Black Boy

I once asked my students to write in regards to the cultural deviations amid them and the other cultures they see around them. I don’t do not forget the precise book I was instructing at the time, but I do do not forget one student’s response. We’ll call him Aaron. Aaron was a 9th grade African-American student, and his response sounded almost precisely like this:

We blacks are just hyphier than the others. I guess Mexicans may get wild too, but not like us. We just hyphier than every one else.

Aaron was supposed to write a page, and it was apparent he had just written this on his way to my class from lunch. Even so, I think he makes a good point.

I think there are numerous primary cultural distinct elements we ought to recognize in all our students so that we may better reach them. But I think that when we think regarding culture and race in education, we must keep out of the way of looking at students of dissimilar cultures as deficient – like they are missing something, or need particular support because of what they are lacking. It is humane nature. We look at what persons don’t have, and forget to see what is great. Sometimes we even look at culture in this light. But I don’t look at it like that at all. Instead of focusing on how culture makes students different, I like to focus on how it makes them stronger. Let’s focus on the good stuff, or in Aaron’s words, the hyphiness.

Black culture is gorgeous cool if you ask me. African-Americans are a bold, fearless people who don’t spend their lives holed up at home crouched over a computer screen. They are social. They are sophisticated communicators, and they take immense pride in being Black. So when I think in regards to how to efficaciously instruct black students, I try to hug these fantasti characteristics. My favored way to do this is with Shakespeare.

That’s right. Shakespeare.

Now, I am intimate with the ongoing debate on whether or not we will have to even instruct Shakespeare in middle school and high school. Some assert our low-income, inner-city, overly-hyphenated students may scarcely read and write – wouldn’t it be better if we instruct them how to use a comma before they begin analyzing Shakespeare? I mean, 95% of our adult population doesn’t comprehend the Old Bard, why do we suppose it out of these kids? I’m not going to get into that argument right now, but I will say this: I instruct Shakespeare for a potpourri of reasons, and one of them is because my African-American boys love it.

Let’s talk with regards to another Black student of mine. We’ll call him by a nickname: Nay-Nay. (No I didn’t make that up). I had Nay-Nay in my 9th grade English class two years ago. Nay-Nay was failing my class. He never did homework, and sat uninterested for the primary quarter while we made our way through The House on Mango Street. Nay-Nay was also very ghetto. He would come into class wearing the same black beanie each day. For a month I told him to take it off each single day, and some days he wouldn’t do it. He would sit there without moving and pretend like he didn’t listen me. Sometimes he would swear at me when I asked him a second time, saying things like, “Damn man, what the fuck! Why you always talking?” I would have to send him out. I wrote referrals. It in the end got to the point where I had to sit down with him and the administration and make a deal where he couldn’t have the beanie in sight in my class, because it was getting such a sore point. It was like he came into class each day looking for a fight. I talked with his mom over the phone, and she made vague promises that never materialized – she didn’t have time to come talk to me.

Despite all of this, my persistence started out to pay off. I’m not going to go into all the ways I tried to work with Nay-Nay, the after-school talks, the calls to his counselor. Let’s just say I was persistent. I didn’t have a problem with Nay-Nay. I thought he was a pretty cool kid. He didn’t like school, and had a heap of severe anger problems, but at my school, that describes almost each male student on campus. After a month of this power struggle, Nay-Nay begun to see I wasn’t out to get him – I just couldn’t have him swearing at me in the initial 30 seconds of each class. By the time we got to my Romeo and Juliet Unit, Nay-Nay had put the beanie away, and was competent to sit through class and get galore work done (he still never did homework).

Then we started Shakespeare.

I have this policy with Shakespeare that each student needs to earn a sure amount of participation points while we read as a class. I assign readers to play each role in each scene. I have a clipboard with a list of all their names with two columns – one for positive participation, one for negative. So if they are messing around, chewing gum, texting, or have a grill in their mouth, they get negative points. If they answer correctly, or actually just give a thoughtful response and participate in a positive way, they get a positive point. That is how their participation grade is decisive for my R&J unit.

As we made our way to Act III and the Balcony Scene, something actually cool started out to take place to Nay-Nay. He had the most eminent participation grade in the entire class. Almost each single time I stopped class to ask them what in the heck just came out of Romeo’s mouth, Nay-Nay was the initial to raise his hand. Every difficult stanza, each elaborated allusion, Nay-Nay’s hand was in the air. And he wasn’t just taking part in a positive manner in order to get points (actually, I don’t think he genuinely cared when it comes to whether he got points or not). His answers were right on target. He could make an analyzation of a passage like the best of my sped students. In fact, Nay-Nay was so far in front of every one else, I had to commence telling him to put his hand down so he could let the rest of the class catch up. I also made it a point to let the rest of the class recognise Nay-Nay had the most eminent grade out of anyone. “Why can’t you all be more like Nay-Nay?” I would laugh, and he would laugh too.

