T.H.U.G. Academy

This entry is my version of Kendrick Lamar’s infamous verse establishing his competitiveness and calling out his friends/enemies. It builds off a tradition of respect and competitiveness embedded in hip hop. Please read the entire entry before determining your position on my argument.

Se que mis rimas a veces causan disgustos,         I know my rhymes sometimes cause discomfort,
cuando mis neuronas corren                                     when the neurons start running
hasta yo mismo me asusto                                          I even scare myself

Mis respuestas pueden ser tan agresivas,             My responses can be so aggressive,
que hasta las letras me huyen                                    even the letters run away
porque tienen miedo de que las escriba                because they’re afraid of what I’m about to say

– Calle 13 “Adentro”

A close friend and co-worker once asked me flat out: “Do you really think you’re a better teacher than me?” I paused for a moment and immediately responded: “Absolutely.” While I knew this statement would invariably drive a strong wedge in our relationship, I genuinely felt that what I was saying was true. By most standards of measure I had proven to be more effective in the classroom and the fact that I was being called out in public meant that I had to do two things: the first was to be honest and the second was to save face. The competitive nature of hip hop and the braggadocio inherent in Latino and urban culture have had a large influence in my personal and professional life.

One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced as a teacher is reconciling my personality with my job. Going into my second year, one of my close friends (who also happens to be a teacher) proclaimed that I was the “Kanye West of Education.” He made this comparison because the general consensus among most of my peers was that, like Kanye, I had a clear attitude problem BUT I was also highly effective. The recent Richard Sherman controversy leading up to the Superbowl further reminded me of how intimidating an outspoken man of color could be to mainstream America. While I don’t fully endorse either Mr. West’s or Mr. Sherman’s behavior, I do in many ways understand where they are coming from. The capitalist system thrives on competition and innovation. It seems paradoxical that we want our kids to be competitive and prepared to participate in our workforce but we find notions of this taboo in public education. I teach my students to be competitive and aggressive in their academic lives. Similarly, I work every day to be the most successful and productive teacher I can be. Because of this I am very passionate about my work and take both my successes and failures very personally. Unlike some people, I don’t think competitiveness and collaboration in education are mutually exclusive. In fact, I think collaboration and competition go hand in hand, especially when trying new strategies in the classroom or techniques to teach concepts.

So that I’m clear about where I stand on cockiness and pride I have provided the following quote and stories to give some context.

“When someones been holding your head under water your entire life, the first thing you’re going to do when you can is take a large breathe and then scream at the top of your lungs.”

When I was in 6th grade, my teacher had to sneak me into her classroom every day for 5 months because she knew I had the capability of being successful in gifted courses, but the school refused to give me the exam based on the premise that it was a waste of money. In the U.S. we typically only test kids in first and second grade for gifted programs which automatically excluded me because I was living in Colombia during those years of my life. Mrs. Earle risked her career so that I could have a better education and months later when she showed up to the office with my file folder in hand, the district had no choice but to send someone down to perform the gifted entrance exam on me.

The day after I got into Brown University, one of my favorite high school teachers pulled me to the side and said: “listen Jonathon, there are people who are upset that you got into Brown and they didn’t. They’re saying that you only got in because you are Latino and low income. Don’t let it bother you but I just wanted to give you a heads up on what people are saying, your valedictorian included.” While I understood my valedictorian’s frustrations (she was ranked 1 out of 650 and I was ranked 65 out of 650), I was highly offended that she had limited my potential to my GPA rather than acknowledge the fact that I played three sports, was involved in two community service groups, and was in the process of attaining my Eagle Scout rank; all while working a part time job as a bus buy in a pizza restaurant. Mrs. Scott was one of the only teachers to recognize the value of my diversity as a student and so her warning was a pleasant reminder that others may not be as perceptive.

At my old school, there was an opening for a supplement in the math department and so I approached my principal about the opportunity to apply. I was one of two returning teachers in the department and I had the highest proficiency and growth data in the district based on the previous year’s standardized test results. He said he would consider it and never got back to me. Weeks later an email was sent out announcing who had been appointed to various positions and I noticed that my name was not on the list. When I asked my principal he mentioned that he made his decision based on a variety of factors but that I should really consider “that to get ahead in education, you need to learn to kiss ass.” I was insulted by his “advice” and told him that I specifically teach my students to reject such notions and to follow my philosophy of working hard so that people have no choice but to respect them for their talents and abilities.

