their content as social and cultural conditions change: they are improvised and negotiable, so that counter-hegemonic strategies must also be constantly revised’’ (1993: 5). 3. de Certeau (1984: 91–95). 4. Thus, respect is polysemous, ‘‘a technical word for the way in which a par-

206

not es t o pages 180 –20 0 ticular signifier always has more than one meaning, because ‘meaning’ is an effect of differences within a larger system’’ (During 1993: 6). Since this is not a study in semiotics but in practices and the everyday, I will not dwell on codings, but note that they are present and important. 5. The job description/advertisement for the academic deans was as follows: the East End Community Heritage School, a multicultural, community-based, public charter school located in the East End of Cincinnati, Ohio, is searching for two high-energy people with vision and charisma to lead the lower (K–8) and upper schools (7–12). The school is dedicated to serving a diverse, urban student body (pre-K–12) geared to pursuing a variety of post-secondary pathways. The academic deans are teacher/administrators who model best practices and help initiate and support collaboration among all members of the school community. The deans must be able to plan curriculum collaboratively, ensure that the curriculum is being taught, and be able to facilitate and nurture communication between the school and the larger community. 6. At the model school, which was housed on the same campus as a church, our team was greeted by several adults, professionally dressed and mannered (suits, dry personalities, serious, conservative style; the kids were also dressed neatly—no baggy pants, no uniforms), and taken to a room for a discussion of the school and a question-and-answer period. The tour guides were students. As they were introduced and our team was broken up into groups to visit similar-grade classrooms, there were comments about the student guides—how quiet, how well behaved, how orderly, how respectful. One teacher commented that none of these students seemed to be fighting for attention, and that that may have been the cause of the order, quiet, and respect. The school itself was well lit and painted, and barely a child was in the halls. Those who were in the halls were quiet. Classrooms were quiet, and students seemed to be involved with their work. Teachers did not seem stressed and had plenty of time to discuss their classrooms and other topics with visitors. Our team noticed that during lunch, staff did not sit with students—this was something that some in our group felt could never happen in EECHS. The students at this model school were held to a high amount of academic, social, and personal responsibility, and were provided with opportunities that allowed responsible actions.

EPILOGUE 1. Lambek (1996: 242). 2. Low (1999: 384). 3. See Halperin (1998). 4. See Willis (1977). 5. Anzaldúa (1987: 766). 6. See Sibley (1995). 7. See Young and Willmott (1957). 8. See Fernandez and Huber (2001). 9. See Gregory (1992).

207

THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alvarez, Robert. 1995. ‘‘The Mexican-US Border: The Making of an Anthropology of Borderlands.’’ Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 447–470. Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso Books. Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Book Company. Appadurai, Arjun. 2001. Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bourgois, Philippe. 1995. In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Certeau, Michel de. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. . 1993. ‘‘Walking in the City.’’ In The Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Simon During, pp. 126–133. London and New York: Routledge. Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. During, Simon. 1993. ‘‘Introduction.’’ In The Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Simon During, pp. 2–28. London and New York: Routledge. Ellin, Nan. 1996. Postmodern Urbanism. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Epstein, Jonathon S. 1998. ‘‘Introduction: Generation X, Youth Culture, and Identity.’’ In Youth Culture: Identity in a Postmodern World, edited by Jonathon S. Epstein, pp. 1–23. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Fernandez, James W., and Mary Taylor Huber, eds. 2001. Irony in Action: Anthropology, Practice, and the Moral Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fine, Michelle, and Lois Weis. 1998. The Unknown City: The Lives of Poor and Working-Class Young Adults. Boston: Beacon Press. Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. New York: Pantheon Books.

