powerless, still . . .

(all names have been changed to protect the privacy of the indivduals)

With deep-set eyes and a broad smile, Derrick Hayes was perched upon his baby blue bicycle just inside of the iron gate and barbed wire fence of the high school in South L.A. where I teach. I didn’t see him at first; my attention was on Ms. Jones throwing her arms around Sean, a ranking gang member who used to attend the school.
“Hi, Ms. Cirelli.” Derrick’s warm voice caused me to turn and see him grinning in the afternoon sun. His hat tipped to the side, he was wearing bright blue sneakers and a blue t-shirt.
Derrick was in my first class of students, ever. I started my teaching career with two periods of U.S. government and three periods of CAHSEE prep, a class designed to prepare students to pass the high school exit exam. Derrick was in one of my 10th grade CAHSEE prep classes. He was constantly in trouble, but from the first day, I so badly wanted him to do well.
In my class, Derrick had good days and bad days. Often, he would attempt the English assignments, but when it came to math, his position was firm.
“I don’t do math.”
“Okay, well just try the first problem. Here, we can work on it together.”
“No. I don’t do math. It’s just not my thing.”
However opposed to math he was, Derrick wanted to be in school. His behavior consistently threatened him with expulsion, and although he almost never got into fights in my class, I often found him in the office during my conference period. In the first few weeks, he would simply leave my class whenever he felt like it. I didn’t know how to stop him from doing this, but I did my best to respect his time by creating meaningful assignments.
Eventually, he started staying in class for almost the entire two-hour period. One day he asked if he could go to the office to speak with the vice principal, Mr. Garcia. I told him he needed to stay in class. We were covering important material, and I attempted to impress upon him the importance of the work. I have to speak with him now, Derrick insisted.
“What could possibly happen between now and the end of class?” I asked.
“Mr. Garcia is going to sign the papers to send me to Crenshaw High.”
There was a chilling combination of desperation and defiance in Derrick’s expression and tone that startled me. At Crenshaw High, gang affiliation runs deep and threat of violence has shut down school events. I allowed James to go give Mr. Garcia the paperwork from his parents that would allow him to remain at our small high school. Derrick wanted to stay in school. But he also wanted to stay in his gang.
One day, our class was reading a short story about a boy in the 1950’s in a fictional New York gang. In the story, the boy is dying and reflects on his loss of identity ultimately leading to his death. Derrick volunteered to read. It was the first time he had volunteered to do anything in class. Stumbling over a few words, he alternated with two other students to read the story in its entirety. The class listened in perfect silence.
Afterwards, I allowed the students 15 minutes to free-write a reflection of any kind before they began the rigorous literary analysis assignment. I had been nervous about using literature that would hit so close to home, and many of the students seemed grateful for the chance to emotionally process before attempting an assignment. Derrick wrote nothing, but spent the time carefully drawing the symbols for his gang over and over on the lined paper.
Kneeling beside his desk, I quietly thanked him for reading and asked if he was okay. He nodded, and kept drawing. In response to a character whose dying action was rejection of a gang identity in favor of individuality, Derrick quietly asserted his identity as a part a group.
There were other days when such assertions were less than quiet. My classroom was on the second story of an old, brick building with windows facing the street. Over the barbed wire fence, the crank-open windows faced 8th Street. Once, someone looked out the window and commented that some Bloods were walking down 8th Street. Derrick jumped up from his desk and started yelling slurs out the window, vociferously claiming the territory. Half the class leapt from their desks to crowd around the windows.
My heart raced, but when I went to the window, I was relieved to see only a few young teenagers walking by. Ordering everyone back to their seats, I again knelt by Derrick’s desk.
“Not from my classroom,” I said as firmly as I could.
Derrick nodded.
Because of Derrick’s affiliation, and recent activity targeted at our school, it was deemed unsafe for him to remain on campus after school. Detention was therefore not an option, and he was permitted to leave 15 minutes before the last class of the day let out. The only thing I had to shape Derrick’s action in class was respect. I used every accommodation I knew as a 2-month-old teacher – preferential seating, special classroom jobs, rephrased directions, breaks outside, etc. It was difficult to track his progress since he completed so little work, but the work he completed seemed to increase day by day. When he wrote an entire paragraph, I was nearly bursting with pride.