I have spent my whole life fighting against people’s perceptions of my potential and so when I graduated from Brown and began teaching I adapted facets of my “hip hop” demeanor to my teaching persona. The moment I received my diploma I felt like I had finally gotten most of society’s hands off my head and could begin to start swimming up and taking breathes. I am a proud and loud Latino Ivy League graduate with a passion for social justice and a drive for success. When another teacher of color told my that successful minorities should take a path of quiet humility I politely disagreed. I countered that successful people of color don’t have the luxury of what we understand as “humility” (people who are quiet and soft spoken about their successes) and that to continue our collective success we have an obligation to be loud and proud of our accomplishments.

Growing up, all my idols of color were either athletes or entertainers. All the men, outside of sports or entertainment, that I wanted to be like growing up were white. In popular culture all the lawyers, doctors, and bankers were white while the gangsters, ballers, and rappers were Black or Hispanic. As a classroom teacher, I have taken it upon myself to be a role model for students and to show them what people like them and I are capable of achieving. During my first year teaching I showed my kids different clips and pictures of successful people of color like Ruth Simmons, Michael Erik Dyson, and  Adela Cepeda so that they understood the profound things that individuals like them had accomplished. We can’t defeat racism or classism over night and a good way of beginning to shift general perceptions of our communities is to show people what we are capable of.

I’ve never said anything about my abilities as a classroom instructor that I couldn’t back up. I am the first to point out my weaknesses and the first to highlight my strengths. In my professional life I am constantly looking for people who are great and trying to co-opt their strategies into my toolkit. I’ve asked administrators to show me who their model teachers were and watched what they had to offer. I’ve opened my door to other teachers and put videos online for others to watch. I see competition hand in hand with collaboration. Regardless of whether my perspective is right or not, I think it benefits the kids in that it constantly forces me to try to be better. I think that much of my bravado and braggadocio will subside with age, but as I continue on in the first phase of my professional life I want to make sure that my kids see my presence as a small example of what they can be and do. Had Richard Sherman’s team lost the Superbowl or had Kanye’s latest album sucked, critics would’ve had a field day over their arrogance. Instead, their critiques have subsided and lost their substance as we have all been forced to recognize their great talents. I look forward to the day that I don’t have to prove myself on a daily basis and can just rest assured knowing that my talents will gain the respect of others. Until then I will follow Kendrick and Calle 13’s example in proclaiming: Soy El Mejor en Esto.

To give some musical context to the particular feelings and frustrations that I channel and emulate in my day to day life:

“It’s time for us as a people to start making some changes…” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXvBjCO19QY

“Now I move with aggression, use my mind as a weapon, ’cause chances are never given they’re taken like interceptions…” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7ZbM7ak8uw

“Soy, soy lo que dejaron…” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkFJE8ZdeG8

“What is competition, I’m trying to raise the bar high…” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaMreUKk5Fk

“Mi honestidad es color transparente, me puedes ver por dentro con solo mirarme de frente, Puedes tratar de tirarme y hacer el intento, aunque pa’ seguir siendo honesto ,yo soy el mejor en esto…” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ7mt30A6aY

*The following entry is a glimpse into the themes my uncle and I will be addressing in an upcoming co-authored article this summer*

“I’m tired of these white teachers not knowing how to talk to and teach us Black and Latino students.”

This quote comes from the open response section of an anonymous climate survey that my school gave our students yesterday. In his book “The Trouble With Black Boys,” education scholar Pedro Noguera discusses a similar study in California where researchers found that while students of color tend to want to do well in school, they feel that their teachers do not care about them or their success. The issue of cultural dissonance between teachers and students of color has gained so much attention in recent years that even Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has commented publicly on the need for teachers to be more responsive to students of different backgrounds and a dire need for the recruitment of more teachers of color.

In the past I have heard teachers complain that I have an unfair advantage teaching students of color because I am a Latino male. While I have no doubt that these parts of my identity don’t hurt my ability to connect with students of color and engage them in learning, I find the underlying assumptions in the argument absolutely FALSE and insulting. The connotations present in assertions like this are twofold: firstly they imply that a white female is unable to connect with students of color and secondly they make it appear as if my students like me more and work harder for me simply because I’m a Latino man. In my experience as a student and educator I have seen many white teachers that were great at connecting with their students and I’ve also seen many teachers of color who were unable to do so in any meaningful way. Furthermore, to imply that I am successful because I’m male and Brown reduces my abilities to facets of my identity rather than my actual gifts as an orator and motivator. I believe that these positions obscure the reality that teachers struggle to acknowledge which is that they need to put in work in order to connect with ALL kids regardless of their ethnic, racial, class, gender, or sexual identities. Suffice it to say that out of the three teachers to positively influence my life the most, two of them were white, and all three were women.

