Student Stories: A New Orleans Classroom Chronicle

The Students at the Center program started at McDonogh 35 High School, which is mentioned in today’s entry from The Long Ride. Brittany Thompson, who wrote the essay below in spring 2005, was entering her senior year at McDonogh 35 when Hurricane Katrina hit.

SAC is proud to be one of the many “graduates” of McDonogh 35 and looks forward to honoring former students and teachers, such as James Browne, from McDonogh 35 and other local public schools as we continue their struggle for social justice and quality education in New Orleans.

Teacher Fired for Promoting Social Equality
Brittany Thompson

On May 31, 1923, James Fortier and his fellow school board members all stared down at James F. Browne standing in the middle of the floor. They had just finished listening to Browne’s argument for social equality of the races. One statement stuck in their minds: “The fact of being white or black [is] merely an artificial distinction.”

Fortier, a strong supporter of segregation, wanted to make sure Browne did not remain a teacher at McDonogh 35 High School. The other board members had arrived at the meeting willing to let him remain in the classroom, if he agreed to no longer speak out for social equality. But Browne had to stand up for his beliefs.

How did Browne get in this predicament? He had started a newspaper, the New Orleans Bulletin, that argued against the Jim Crow laws of his city and state. In one issue, he argued, “social equality is freeborn, recognizing no artificial distinction and lives wherever Christ is found.”

Fortier apparently got a hold of this newspaper, suspended Browne from his teaching job, and wanted to hear what the teacher/activist had to say.

In private, after the hearing and away from James Browne’s ears, the board members all agreed with Fortier that “such utterances as Browne has made to persons easily led and deluded would foment trouble of a most serious nature.” They voted unanimously to fire him.

This vote was supposed to put fear into the black teachers and convince them that white teachers were superior. But in the next decade the black teachers had formed a union (American Federation of Teachers Local 527) and formed an organization with fellow community members to demand that black teachers be paid the same as white teachers.

Posted by Jim Randels at 6:08 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Gabrielle Turner wrote the story featured in today’s blog in the summer of 2003 as part of an eight-week, eight-hour-a-day summer of work and training that Students at the Center produced for 30 young people: about 20 9th through 12th grade students at Douglass and 10 of our graduates from Douglass, McDonogh 35, and McMain High Schools.

Gabrielle’s “Twelve Year Old Talks to Plessy” is one of the many selections from The Long Ride that SAC students and staff still use in writing and reading workshops with elementary school students in New Orleans. And Gabrielle is now a staff member with SAC, teaching writing and video production at Franklin and Bethune Elementary Schools. In May she will leave us for a year; she will be pursuing a master’s degree and teaching certificate and then plans to return to New Orleans as a classroom teacher.

Twelve Year Old Talks to Plessy
Gabrielle Turner

The date was June 7, 1892. It was a sunny Tuesday afternoon, when mama sent me to make groceries. As I walked down the road I repeated in my mind, "milk, bread, sausage, and sugar," over and over again so I wouldn't forget. My reciting was distracted, when I noticed the bright red train signals blinking on and off. The train was just sitting there, and I knew I had to wait. So I sat down on the ground and made my name out of some rocks.

With my head to the ground, I saw the shiniest pair of shoes walk past me. I knew exactly who it was. It was Mr. Homer. He always had the best looking shoes in the neighborhood, because he was a shoemaker.

Before I looked up I saw another pair of shoes that weren't so nice walking behind Mr. Homer. I looked up and saw Mr. Homer with his hands behind his back and handcuffs tightly on his wrist. The other pair of shoes was a man in a dark blue suit. Mr. Homer looked down at me with a weird expression on his face. He winked his eye at me as he always did, and I watched as they took him away.

I stood there for a while. I was confused. Mr. Homer was the nicest man you could ever meet. He wouldn't hurt anyone. So, why would he be arrested on the train?

The train started to move backwards and then forwards again. I walked to the grocery, and I got the items momma told me to get.

A couple of days later walking home from school, I passed Mrs. Louise's house. Mrs. Louise lived in one of the shotgun houses on my street. All the houses were painted the same color, a dull green, but Mrs. Louise's house was different. She had a little garden next to her step. She always kept some chairs in the alley for when her friends stopped by. She and three other women were sitting on her front porch talking. She leaned back in her old wooden chair with The Crusader newspaper in her hand and said, "that man, he was only trying to get us black folk equal treatment."

