During the writer’s senior year at Yale in 2000, he turned down a job with an Al Gore pollster to teach in the Emery Elementary in Washington. This was an inner city school and from the start, he was warned it was not going to be easy. The skills that he had picked up during summer from the TFA (Teach For America) was not helpful in running the fifth grade classroom at Emery(Kaplowitz, 2003).
As a white teacher in a dominantly black school, he was racially harassed and most people did not believe in him. The principal was unhelpful and criticized every attempt he made to manage the classroom. After thwarting all his efforts and filling his report with criticism comments, he was demoted to teach the second grade. The class was worse than the fifth grade, but I was determined to succeed(Kaplowitz, 2003).
On June 13, 2001, a student accused him of assault. In the following months, the student’s mother filled a $20 million lawsuit against the school district. In March 2002, he was found not guilty, but the mother pursed civil damages. After refusing to pay her $200,000, the school system agreed to settler her demands.
Though his experience in Emery is not unique to most public schools, there are those schools that have shown that a public school does not have to be a hellhole. With the help of a strong willed principal, the schools can be a better place(Kaplowitz, 2003).
References
Kaplowitz, J. (2003). My Classroom From Hell. The Wall Street Journal. Web.