I don’t remember Mrs. Earle, Mrs. Scott, and Mrs. Campitelli simply because of the concepts they taught me; I remember them because they took the time to get to know me and showed me who they were as people. It was evident in the way they spoke and in how they delivered the material that they loved the subjects they taught and they loved the students they taught. It was the mix of these that allowed me to recognize their humanity and earned them my respect as a student and a person. When each of these teachers spoke, the students could tell that they were being genuine. Whether they were talking about the content or something else, I never got the sense that they were being disingenuous. I believe that one of the major problems in education today is personality and performance. Education programs around the country and certification supplements, like Teach For America, work to help teachers deliver content but not how to truly perform it. There are few, if any programs, that have some kind of performance and personality workshop embedded in their curriculum. I had a teacher once tell me that she doesn’t like speaking in front of people which seems highly problematic given that our job requires us to be in front of a group of people teaching them all day!

Recently, “Teach Like A Champion” by Doug Lemov has been trumpeted as the “bible” of education. The book is filled with techniques for the classroom aimed at increasing engagement and accountability. While there are some amazing things in the book, I feel that it fails to capture the human connection necessary to truly encompass the teacher student relationship. My problem with what I have seen come out of the implementation of techniques from Lemov is the way teachers have embraced it is as a program; a – one step –  two step – three step way of executing teaching that leaves no room for personality and flair (or what my uncle and I like to call it: SABOR). I have seen teachers in many schools who are awesome passionate people in their day to day lives but robotic and utterly disengaging drones in the classroom. Latinos and Blacks come from an oral tradition that is all encompassing and promotes a sense of community. Most classrooms I’ve seen look like a Catholic Mass where every word and move is predictable and the congregation frequently dozes off.

When my uncle was leaving his research job and taking a substantial pay cut to become a high school teacher at his alma mater his co worker gave him some sound advice: “be yourself and have no fear, kids are like wolves and they can smell it on you.” As teachers around the country begin to implement “Teach Like a Champion” strategies they must keep in mind that these need to be incorporated into your personality and not worn as a mask over who you are. When done incorrectly, the teacher voice and persona can come off as extremely condescending and disingenuous (both of which kids, and especially urban youth of color, are not particularly fond of). As a student of color and as a teacher of color I can sniff out a fake presenter as soon as they open their mouth. As a kid, once I noticed that a presenter or teacher was not being themselves I was completely disconnected from anything they had to say. If someone is not being personal and by proxy personally connected to what they are saying, then why should I? Just as personality and delivery needs to have a flow, so does behavior management.   

We no longer expect teachers to have uniform instructional deliveries for their kids because we recognize that kids learn differently, yet we expect all kids to adhere to the same rules and penalties for their behavior. This seems strikingly hypocritical. When I got in trouble with Mrs. Scott, Mrs. Earle, and Mrs. Campitelli I was given the same initial punishment as the rest of the class, but then I was approached differently afterwards because they were aware of the personal baggage I was bringing to school with me on a daily basis. Mrs. Earle was aware of the surgeries my mother and I had undergone in the same year and occasionally asked how my mom was doing. Mrs. Scott knew about my godson and cousin being born with down syndrome and  heart problems so she would frequently check in with me about his progress. Mrs. Campitelli had seen my emotional ups and downs throughout high school and was very understanding of the plan that my school counselor had put in place for me. What I am trying to get at is that my teachers knew me as a person and I never felt like I was being treated like another cog in the machine. I was not given “special treatment” or granted lowered expectations, instead I was given a personalized version of the system that worked for the majority of students. Finding a way to systematize education is great but at the end of the day we work with people and so we need to be trained to empathize with and engage them. If done correctly, this can create a sense of trust with students that can translate to academic success when channeled correctly (my students).

By looking at relationship building in this light, teachers can stop trying to resign themselves as never being able to be me (after all, there’s no curler, tanner, or amount of salsa lessons that can convert someone to me) and aspire to be a child’s Mrs. Earle, Mrs. Scott, or Mrs. Campitelli. Cultural differences, as far as I can see, are currently more of an excuse to disengage and instead need to be seen as just another hurdle to conquer in our individual quests to be great teachers. The discussion needs to shift from “we can’t connect with them like ‘these’ teachers” to “let’s find a way to connect with ALL students” because I’ve yet to hear one of my white students say “I don’t trust or like your teaching because you’re Latino and you don’t know how to talk to or teach us”…

*Disclaimer: I want to establish early on that I currently do not have a clear stance on teachers unions. I have seen, heard, and experienced both positive and negative things from them and do not wish to endorse or attack them at this time. For now, I want to comment on one particular issue that they have been entrenched in for years.*

People who don’t like what they see rarely look in the mirror. This is presumably a defense mechanism aimed at avoiding what you know is there. For decades, Teachers Unions have vehemently fought against the implementation of any meaningful evaluation system for teacher performance. Although it is difficult to admit, THERE ARE BAD TEACHERS. A colleague once told me that teacher effectiveness, like that of workers in any other industry, must be distributed much like a bell curve; there are some bad teachers, some great teachers, and most are probably middle of the line good. What politicians, teachers unions, administrators, and especially teachers struggle to concede is that these low tier teachers, unlike talking M&M’s and Santa Claus, do exist!