I was a little girl, only twelve years old, and I didn't quite understand what was going on. I walked along the brick cobblestone sidewalk to get to her porch. I sat on her step listening to them talk about how people in this organization called the Citizens’ Committee gathered together to plan to have Mr. Homer arrested.

I stared down at the bricked sidewalk. My eyes fastened to the green sponge-like grass that pushed its way up through the cracks between the bricks. While I continued to listen, I turned to catch Mrs. Louise's eyes, and with my eyes I asked a question "may I?" as I pointed to the newspaper.

Without interrupting her conversation she nodded, and I eased the newspaper from her lap. I read that the man in the dark blue suit was Private Detective Cain. I thought to myself, "why would Mr. Homer, a shoe maker, risk getting arrested?"

Later on that evening after eating supper mama and I sat down on the floor to do some arithmetic. My mind was not on counting how many dirt rocks were on the floor. Instead I wondered why Mr. Homer volunteered to be arrested.

I interrupted mama and asked "why would somebody get arrested on purpose?

"Child what are you talking about?"

I explained to her what I saw two days ago. She began to tell me that she and some other women in her women's club, the ladies of St. Joseph, had given money to support him getting arrested.

"Why would you do that?"

"You see baby, we cannot eat, shop, sit, or live among white folks, and it is not right. So people in the community rallied together to raise money to pay for the legal fees for Homer Plessy's case.”

"What case?"

“Oh child, there is going to be a big case behind this."

"Behind what?"

"Behind us not being able to sit on the same train car as a white person, and we all trying to get to the same place."

"So we breaking the law?"

"Yes."

I never thought I would see the day that mama would say it was alright to break the law. She always taught us to abide by the law. Her motto was always "put it in the hands of the Lord, and he'll take care of it," but not this time. Maybe she thought they were just trying to help the Lord.

She explained to me that things were getting bad. People were dying. Families were starving because they could not get good jobs, to make groceries. She was getting upset, and she started crying. She said, weeping, "we have to do something or we will never get anywhere in this world."

So I guess a lot of folks felt the way that mama did and wanted to see things change. I started to understand why we broke the law. It was for our own good.

"So, what can I do to help?"

"First of all you need to pray. We need prayer. You could also come along to the rallies at the churches and participate and listen. You need to learn all you can about what's going on, but I don't want you to get too involved, because you're just a little girl."

Mama looked at me with a strange smile.

"Child, why do you want to be involved with this?"

"Well, mama you know how I hate to see people, especially colored people, go to jail when they really didn't do anything wrong. You remember when we went by Grandpa Lloyd's house and we saw a man get arrested and beaten because a white woman said he raped her? It's not fair, and I want to help in any way I can, even if it means breaking the law. Because we are breaking the law for a good reason, right mama?"

"Yes, child."

Posted by Jim Randels at 5:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

We were glad to hear from our good friend Jackie Royster today, in her comment on the “Finding Home at School” entry. Jackie and her colleagues at the Bread Loaf Graduate School of English have been great allies in our work.

So in appreciation for Jackie, we are sharing on today’s blog an essay that Maria Hernandez, who was in the fall 2004 AP English class at Douglass, a writing developed from her reading of Traces of a Stream and included in The Long Ride, the book we are featuring this week on the blog.

The Courage of a Woman:
Maria Stewart (1803-1879)
Maria Hernandez

After her good friend David Walker was killed for circulating a pamphlet condemning slave owners for their evil and hypocrisy, Maria Stewart started an odyssey writing and speaking about the same things. From 1831 to 1834, her essays were published in The Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper as well as in her own books. But by 1834, the men in power decided that writing and speaking were not proper roles for women in society. She worked the rest of her life as a school teacher, so we know she was still reaching many people.

Also what she said and wrote has reached a few of our most important African American women and even me in 2004.

I admire that she pushed to have her say and refused to bite her lip while her people were still scared of hearing the whip. Imagine having your best friend killed for writing against white power and then turning around and walking into the fire yourself. Even though she wrote her essays in a humble tone, she had a strong will to be heard; and that is why her words never came out a mumble. She shared stories of other women who spoke out before her.

