The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth - Alexandra Robbins [145]
Neither is a more controversial form of neglect. An Illinois middle school teacher described a number of instances in which students singled out English Language Learner (ELL) students and ridiculed them in front of their lunch tables. This behavior continued for months until ELL teachers notified administrators, who did nothing other than reprimand the offenders. Business as usual, perhaps—except the teacher believed the offenders were modeling teacher behavior. “Sometimes teachers and staff treat these kids differently,” she told me. “Administration is slow in reacting toward situations regarding ELL students being wronged. And I have heard [colleagues’] comments about generalizations toward certain ethnic groups. The biases and stereotypes are there, and of course that comes out in their teaching, no matter how subtle. Kids usually catch on to how teachers act toward them.”
In this manner, teachers play a role not only in perpetuating stereotypes, but also in alerting students to them. A Texas teacher said that at his school, “The veteran teachers and administrators tend to treat students according to dress. The emo kids sometimes are kept at arm’s length or are chastised about piercings. The openly gay kids have complained that some of their teachers have stopped lessons to lecture them in front of their peers about sexual morality and not being able to ‘enter the Kingdom of God’ if they don’t change their ‘ways.’ ”
Psychologists suggest that teachers are influenced by students’ cliques and vice versa, fueling a cycle that keeps certain groups atop the social hierarchy. One study described how this phenomenon can cause an achievement catch-22: Rather than vary student pairings, “Teachers may take the social structure of the class into account in making ability group assignments in an effort to utilize student friendships to promote learning. As a result, the presence of cliques can affect a teacher’s decision regarding the number, size, and composition of tracks and ability groups in a school. These grouping characteristics, in time, affect student achievement.”
Educators can be just as guilty as students of affixing labels and then refusing to look beyond them. Teachers across the country discussed colleagues who treated students poorly for this reason. An Iowa teacher reported that a coworker gave some students “the same grade all four years she had them because she didn’t believe they could change after freshman year.” At this school, a few days before classes started, the administration briefed new teachers on the “troubled” students. “We were told horror stories about attitudes and that these kids should be thrown out of class and sent to the office immediately if needed,” the teacher said. “Since they are labeled the troublemakers of the school by the administration, a lot of the faculty has bought into that and will automatically send them to the office. Those students are immediately suspected to be guilty of anything. Sometimes they deserve it, but a lot of times the teacher could handle it without intervention.”
One of the students labeled “troubled” by the administration was simply a quirky girl who liked anime. “I have never had a problem with her in my class. She’s a good kid who just got an unfortunate label. Other faculty talk about her like she’s the worst troublemaker they’ve ever met and I wonder if they’ve actually ever paid attention to her or know anything about her, because I just don’t see it,” the teacher told me. “I was taken aback that we were warned about these particular students and weren’t given the chance to make up our own minds. The students don’t really put a label on the ‘troubled’ students. That’s the label the administration puts on them. They seem to be targeted for bad behavior that other students mostly get away with.”
Several students told me they have experienced this treatment firsthand. Dawn, a freshman in Florida, was in class