Midway through my second year teaching, the Florida Department of Education released its evaluations of teachers across the state. Even though I was excited to be rated “Highly Effective” I was also  highly troubled by the data as a whole. According to the FLDOE,  Miami-Dade County Public Schools (the third largest school district in the country) had one teacher that was rated “Developing/Unsatisfactory.” While it would be a great victory for any district to have all “effective” and “highly effective” teachers, it is statistically IMPOSSIBLE that out of thousands of teachers there is only one “bad” teacher in the entire district. If this was the case then Miami would have solved the problem in education and moved on to other matters of social justice/importance! Seeing how the ratings were given took away the excitement of my evaluation because it watered down the value of my score. Rather than being evidence to the strength of teacher performance in our state, these results show that our system is a joke. I went to great public schools in Miami but I know for a FACT that not all of my teachers were good and from my tenure as a teacher in the district I met many teachers who were a far cry from what the term “highly effective” connotes. We need an evaluation system that filters bad teachers out of education and supports/celebrates good teachers continuously.

Last month, a Florida judge ruled in favor of a newspaper’s suit claiming that the value added model (VAM) scores for individual teacher evaluations should be made public information.  Reactions to the decision ranged from outrage to excitement. Teachers Unions immediately condemned the decision and said that it was essentially a spit in the face of educators. When I went onto the database to look up my own numbers I wasn’t upset at all, in fact I was proud. The top two VAM scores in my school went to teachers who worked with high need students with IEP’s that were enrolled in intensive and/or inclusion classes. These kids are some of the most challenging to work with and the growth that these teachers helped stimulate and guide is truly inspirational. The third highest score was mine. In my second year, I managed to have one of the top three VAM scores two years in a row. Looking at the data, I was unsure why there was such outrage. What are we afraid of? Why don’t we want to look in the mirror? I agree that my perspective is biased because I have always received high ratings but I strongly feel that my ratings were a result of my labor. If I got a poor rating (with the condition that I taught a core tested subject), instead of coiling up for an attack like a snake, I would go back and see what I could do better. If I couldn’t find ways to improve, then I would find a job that better suited my talents. This is harsh, but it’s realistic. I’m not artistic and have terrible handwriting; therefore I would never be good at graphic design, no matter how much I like art. Some people are simply not good at teaching, no matter how much they may like kids.

Teachers argue that the VAM system unfairly assigns scores to teachers outside of core subjects; I agree. They offer that teachers in untested subjects are unfairly judged; I agree. They state that the evaluation system overall is broken; I couldn’t agree more as evidenced by the paragraph above. All that being said, lets shift our focus from just regurgitating problems to coming up with solutions. If the teachers unions have enough money to hire a lawyer to fight a newspaper in court, they should allocate some funds towards hiring a statistician to formulate the algorithm that would produce a more equitable and fair evaluation system! Ignoring the flawed data we have is not the way to fix the system. Instead of working in a dichotomous us versus them system, we need to come together to devise a truly strong evaluation system that finds great teachers and highlights them but also finds bad teachers and gets rid of them. Without this, we will never get the sort of talent that we want in our classrooms leading our children and my T.H.U.G.’s. It’s time to look at the mirror on the wall…

*WARNING* The contents of this blog are a mix of my opinion, stories of my experience inside/outside of the classroom, and my interpretation of facts. If you are easily offended, please stop reading now. I also apologize for the length of the article. I wanted to give some context for where some of my ideas are coming from!

What is this all about?

This blog is about education. It’s titled T.H.U.G. academy as an homage to the theme I used in my classroom during my first two years teaching. Most people associate the word “thug” with negative images of crime, violence, and, in today’s world, people (in particular men) of color. I spent a great deal of time in my first months teaching trying to find ways to motivate and engage my students. I studied their behavior, their conversations, and their academic strengths/weaknesses in order to look for a glimmer of something that might help me help them. Then it hit me; regardless of our age difference, my kids and I had a shared LOVE for HIP HOP. (To give some context: my school has a population that was 99.9% Black or Latino and had over 90% of its population on free or reduced lunch.)

