Another book that has lingered on my TBR for far, far too long. Slowly but surely, I’m clearing out the older ones!
Public education and policy has long been one of my areas of interest, which is how The Emergency Teacher: The Inspirational Story of a New Teacher in an Inner City School by Christina Asquith (Skyhorse, 2005) ended up on my list in the first place. I remember a few friends reading this when it first came out, which is how I became aware of it and added it to my list, so I thought it would be more popular and more available than it was, but I ended up needing to obtain a copy via interlibrary loan.
Having long been interested in education, journalist Christina Asquith answered the city of Philadelphia’s call for 1500 emergency teachers. No real qualifications necessary, just show up, attend a few meetings, and boom, you’re a teacher in one of the most underfunded districts in the state with kids who’ve been passed along without having any of their needs, educational or otherwise, met for ages. What could possibly go wrong?
The answer is everything. Supposedly assigned to teach middle school history and Language Arts in the school’s actually non-existent bilingual program, Ms. Asquith is given no curriculum, no books, no assistance, and more students than she has desks for. Some of her students have spoken English from birth; others arrived last month from Puerto Rico and speak little to no English. A handful are there to learn; others are entirely illiterate; some have emotional problems that could never be addressed by but still must be dealt with in a school setting, and these students affect the entire class. One or two other teachers step up and aid Ms. Asquith in her attempts to educate such a motley group of students with so many competing needs, but for the most part, the school throws her in the deep end and walks away, only stopping by to check on her when they’re making sure she adjusts test scores in order to ensure the school doesn’t get shut down.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book, and books like this. The Emergency Teacher is well-written; it’s a smooth read (though I did find it a little slow to start; it begins with the history of Philadelphia’s school system, and while it’s interesting and depressing, it drags a little. Don’t worry though, it does pick up), and I did enjoy hearing Ms. Asquith’s story, the difficulties she faced, and the (few) victories she had over her year as an emergency teacher. But I found nothing ‘inspirational’ about it, as the title suggests. Instead of being moved, I was angered. Angered that this is the state of education that far too many students must contend with. Ms. Asquith, although as well-intentioned as the other emergency certified teachers, had no idea what she was doing (having had no training in classroom management or even how to teach) and admits that she struggled badly and failed her students as much as everyone else in her first months of teaching. Other emergency teachers didn’t even bother teaching after the first few weeks- middle school isn’t easy to teach even for seasoned veterans of the educational system, and these were kids that had been failed over and over again, by society, by the educational system, by their families who had also been failed. Expecting them to sit and listen as though they had been privileged to receive only the best their entire lives is beyond the pale. To be clear, Ms. Asquith understood better than some of the other teachers what she was getting into; others chose to give up close to immediately, whereas she did not. She did maintain contact with several of her students after her year of teaching, but there are few happy endings when the book concludes. In a place dubbed as ‘The Land of Opportunity,’ opportunity can be hard to come by unless you’re born into a family ripe with it.
The Emergency Teacher and books in this genre, including many of those by Jonathan Kozol and Alex Kotlowitz, are maddening and will leave you feeling helpless. While schools in these books have flooded hallways, leaking roofs, and are unable to afford neither teachers nor toilet paper, other schools in richer neighborhoods have attached planetariums, Olympic-sized swimming pools, and offer dual enrollment at local colleges so that students graduate high school with not only a high school diploma, but also an Associate’s degree. The way we fund education in the US is an utter travesty, and nowhere is it exposed more fully than in these books.
The Emergency Teacher. Inspirational? No. An excellent highlight of a major, major emergency in this country? Absolutely.
She's probably at the library... 