209

bibliography Freire, Paulo. 1970 [2000]. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. Fromm, Erich. 1941. Escape from Freedom. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. García Canclini, Néstor. 1995. Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. . 1997. ‘‘Urban Cultures at the End of the Century: The Anthropological Perspective.’’ International Social Science Journal 153: 345–356. Geertz, Clifford. 1983. ‘‘Common Sense as Cultural System.’’ In Local Knowledge, pp. 73–93. New York: Basic Books. . 1996. After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Giroux, Henry A. 1998. ‘‘Teenage Sexuality, Body Politics, and the Pedagogy of Display.’’ In Youth Culture: Identity in a Postmodern World, edited by Jonathon S. Epstein, pp. 24–55. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. Edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell. New York: International Publishers. Gregory, Steven. 1992. ‘‘The Changing Significance of Race and Class in an African-American Community.’’ American Ethnologist 19 (2): 255–274. Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson. 1992. ‘‘Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference.’’ Cultural Anthropology 7 (1): 6–23. . 1997. ‘‘Culture, Power, Place: Ethnography at the End of an Era.’’ In Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology, edited by Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, pp. 1–29. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Halperin, Rhoda H. 1990. The Livelihood of Kin: Making Ends Meet ‘‘The Kentucky Way.’’ Austin: University of Texas Press. . 1994. Cultural Economies Past and Present. Austin: University of Texas Press. . 1998. Practicing Community: Class Culture and Power in an Urban Neighborhood. Austin: University of Texas Press. . 1999. Third World at Home: Social Banditry as Metaphor for Urban Grassroots Leaders in a Midwestern City. City and Society (American Anthropological Association) 11 (1–2): 49–57. . 2002. ‘‘The Interstices of Urban Development: An Economic Anthropological Approach to Development in a Midwestern U.S. Community.’’ In Economic Development: An Anthropological Approach, edited by Jeffrey H. Cohen and Norbert Dannhaeuser. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Hemmings, Annette. 2000a. ‘‘The ‘Hidden’ Corridor Curriculum.’’ High School Journal 83 (2): 1–10. . 2000b. ‘‘Lona’s Links: Postoppositional Identity Work of Urban Youths.’’ Anthropology & Education Quarterly 31 (2): 152–172. . 2002. ‘‘Youth Culture of Hostility: Discourses of Money, Respect, and Difference.’’ International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 15 (3): 291–307. . 2003. ‘‘Fighting for Respect in Urban High Schools.’’ Teachers College Record 105 (3): 416–437.

210

bibliography Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. hooks, bell. 2000. Where We Stand: Class Matters. New York: Routledge. Huyssen, Andreas. 2001. ‘‘Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia.’’ In Globalization, edited by Arjun Appadurai, pp. 57–77. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Lambek, Michael. 1996. ‘‘The Past Imperfect: Remembering as Moral Practice.’’ In Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory, edited by Paul Antze and Michael Lambek, pp. 235–254. New York: Routledge. Low, Setha M. 1999. ‘‘Introduction: Theorizing the City.’’ In Theorizing the City, edited by Setha Low, pp. 1–36. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. MacLeod, Jay. 1995. Ain’t No Making It: Aspirations and Attainment in a LowIncome Neighborhood. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. McCay, Bonnie. 1990. The Question of the Commons. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Meier, Deborah. 1995. The Power of Their Ideas. Boston: Beacon Press. Metz, M. H. 1978. Classrooms and Corridors: The Crisis of Authority in Desegregated Schools. Berkeley: University of California Press. . 1990. ‘‘Real School: A Universal Drama and Disparate Experience.’’ In Politics of Education Association Yearbook, edited by D. Mitchell and M. Goertz, pp. 75–91. London: Taylor and Francis. . 1993. ‘‘Teachers’ Ultimate Dependence on Their Students.’’ In Teachers’ Work: Individuals, Colleagues and Contexts, edited by Judith Warren Little and Milbrey W. McLaughlin, pp. 104–136. New York: Teachers College Press. Morrison, Toni. 1973. Sula. New York: Bantam Books. Ortner, Sherry. 1991. ‘‘Reading America: Preliminary Notes on Class and Culture.’’ In Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present, edited by Richard Fox, pp. 163–189. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Sassen, Saskia. 1998. Globalization and Its Discontents. New York: The New Press. . 2000. ‘‘Whose City Is It? Globalization and the Formation of New Claims.’’ In The Globalization Reader, edited by Frank J. Lechner and John Boli, 70–76. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. . 2001. The Global City. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sibley, David. 1995. Geography of Exclusion. New York: Routledge Press. Simon, David, and Edward Burns. 1997. The Corner: A Year in the Life of an InnerCity Neighborhood. New York: Broadway Books. Sizer, Theodore R., and Nancy Faust Sizer. 2000. The Students Are Watching: Schools and the Moral Contract. Boston: Beacon Press. Smart, Alan. 1998. ‘‘Hong Kong’s Twenty-First Century Seen from 1997.’’ City and Society Annual Review 1997, pp. 97–116. Solnit, Rebecca. 2000. Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism. London, New York: Verso. Stewart, Kathleen. 1991. ‘‘Nostalgia.’’ In Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present, edited by Richard Fox. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.

211

bibliography Thompson, E. P. 1963. The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage Books. Van Gennep, Arnold. 1960. The Rites of Passage. Translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Weis, Lois, and Michelle Fine, eds. 2000. Construction Sites: Excavating Race, Class, and Gender among Urban Youth. New York: Teachers College Press. Willis, Paul. 1981 [1977]. Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. New York: Columbia University Press. Young, Michael, and Peter Willmott. 1957. Family and Kinship in East London. London: Routledge.