Recently, popular figures such as Bill O’Reilly and Bill Cosby (ironic that two Bill’s don’t make a right) have spoken out about the negative influence of rap music and hip hop culture. In some regards, the Bill’s are right to speak out against the homophobia, sexism, and consumerism propagated in rap music. What they fail to understand is that we can’t condemn an entire culture, and by proxy its generation of followers, simply because we don’t agree with certain facets of it. Their arguments regarding the culture’s shortcomings obscure the fact that they are completely overlooking the ways in which hip hop and urban culture allows kids to connect with artists, see people who look like them grow to be successful, and hear narratives that reflect many of the issues that they deal with on a daily basis. While I in no way accept all facets of hip hop culture, I do not reject it upfront because of its many flaws. Instead, I embrace what Tricia Rose calls a “love ethic” by which I both admire it and criticize it freely hoping that it will evolve and continue to grow.

The outright rejection of hip hop by people like the Bill’s, administrators in school’s across the country, and in particular, teachers in urban classrooms has led to what education scholars regard as “oppositional behavior.” By devaluing the very culture that kids feel a part of, the message we are sending kids is that they are, like the music they listen to, worthless. In response, kids become disengaged because they feel like they are being forced to embrace a different culture or set of values over their own. This sort of cultural imperialism is a major issue in conversations on urban education throughout the country and one that isn’t engaged in adequately.

As a result of these frustrations, I spent months trying to find ways to build a bridge between the music/culture that I was raised with/by and a public education system that saw no value in it. I knew that I was seen as a “thug” by many teachers and administrators (I dress in what some call “urbanwear,” I have long curly hair, and in my second year I taught with a gold grill in my teeth) and I also knew that this was how they viewed many of my kids. One day at the gym while listening to Tupac (the irony that the man who proclaimed “thug life” would be my inspiration) I finally came up with it: T.H.U.G = True Hardworking Urban Gentleman/Gal. While I’d heard cheesy acronyms like this before (SWAG as students who achieve greatness and PIMP public intellectual with moral principles) my term connected with the qualities that we associate with a “thug” and simply recontextualized them to fit in an academic setting. I explained to my students that the loyalty, hard work, dependability, aggression, success, and other qualities that so many of them associate with “thugs” could translate to achievement in the classroom and beyond if channeled correctly.

I made posters for my classroom emblazoned with my acronyms and introduced new “hip hop quotes of the week” with modern and old school artists who spoke about positive themes. I told the students stories of my own life and how I had overcome struggles to be successful. I told them about my immigrant parents, my teenage mother, my heart surgery, and the reason why I taught: because people had invested in me and so I felt obliged and honored to give back by also investing in people. Gangster flicks from the 70’s and 80’s always depict the “thugs” as taking care of their own and working to make their families and sometimes community better; I wanted my students to understand how important our individual successes were for our collective success. At the end of my first year teaching, my students had the highest level of proficiency in the 13 year history of the school, my advanced Algebra 1 students had a 100% passing rate on their state exam, one student who had been in the country for two years made a perfect score, and statistical analysis showed that I ranked in the top 25th percentile of teachers in the state of Florida.

Midway through my second year teaching the vice superintendent visited my classroom to see the “rockstar” math teacher in action. The man didn’t speak a word to me, looked around for a few minutes and then walked out. That afternoon, my principal approached me and said that his boss had some serious concerns about the way I was teaching my kids to glorify criminals and hoodlums. He also said that I, as the only Latino male teacher in the building, should set a better example. I kindly reminded my principal that I was/am one of those kids and that I was one of two people in the building with an Ivy League degree (he wasn’t the other). I then informed him that if he wanted me to do something different then he would have to show me a teacher with the same type of students, the same level of success, who did things the district’s way… That person didn’t and doesn’t yet exist. Until then, I declared, I will continue to be a T.H.U.G for my kids. The day after the superintendent’s visit I put up a new poster in my room: “Yes I am going to say that I’m a T.H.U.G., because I came from the gutter and I’m still here!” – Tupac. I told my kids the story (I’m VERY honest with my students) and said that it was just another example of people “hatin'” on us. My kids took the administrators words as a sign of disrespect and went to town on their standardized tests. This time, even though my algebra classes were doubled from the year before, we still had 93% of students pass. Today my T.H.U.G.’s are in high schools all across Miami enrolled in AP and Honors classes. Many of them are in the top 10 of their grade and most of them keep in touch with me. This blog is for them and all the other T.H.U.G.’s out there!