In her essay, “Mrs. Stewart’s Farewell Address” she showed people that women have always stood and said something when it is in dire need of being said. She also said that she was an instrument of God. I guess you can say she had a higher purpose. Maria Stewart saw an opportunity and used it well—by what many of us can tell a great element. That’s what she was. Because of her we have Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Charlotte Forten, and many, many more. Reading about her has even made me begin thinking about writing not just about my life and family but also about injustice in society. Today things are very different from the way they were before, and I’d like to think she had something to do with it.

There is no way I can repay you for your deed. All I can say is, “Thank you, Mrs. Stewart, and may you rest in peace.”

Posted by Jim Randels at 7:43 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In June, 2007, 50 teachers from the three major types of public schools in post-Katrina New Orleans (the state-takeover Recovery District Schools, the local system’s New Orleans Public Schools, and charter schools) gathered for a weekend workshop on equity and collaboration in the new landscape of education in New Orleans. The conference was co-sponsored by United Teachers of New Orleans (AFT Local 527), Concerned Educators of New Orleans, and the National Coalition for Quality Education in New Orleans (NCQENO).

Anastasia McGee, a three-year member of SAC until the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina chased her away from Douglass High School for her senior year, wrote the following essay in the spring of 2005 after reading the essay by Adrinda Kelly posted yesterday on this blog. Our current Douglass and McMain students increase their academic and community efforts after they read essays such as Anastasia’s and Adrinda’s, both of which appear in The Long Ride.

Connecting with Maroon Colonies
Anastasia McGee

I became interested in maroon colonies and the 1811 slave revolt when I read “Resistance” an essay by Adrinda Kelly, a McDonogh 35 graduate and Students at the Center participant. One of her essay says:

“In New Orleans enslaved people sought refuge in swamps before they would endure another day of dependence. Imagine the same hands that cherished a black woman’s hips made bloody in the sugar cane fields of master’s enterprise. Imagine having to mend those hands, to cradle the broken fingers that made your children, restoring them with your tears and your care.”

When I read these words I connected with maroon colonies, because it made me think of my current situation at my high school. The maroons communicated and stayed with the slaves to help free them. They could have easily left at any given time but chose to stay to help the other hundreds of slaves who were left in bondage and confinement. It made me think about the decisions I could have made to escape oppression at my current neighborhood school like the maroons did, but I resisted some teachers’ and students’ efforts to try and get me to go to Easton or 35, selective admissions high schools where only certain students fit the criteria. I made the decision to stay at Douglass long before I read anything about the maroons and the history, but reading it made me conscious about my decision, and that is when I started to feel a connection to history.

My decision to remain at Douglass is a struggle, but like the maroons I believe in helping other people in my community and not just myself. Adrinda’s essay made me see the connection I had to the maroons. It was only after reading “Resistance” for the fifth or sixth time that I understood the significance of hearing my predecessor’s story that she wrote when she was my age.

Posted by Jim Randels at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Douglass High School was full of activity on MLK Day. Volunteers from across the city and nation organized by Hands On New Orleans, InterFaith Works, and the Frederick Douglass Community Coalition helped with projects such as painting, landscape, and courtyard renovation.

The selection below was written in 1997 by one of our first SAC students, Adrinda Kelly. Students still read and learn from these essays. Part of the SAC methodology is to use collections of student writings as texts in classrooms. The Long Ride is a book we use especially in our Junior English classes, because those students are also studying U. S. History. It’s an approach we think many schools and districts should consider.

Resistance
Adrinda Kelly

I am a child of contemporary America. I nod pleasantly, almost attentively, when militant instructors speak so passionately of the great tragedy of too many millions of dark people. It is a foreign idea to me, this African Eden where the Adams and Eves of my race slashed the sultry air with ivory smiles whiter than the Europeans who would become their oppressors. Yet the story of Africa is no caricature of pagan playfulness. I would like to recount the ten thousand tales of African royalty and bloodline I know exist, but I must relent to a shameful ignorance of my African ancestry. I cannot quote specific examples of African grandeur, yet I can tell you easily of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. I rejoice that George Washington, upstanding father of baby America, maneuvered this nation to adolescence and independence. My heart burns with pain for the Jewish millions subjected to Hitler’s maniacal vision.