What was going on with Nay-Nay wasn’t anything new to me. By then I already had this theory regarding Black boys and Shakespeare, and each year students like Nay-Nay seem to prove me right. My theory is this: Our African-American boys are so wrapped up in the intricate, rapid lyrics of hip-hop, it helps them decipher Shakespeare. All day long groups of Black students stand around in circles on the quad beat-boxing and free-styling. They spit fast phrases with even more immediate rhymes, and listen to the masters do it in their iPods. Yes, a lot of times I don’t agree with what is coming out of the mouths of galore of these rapper, but if anything, students who are into hip-hop have a highly developed ear for language, poetry, and meaning, and it always shows when we read Shakespeare.

And it isn’t just Black boys. Any student who is into hip-hop music and fancies himself a freestyle rapper in all likelihood has the same advantage. They listen something once, very quickly, and they get employed to understanding it the original time. I think it is just more indicatory of the African-American community because they are the ones who invented hip-hop, and accordingly it is a more integral share of their culture. So when it comes to Shakespeare, I feel like instructing his plays is playing to the intensities of my Black students. Understanding the Old Bard is just like attempting to figure out what is coming out of the mouth of Ol’ Dirty Bastard. It might even be easier.

Of course I’m not the only one claiming we need to be conscious of the cultural deviations in our students of color. I’ve been to teacher in-services where an African-American speaker has told us that because of the special and significant stress on being social in the African-American community, we have to take that into account when dealing with our Black students. They advise us to let them participate more, because they need to talk and socialize in order to learn – in particular African-American boys. I’m not making any of this up, but I am here to remind you there is not one thing wrong with any of it. A Black boy needs to ask questions and participate in order to learn; other students would rather sit quietly and take notes, whatever. It’s all the same to me. I in truth prefer the former.

So rather of looking at these divergences as a model of deficiency, lets hug it and do a heap of real teaching. Like Aaron said, Black boys in the ghetto are a little bit hyphier. They want to be a part of what’s going on, so I say we let them. Nay-Nay got to be Romeo closely each day for a month, and when he wasn’t speaking Romeo’s lines, he was expounding the meaning of them to the rest of the class. And Nay-Nay wasn’t the only black student who has shined while reading Shakespeare. Whether it is a sophomore as Julius Cesar, a junior as Othello, or a senior reciting Hamlet, I don’t instruct too a heap of Black boys who decrease rapidly for the duration of a Shakespeare Unit. Usually they become the main character.

Nay-Nay still failed my class, or got a D, I don’t do not forget exactly, but I do recognise he had to go to summer school. He still didn’t do any homework, and detached from his participation grade, the rest of his work wasn’t done well sufficient to lift him up very far. This is normal. This is the real world. With a kid like Nay-Nay, from time to time we have to be happy with the fact that he took a vested interest in what was going on in class. He found Shakespeare interesting, and if you asked him in regards to Romeo and Juliet, he would have something to say. Maybe that was the primary time he found English class interesting, perchance not. I try to be truthful above anything. There might be a lot of of you out there who scoff when I say I still failed him in spite of how far he had come. But you have to remember, whether he shows a natural capacity and immense improvement, he has got to have the willingness to put in the work. He’s got to sit and write. He’s got to study at a good deal of point. Nay-Nay failed because he was a horrid student. But he did make strides, no matter how small. He made it to sophomore year, which was not a guarantee at the beginning of the year when he was coming in each day with his beanie, looking for a fight.

Nay-Nay found school interesting, and did a heck of a occupation reading Romeo and Juliet. And for the rest of the year, he begun to take a little bit more interest in the rest of the books we read. That is how it works in the real world – we don’t change them in a day or a week, but if we keep chipping away at it, possibly a year or two later it begins to take effect. Nay-Nay surely never gave me any more trouble, which made my occupation having little impact as a teacher and his occupation having little impact as a student. I frankly think I may attribute all this to Shakespeare, and my Romeo and Juliet Unit.

And Nay-Nay did the class and me a favor too. He injected a great deal of much-needed hyphiness into what may most times be arid reading.

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