212

INDE X

academic deans, 176–178, 180–181, 183–188, 207 affordable housing, 4, 35, 82 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 10, 196–198, 200 Appalachian ethnicity, 34, 204 Appalachian Political Action Committee (APPALPAC), 34 Athena. See founding mothers Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). See learning disabilities baseball and community projects, 85 and school, 85–88 board meetings, 104–106, 123–125, 150–153, 154–157, 160–161 boat school, 33–34 bomb threat, 120–122 borderland academic, 109–120 agency of, 14, 74 alliances, 47–51 boundaries of, 6, 131–142, 145, 165–169, 199 class issues, 126, 129, 167 collaboration and consensus in, 120–126 of community, culture, and class, 175–190 discourse of, 99–102

formation, 7 and founding mothers, 178–180 internal/psychological, 81, 195 and inverted imagined communities, 164–169 kids of, 74–96, 109, 139 and memory, 191 multidimensionality, 197 negotiating the, 129–145, 153, 188 and race, 176 transformations of, xvii, 131–142, 148 urban, xxii, 7, 10, 41, 47, 50, 74, 106, 125, 169 Bourdieu, Pierre, 8 Bourgois, Philippe, 17 Canclini, Néstor García, 197 case management, 157–163, 188–189 charter creation of, 43–44 politics of, 44, 47–55, 71 voting/approval of, 51, 61 charter vs. public schools, 48 children Benj, 93–96 Crystal, 81–82 Danny, 83–84 Diana, 82 Frankie, 89–90

213

index Josh, 79–81 Liticia, 88–89 Ned, 82–83 Ray, 81 Cincinnati Public School Board (CPS), 24, 33, 34, 40, 44, 47, 49 and community, 9, 52–53, 62, 63, 188 and founding mothers, 47–50, 54 Clark Montessori School. See Highlands community and church, 31, 194 council, 77, 194–195 health, 165 imagined, 164–167 space, 7, 132–133, 206 support, 22 unwritten rules of, 88, 114, 143 community leaders, xxi, xxii, 8, 9, 12, 13, 18, 24, 27, 43, 47, 48, 53, 54, 57, 69, 73, 97, 122, 131, 134, 136, 144, 170, 172, 173, 183, 194 community space and board members, 105–108, 123–125, 129 conflicts and clashes academic deans, 183–185 community impact of, 178 computers, 43 cultures, 198, 200 class, 200 high-school teachers quit, 108, 146, 181 ideals and reality, 191 insider/outsider, 70–73, 125–126, 129, 146–150, 168, 183, 191, 192, 196, 198 internal, 43 philosophies and practices, 97– 108, 183 power struggles, 131–142, 200 principal, 69–71, 98, 102–104, 123–124, 130–131, 133–134, 146–150, 161–163, 168, 170– 172, 198

school’s mission, 100–104, 106 and wellness center, 7 culture. See East End cultural diversity. See East End cultural studies, 175 deCerteau, Michel, 175–176 Destiny school, 183–185 deterritorialization, 2, 98, 147, 162, 168–170 crisis and reterritorialization, 146–163 and globalization, 4–5 discrimination from bureaucracy, 41 diversity. See East End dropouts, 2, 129, 199 drug dealing, 82–83, 89 During, Simon, 175, 206–207 East End description, xvii and common sense, 11 heritage and diversity, 10, 24, 28, 36, 176 kinship, 8, 11–12, 39, 58, 64, 75– 76, 78, 92–93, 147, 174, 199 upper/lower distinction, 30–31, 81 stability, 39 East End Community Heritage School (EECHS) description, xvii, xix cafeteria plan, 28 as common/community property, 132–133 corporate school model, 105–108, 144 and CPS, 47 curriculum development, 36, 40, 42, 44–45, 103, 126 curriculum neglect, 180 financial influences, 42, 123–124 free services of, 48 and Highlands building, 32–33 k–12 problems, 12–14, 103, 124 mission, 100–102, 126

214

index —Robbie life history, xviii, xx, 28–30, 37 memories, 19, 192–193 renderings of, 25–27 school office, 179 freedom, 98–99, 103–104, 164–165 Freire, Paulo, 164–165, 201 Fromm, Erich, 99

as model for other schools, 50, 63, 188, 203 opening of, 12–13, 69–73 partnerships and focus, 9, 38–42 planning, 33, 36, 100 technology, 60–61, 91, 124 as an urban microcosm, 8, 168, 173, 196, 199–201 East End Riverfront Community Development Plan, xix, 3, 52, 204 education changing landscape of, 33 employment barge and riverboat work, 95 and deindustrialization, 32 Renaissance festival jobs, 95 ethnography (urban), 4–7 methods of, 7–10 evaluation, accountability, and professional images, 42–43 Evylyn. See founding mothers

