How to fail a black boy

A boy in special education program came to my “Homework Club” room intending to do some work. This ninth grader noticed the teacher in charge was his own English teacher. The teacher asked him to redo his paper on, ”House on Mango Street” since he handed in someone else‘s paper.

He proceeded to get that book out. The black boy did not seem to know what he needed to do yet his teacher would not tell him. The teacher proceeded to scold him by saying, “You did not pay attention during class and this is why you do not know”. She said, “You were misbehaving and this is why you have no clue”. She is, however, paid extra to work Homework Club.

After observing this for about five minutes, I realized that he would not be able to get help. I decided to help him by asking the teacher for a guide to this assignment. “He knows”, was the reply from the teacher. After about tem minutes of back and forth, I was not able to get a clear idea of this assignment. I asked the boy to go to the hall way and see if he could find anyone else who might know what to do.

At this point, she said that he was supposed to write the definition of “culture” followed by three paragraphs of examples found in the book. He and I started to read the book.

I quickly found out that he was probably reading at a second grade level. He could not read “Chinese” as a word. I helped him a bit more and left at 3 o’clock.

When I saw him the following day, he said that he was never able to finish those four paragraphs.