Still, during my conference period, I would run into Derrick without fail either in the office or sitting outside his history class, doing work alone on the benches. It seemed to be a good strategy for him, until one day when a new student arrived, and a significant altercation occurred. Ms. Acosta, the fiery, well-respected, barely five foot history teacher was standing in the door of her class, physically blocking Derrick’s tall frame from whoever was inside.
“Please go get someone from the office right now,” she calmly but urgently asked me.
My eyes begged Derrick to calm down, but I went to retrieve a security officer.
The incident was resolved, but I knew Derrick’s expulsion was hanging by a thread. Several of the other teachers were working hard to keep him on track, and as a brand new teacher trying to figure out everything from lesson planning to classroom management as I went along, I felt powerless to make an impact.
A week or so later, the administration informed me I would be switching all my classes. The 9th grade English position needed to be filled, and I was selected to take over. Although I had only been with my current students for two months, I was already very emotionally invested. But the decision was for the good of the school overall, so I had not choice but to oblige.
At a staff meeting two weeks later, the principal announced that Mr. Hayes, as he referred to the students, had been let go. My heart dropped. Why? I thought. During the last several meetings Mr. Lopez, the principal, had used Derrick as the poster child for students who were turning around, an example of the school’s progress. Now, without warning, he was gone.
I carried on teaching the 9th grade for several months, which brought a new set of challenges for which, again, I was radically underprepared.
When I next saw Derrick, it the day of a ceremony for the 12th grade students to reveal the colleges they planned to attend. James, an affiliated student I had in one of my old U.S. Government classes, planned to attend U.C. Santa Barbara. Aside from greeting him in the hall, I hadn’t kept in contact with James, but I knew he was doing well and was proud to see him unveil his post-high school plans.
Seeing Derrick and Sean back at school surprised me.
“Derrick! How are you? What are you doing here?” In the back of my head, I remembered Derrick was not allowed on campus after being expelled.
“We’re here to support the homie,” he replied, nodding towards James, who was grinning widely.
“That’s right! That’s awesome.”
Before I could say more, something called my attention to the other side of the building. When I walked back, the vice principal was locking the two boys out. James continued to talk with them through the iron gate, practically pressing his face against the metal. Derrick biked in circles in the street.
Fifteen minutes later, I was getting lunch at the celebratory barbeque, and Derrick wheeled in, triumphantly maneuvering between lunch tables to greet old friends.
“He’s not supposed to be here,” one of the other teachers grumbled. Someone went to alert the administration. I anxiously worried an unnecessary confrontation would spoil the afternoon. Please just leave, I thought to myself.
“It’s okay, he’s nice,” one of the students explained to a new teacher who looked nervous.
Yeah, I thought to my self, he’s a good kid. He could have done so well. But when he leaves, he’s not going back to school somewhere. It’s the middle of the day. He seemed carefree, but I knew otherwise. Derrick’s father had been in the hospital with cancer the last time I saw him. I wanted to ask him how his dad was, I wanted to ask him if he had changed his mind about dropping out of high school. I’m sure being expelling from our school couldn’t have helped him make his decision. He knew the trouble that was waiting for him at Crenshaw High. I wanted to ask him where he was living. I wanted to ask him to come back.
I hated the blue t-shirt. I hated the blue sneakers. I hated the vice principal for locking him on the other side of the gate. I hated myself for not knowing what to do when he was in my class, and even more for having no power to do anything now. My body ached as he sailed away. A few minutes later, one of my own freshman was being restrained by security and a substitute teacher. His face was twisted with the pain of being powerless. I had no idea why he was fighting, but I wouldn’t have any way to find out until the following week when I had him in class. I put my fruit down and herded ravenous students away from the scuffle.
When I joined Teach for America, I thought I would be part of a movement to provide educational equity. In some ways, I do feel like I’m part of that movement. However, the stories I read of TFA classrooms lead to high achievement and students whose lives were turned around seem to mock me now. “Lisa, the 5th grade student who increased her reading by three years in just one, is why I Teach for America,” the stories would end.
“Carlos, the 11th grade student who couldn’t write a sentence and is now applying to college, is why I Teach for America,” a story in our training manual concluded.
During training, we also heard stories of teachers who didn’t do such-and-such, and never reached a certain student. These teachers ominously told us they were still haunted by their failures.
At the time, I thought perhaps this was all a scare tactic to shape all our actions into uniformity. But now, these are the stories from training that resonate with me the most. Maybe it’s cynicism, but I think it’s the soul-numbing reality that propels me forward each day.
Derrick is why I Teach for America.