GED, 22, 94 Geertz, Clifford, 11 gentrification, 3, 50 globalization, 4, 5, 6, 173, 174 and identity, 172–173 Gramsci, Antonio, 21 grant writing, 41–42

family and anger and depression, 92–93, 197 See also East End, kinship flood of March 1997, 76–77 fluidity, 199–200 founding mothers, xviii, xix, xx, xxi, xxii, 8, 24, 25, 47, 54, 56, 60, 69, 97, 100, 102, 126, 137, 138, 146, 148, 160, 162, 169, 192, 195 —Athena and bomb threat, 121 and borders, 178 character and credentials, xvii, 27, 37, 38, 39 and community, 52 and CPS, 48–50 and creation of the charter, 25–46 and Hoff, 30, 31, 40, 193 life history, 30–32 memory of, 142 —Evylyn, 140–141, 179 goals and responsibilities, 45–46

hegemony/counter-hegemony, 135, 143–144, 175, 206 and principal, 173–174 heritage. See East End Highlands School, xix, 1, 4, 24, 27, 28, 32, 44, 62, 69, 160, 192 as Clark Montessori, 2, 52, 62 community importance, 55 and CPS, 49, 55 lease, 47, 49, 51–54, 189 as Peter Clark Academy, 2 timeline, 2 See also East End Community Heritage School Highpoint as a miniature East End, 37 homelessness, 89–90, 93 hooks, bell, 175, 203 householding, 144 Huyssen, Andreas, 191 hybrid cultures, 197–198 identity, 126 and class, 199 and community leaders, 172 and globalization, 172–173 and literacy, 17–24 and pop culture, 81–84 instructional leader, xix, xxii, 56–

215

index 58, 61, 62, 64, 65, 69, 71, 176, 201. See also academic deans; conflicts and clashes, principal interdisciplinary teaching vs. conventional, 103–104, 116– 119, 122, 144, 205 ‘‘Facing History’’ program, 181– 182 learning centers vs. rows, 98–99 Multiple Intelligences theory, 182–183 intervention team, 7, 134–142, 144– 145, 180, 200 KB, 41–42, 50 kids girls, 81, 89 juvenile incarceration, 81 in limbo, 79, 199, 205 loners, 79–80 and money, 113–116 See also borderland, kids of Lambek, Michael, 194 learning disabilities, 81 Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), 77–78 literacy and community support, 22 illiteracy as negative stereotype, 17–19, 23 school, and identity, 17–24 survey, 18 local knowledge, 3, 56, 97, 135–136, 175, 199 of children, 40 vs. institutional knowledge, 11, 82–84, 126 and memory, 194–195 Low, Setha, 196 maps, x–xv Meier, Deborah, 103, 146–150, 205 memory of Athena, 142

of class, 193 community, 62, 162–163, 167 and history, 1–4, 197 of race, 193 reinventing, 195 of Robbie, 19, 167, 192–193 urban, 162–163, 191–197 MICROgirls math club, 109–119 Montessori, 39, 51, 60. See also Highlands, Clark Montessori School Morrison, Toni, 1 Mt. Jefferson as model for EECHS, 63–64 Multiple Intelligences theory. See interdisciplinary teaching New York, 175–176 parents, 84–87 Pendleton car barn. See Pendleton Heritage Center Pendleton Heritage Center, 4, 21, 36, 38, 52, 150, 165–166, 193–194 private and public life, 4 Project Succeed, 160 reading, 91 as punishment, 193 reterritorialization, xxii, xxiii, 146– 163, 169–174, 201 Robbie. See founding mothers Sassen, Saskia, 173–174, 201 school divisions high school, 84, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 124, 125, 135, 138, 146, 150, 155, 158, 177, 180, 181, 199 K–8, 1, 64, 177, 180 K–12, 9, 12–14, 64, 103 middle school, 22, 92, 105, 117, 122, 142, 156, 180 primary school, 103, 105, 145, 180 schools. See Cincinnati Public Schools; Destiny school; Highlands; Mt. Jefferson

216

index September 11, 2001, 120 soup, 93 as a metaphor for EECHS, 96 Starbucks grant, 122 suicide, 90, 92

See also instructional leader; academic deans; conflicts and clashes ‘‘Traffic’’ poem, 20–21 truancy, 137–138

tattoos, 92 teachers/staff accountability, 138 hiring of, 12–13, 56–66 instructional assistants (IAs), 60– 61, 81, 92, 147–150, 154–157, 196 interviews, 57–58 personal experiences, 99–102 problems of conventional hiring, 58, 203–204 relationships among, 196 salaries, 48, 203–205 teacher unions, 47–48 training, 56, 97

Urban Appalachian Council (UAC), 34 urban borderlands. See borderlands urban/rural relationships, 12, 78, 197 university-community partnership, 38–42 wellness center as community-controlled space, 7 See also intervention team; community, health working-class, xviii, xx, 2, 5, 9, 10, 21, 34, 36, 40, 45, 48, 64, 70, 71, 87, 92, 126, 129, 172, 196

217