Processing a Metaphor for Subversive Teaching - The Underground Railroad

I've always seen teaching as bringing the light to dark places in hopes of showing young people alternative paths to their success and a way to get through difficult obstacles that stand in their way. It is my belief that young people respond to the light and follow it when they know the intentions will best serve their personal interests.

Yesterday, two of my favorite educators stopped by to catch me up on their school year and to celebrate the phenomenal work they do with CWP-Fairfield in the summer and how the work is carried forward to their academic school year. They've made great connections with kids, word has spread, and colleagues are interested in what they are accomplishing.

"It feels like we're leading an underground railroad," one said. "It's like the institution itself is designed to keep the kids from learning, from growing, from succeeding, and believing. We're trying to show them a better way."

When I probed further, they described the professional development they receive at their schools, the inundation of more and more tests, and the administrative eye scolding them for reaching kids and not focusing 100% of their attention on the actual tests that are measuring the school."

"The underground railroad," he explained, "is getting kids to read, to write, to take chances and to speak in a way that is working. It is, however, in total contradiction with how our schools are requiring us to do so."

I wanted more.

"The test-only push, the mandate of reading and writing requirements that are totally disconnected from the lives our students are living makes them hate school. In fact, they feel that such an environment makes the school a place that is not safe. As kids come to us, we give them books, we ask them to share their stories, we encourage them to speak out. They work for us, but are totally disillusioned with how they are treated in most classrooms."

The metaphor of the underground railroad caught my ear. They are reporting on kids who want to do well, who are there to play the game, but who are totally recognizing that the schooling institution is there to hinder their achievement. What is a light, however, is the introduction of reading, writing, speaking, and action that is not on the larger institution's agenda.

What I've learned from 24 years of teaching is that the best guides to helping students to achieve come from listening to youth and what they report. These teachers work in schools with all the deficit labels that come from state and national testing, yet they have students who want to work hard, to read, to write, and to take action. The curriculum of the school, they report, is impeding their learning. These are locations where teachers are reporting almost half the year is taken over by tests testing kids to get benchmarks so that teachers can better understand what needs to be done before the 'real' tests arrive. Meanwhile, while this testing is occurring, reading, writing and action are not occurring.

They feel like they are leading an underground railroad, because they are achieving behind the scenes, underneath the radar, and beyond the administrators who oversee them, through finding literacy instruction that works with the young people coming to them with goals for a college education and a successful life.

Strange. This should be the purpose of all schools, yet teachers need to be subversive with the actual instruction that works.

"It's coming from after school programs, free periods, and weekend. This is where we can actually teach the kids and they're thirsty for it."

If this is the case, then how do we find a way to communicate this in a way that actual administrators and politicians will actually listen? Perhaps I'm too much a socio-constructivist, but I've always found more fault in the systems and institutions that put the deficits on the kids when, in actuality, the real problem is in how they are viewing what kids know, can do, and should prove they know.

Currently, it's a measurement that is not capturing truth. I'm now seeking more lanterns to help these teachers guide the young people they say are coming towards them more and more looking for help. They want to achieve, but the top-down management is making them failures. It is so crazy.