It is convenient for me to learn these histories, and by knowing no examples of African intellect and accomplishment, it becomes easier to negate my identity and marvel at the lightskinned, light-eyed blacks who are closer to whiteness than I’ll ever be. It becomes easy for me to listen to the messengers of African enslavement and disregard the oral histories that survived Emancipation. I am sympathetic to the tales of plantation politics: the castration of millions of black males, submerging them in the phallic fluids of white domination even as black women suffered the seed of their masters, bearing beige babies who were cursed at conception for not being classifiable. I disassociate myself from this genre of black experience in America, fashioning, instead, a definition of blackness that remains sympathetic to slavery, but only in the context of a compassionate observer. I am ashamed of how easily and efficiently a race of people was carried across ocean depths to a “land of liberty” that would hate them. And these people who rejoice in their heritage in an America that has taught me to disgust my blackness want me to be proud of a “cattle race?”

That great white philanthropist and owner of slaves, whom my school honors with its name, must be laughing heartily in his cold closet inching to hell. In an American social system based on the ideal of whiteness—the CEO, the blonde bombshell, the infant’s innocent blue eyes—educators are employed to reinforce the isolation of black identity by teaching European histories to black students searching for a cultural identity. In this way black solidarity is disrupted as black people chase tangent ancestries in French and Spanish cultures. These black people don’t know the history of Africa and, therefore, have no desire to claim African ancestry. No great benefactor of black people, John McDonogh knew, even then, that miseducation is the greatest divider . . . and oppressor.

Understand this, slavery is America’s bastard and was never homogenous with the black American disposition. It is not in our nature to pay homage to the “great white master” who liberated us from pagan heathenism and enslaved us in the Christian doctrine that called every man brother. Africans were never content to be slaves, and even as our bloodline diluted, Africa’s children and grandchildren refused to be domesticated by a religion that preached humility and gratitude in the face of blatant oppression. In this way, religion was used to placate discontented blacks who chafed under the raspy caress of oppression, while satisfying their desire to be part of God’s plan for humanity. Yet, the idea of black subservience to whites as a religious doctrine rooted in the Bible, contradicts the fundamental principle of a Christian God. God, according to Christian beliefs, demands exaltation and service from all His creations, and any system, such as slavery, that glorifies man as Lord and master over man incites the rage of a jealous God unwilling to share his omnipotence. Furthermore, assuming that Christianity is rooted in compassion, biblical verses like “created in His own image” and “love thy neighbor” imply that the entire human race is embraced by God and loved by Him equally. Therefore, Christians who seek to serve God through imitation of his Divine love could not justify slavery as a sympathetic institution.

Understand that here, in New Orleans, enslaved people sought refuge in swamps before they would endure another day of dependence and say thank you for the sustenance their bloody hands had provided. Imagine the same hands that cherished a black woman’s hips made bloody in the sugar cane fields of master’s enterprise. Imagine having to mend those hands, to cradle the broken fingers that made your children, restoring them with your tears and your care. A cycle of brokenness begins that is bitter to the spirit, and it becomes easy to consider death and murder in the connotations of freedom. “Resistance! Resistance!” The chant begins on the lips of Charles Deslondes and then carries to the church and the cabins of the discontented until one after the other begin to steal away, slaves who are stealing themselves from slavery and returning to the camaraderie of black men with a cause.

And when the day came to pillage and plunder like some great avenger, black men again slashed the sultry air with blinding smiles as beautiful as they were deadly. They fitted themselves with firearms and swords and fists and marched in unison to the demand: “Freedom or Death!” They stopped at plantation after plantation, returning a mortal death to the white men who had killed their ancestry and independence daily. Their numbers swelled to five hundred as both men and women joined the battle cry, enlisting each other to be like the Haitian revolutionaries who had won a country in the name of African independence. To be a woman then and have bloody hands sear your hips in a painless lovemaking! To know that this child of insurrection would be your own, no longer having to share your breasts with the greedy pink babies your womb did not remember. This was the reward, and it steeled your soul from remorse. Enough to kill and be judged and know that your babies would own themselves.

