Holding in Homeroom

It's been an interesting week. I proctored my first state exam, in which 200 RE-testers took the English II Exam. Some of the students sat there for the full 7 hours and still didn't finish.

Proctoring is a taxing task. Here, there is no proctor-slouched-over-reading-a-magazine kind of set-up; rather, myself and five other teachers paced the aisles for the full 7 hours. I wore tennis shoes, white, with my black crop pants and a lightweight black sweater (a very becoming get-up, I assure you), per the advice of a second year corps member. Our lunch break consisted of a ten-minute break, in which we had to accompany the students to the lunchroom and eat with them to assure no test-talk would ensue. Unfortunately, no one sat by me.

After the much too long day of silence and numbness, I thought that spending the day in the classroom popping movies and teaching mini-lessons would be better. After two full days of "holding in homeroom," I must say that the jury is still out on which is the better gig.

The students call these days "free days" and refuse (more than normal) to do ANYthing that could be conceived of as work. With nothing to hold over them and no consequence system in place (we can't send them out because the school is a "secure testing site," meaning no one can even go to the bathroom without taking the whole class with them), I am forced to acquiesce to their protestations.

So, we started out by watching "Eyes on the Prize," a PBS documentary on Civil Rights, then moved to "Waiting for Superman," the hot, COLOR, documentary on the achievement gap, and finished out with "To Kill a Mockingbird" --back to black and white but a FEATURE FILM. In between the showings, spread over two days, we did a bit of USA map copying/coloring, US History jeopardy, and the ever sought-after "free time."

It was a fascinating experience, sitting beside my students as we witnessed violent demonstrations of racism and classism, past and present. Every time the "n word" came up, I turned red and slouched in my seat, nervous that I was asking too much of my relationship with my students, many of whom probably still do not trust me. I think it was time well spent, though, since from the first five minutes of "Eyes on the Prize," when a student said "Indianola's like that" when the narrator described segregation, some students were engaging with and responding to the material. Yet, sadly, most students continually complained about how boring the class was and how they wanted to watch movies like "Big Mama," "like all the other classes." My homeroom students are DEFINITELY far from enamored with me. I make them "work" everyday, and they seem to resent me for it. Maybe they'll come around someday.

I couldn't believe that even topics that related so closely to their lives--failing schools, blatant racism/segregation--were of no interest to them. Where is the sense of injustice? The desire to DO something about it. At one point, we listed all of the places in Indianola that are "white" and "black" and then tried to come up with a few places that are integrated (the list: Wal-Mart and McDonald's). But then nothing happened. I asked if anyone was bothered by the segregation. They shrugged. I asked if anyone tried to do anything about it. They stared. Am I wrong to expect critical consciousness of the oppressed? Am I wrong to conceive of it in that way?