Emergency Classroom

Imagine taking a teaching position with no training at one of the worst urban schools in Philadelphia. Now imagine that the building was crumbling and rat infested, your 6th grade class was struggling with illiteracy, you had no textbooks, curriculum or guidance, and violence and obscenities were daily phenomena.

Christina Asquith doesn’t have to imagine those things; she lived them. In 1999, with burning questions about why inner-city Philadelphia schools (and those in other cities) were failing, Asquith joined the ranks and became a teacher with no formal training at a time when the schools were desperate for them. Before that time, Asquith had been a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

In her book, The Emergency Teacher, Asquith shares insights from her one-year experience as a teacher at Julia de Burgos Bilingual Middle Magnet School in North Philadelphia, the worst middle school in the city’s public school system. Eighty-five percent of students at Julia de Burgos were at “below basic” education levels.

“A child in Philadelphia’s public schools had less than a 50 percent chance of getting a math teacher who could do basic math,” Asquith wrote.

Illiteracy was also rampant in Julia de Burgos. One of Asquith’s students, a twelve-year-old named Melinda, couldn’t read. Asquith said, “I read it [Melinda’s assignment] over and over but couldn’t even decide if this was English or Spanish. She was twelve and had moved to Philadelphia from Puerto Rico when she was eight years old, which meant four years in the city’s public schools. It also meant four teachers had passed her through, despite her illiteracy.”

Melinda was far from an exception. Ronny also could not read in English or Spanish although he desperately wanted to be able to because he did not want to run a bodega for the rest of his life like his father.

Illiteracy also contributed to disruptions and behavior problems within the school. Jovani was a constant disruption in Asquith’s classroom. Once while discussing his behavior with his mother, Asquith listened to his accusations. After Jovani’s mother told him to be quiet and accept blame for his disruptive acts, Asquith realized that teachers really are to blame for Jovani’s problems.

“Even though Jovani couldn’t articulate it, I knew what he meant. The teacher doesn’t give me work I understand. She doesn’t help me. I want attention. Our message was ‘try harder,’ even though I couldn’t shake the feeling that Jovani had tried. No one had taught him how to read or write. His bad behavior was borne out of frustration,” said Asquith.

The special education program at Julia de Burgos was also a shambles. Children labeled as special education cases brought in more government funding, but there weren’t teachers trained to fulfill their needs whether they were in separate classes or mainstreamed in the other classes. At one point the school was audited to make sure they were in compliance with special education requirements. Asquith was sure they’d fail, but the school passed with flying colors. The program existed on paper and that was what the auditors cared about.

The truth was much more disturbing. The special education classes at her school were run by a constant stream of substitute teachers with no special training, giving the students the chance to constantly misbehave. Thus, they weren’t learning anything.

Asquith recalls leaving one of these classrooms and focusing particularly on one of the children. “He looked trapped, like a man imprisoned. His eyes said, Get me out of here. I wanted to pull him out of there and put him in my class,” she said.

One special-ed student, Wilson, who had no regular teacher and was not learning in his class, begged to be admitted to Asquith’s class.

“Miss! Miss, our new substitute is not coming back. We want to be in your class. Please miss, we don’t got no teacher. Why can’t we stay, if you want us here, and we don’t got no other teacher?” Wilson asked. Asquith fought to accept Wilson into her class when she realized he “had been deprived of an education for months. He had gone all year without a teacher, a classroom, or a lesson.”

For each of the students “trapped” in the special education classes not learning, were plenty of other students in regular classes who needed special attention and couldn’t get it because of the unending bureaucracy and mountains of paperwork necessary for them to get help.

Asquith asked Mrs. G about getting help for some of her students. “The mothers have to push for it. If a parent doesn’t advocate for their rights, then the school lets it slide. That’s how it works here,” was her response. It didn’t matter if it was illegal for that student to not receive help, no one had to, unless a parent said something.

“The school system was corrupted, and we couldn’t stop the corruption, because if we tried we’d be fired [or blackballed]. So we were forced to work within it—and that in itself was corrupting,” writes Asquith near the end of her book.

Rampant social promotion of students who should have been held back also occurred at the school according to Asquith. At the end of her year, she failed two students only to find that the administration had passed them anyway. One of the students she failed was Jose R. She had warned him throughout the year that his lack of effort would result in his failure. Sadly, Jose R. knew the system better than Asquith and at the end of the year he told her triumphantly that he was “moving schools.”

“He was right. Even though I had his grades in my grade book and pink slips to show he had fooled around and bothered other students all year, test scores to show that he couldn’t read or write well, and a diary full of my failed efforts to intervene and help him, none of it mattered…He would be falsely promoted and not a damn thing I said all year would touch him…I sat there, watching him laugh at me and realizing the depths of the school system’s cruelty to its children…and I was really sad for Jose R.,” she wrote.

After a year of minor successes and many failures, Asquith considered signing on for a second year, but decided she probably would not survive another. She did; however, come away with several key opinions about what needs to be done for public education.

1) The unions are the problem, not the solution. They are an obstacle to school reform efforts because they seek to maintain the status quo. Also, unions think the answer to all of the problems is money, but there is already $1.6 billion going into the Philadelphia public school system. In Asquith’s school, she didn’t have textbooks for weeks and the books she finally got were archaic and fairly useless. Money is clearly not the answer.

2) Principals need to have authority in their schools. In Asquith’s school, the principal was vilified by many because she wasn’t the “right” race and didn’t speak the “right” language. People didn’t respect her and because she lacked authority there was nothing really that she could do. She had to make things look good for her superiors, while having no authority at the school.

3) School choice gives parents desperately needed control of their children’s education as well as creating a healthy competition that will improve schools.

4) Bilingual education hurts students.

Asquith’s book is a must read for parents, teachers and policymakers struggling to solve the problems plaguing public education. For more information on the book please visit www.TheEmergencyTeacher.com.

Julia A. Seymour is a staff writer for Accuracy in Academia.