“On to New Orleans!” they promised as the sound of a thousand legs marched on. But New Orleans had been mobilized, and the revolutionaries could not penetrate that final barrier to freedom. They were gunned down by a government militia force given orders to slaughter any black it saw. Black men fought bravely and desperately, determined to die resisting. Black women saw their blood spilled and their wombs ached painfully. They cried remorselessly for this last loss and rejoiced in their tears for the return of enslaved souls to the African shore.

And in the end there was death for all who had resisted. White men claimed a victory for slavery, and slaves again encased themselves in the costume of bondage. But underneath their rags something pulsated and trembled in memory of their brethren. Slaves did not forget Charles Deslonde and his attempt to liberate them. Uprisings sprang up across the nation and whites grew worried because they knew that the “change” sung about in Negro spirituals was imminent. They cowered beneath the prospect of revolution, and in a conspiracy calculated to undermine African-American resistance, the government staged the Civil War and turned to subtler forms of oppression. The education of black students was structured to negate African history, instilling a psychological void that manifests itself in total assimilation into white culture, surrendering blacks to white domination . . . again.

Almost two centuries later, it is easy for me to distance myself from slavery and the people who endured it. However, slaves did not merely endure oppression. They resisted bondage in uprisings like the 1811 Revolt, culminating with the Civil War and the active abolition of slavery.

I don’t know African American History beyond the textbook pantomime of the “kind white master,” but I do know this: Charles Deslonde, Nat Turner and others like them mobilized these words into action:

No chains to bear, no scourge we fear;
We conquer, or we perish here.
We conquer or we perish here.

There is no need for me to be ashamed. Slavery was not a passive institution, and mine is not a race of domesticated animals.

Posted by Jim Randels at 7:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Adriane Frazier, who has worked with Students at the Center as a high school student, college intern, and staff member, wrote this essay when she was a junior at McDonogh 35 in our SAC writing class. It is one of many essays by former students that we still study. We hope you appreciate it, as our current students do, on this Martin Luther King Day.

Martin Luther King Jr.: Remember, Celebrate, Emulate
Adriane Frazier

I remember being in second grade at Patch Elementary in Stuttgart, Germany. Ms. Thompson began the class by explaining that it was Black History month. Clearing her throat, she started to tell a story about a civil rights activist. She said his name was Martin Luther King Jr. She selected me to read aloud a speech that he had written entitled “I Have a Dream.”

The words didn’t really resonate. How could they? I had spent the majority of my childhood in Europe and had no connection to the Jim Crow south. Sure I was only one of five African Americans in my class, and Ms. Thompson was the only black teacher at my school, but the closest I had ever gotten to any type of “Movement” was putting up yellow ribbons in hope of peace during Desert Storm/Shield. I witnessed families like my own being torn apart by war, unaware that only a few decades earlier families in the South had experienced similar hardships due to racism.

Until recently I was never able to make a connection between my own life and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I had studied King’s views on integration and equality, but I was never taught that King lived during a time of war or that he took a stand against the U. S. involvement in Vietnam, even though I could identify with that. Many of the organizations with which King was associated discouraged him from taking public positions on foreign affairs. King spoke openly about his disdain saying, “The Negro must not allow himself to become a victim of the self-serving philosophy of those who manufacture war that the survival of the world is the white man’s business alone.” Following his anti-war declaration, King was abandoned and consequently labeled a threat by some people who once supported him.

To truly celebrate Dr. King’s legacy we must acknowledge both his popular and unpopular decisions and commemorate his life through our own fights for social justice. I know from experience how easy it is to be blinded by one’s own good fortunes. It wasn’t until I became actively involved with the impoverished community surrounding my inner-city school that my eyes were opened. When I recognized the systemic root of my people’s condition, I became angry and saw the need for change.

Realizing the need for change and actually taking action are quite different. Here is where we must emulate Dr. King by giving our time, energy, knowledge and, in his case, our lives for the benefit of the whole.

In an effort to positively affect my community, I volunteer at a school that has been labeled “academically unacceptable.” I teach radio production to eighth graders. We discuss oppression, exploitation and stereotypes and use the understanding of these concepts to build foundations for the social commentaries the students write. Now I can give these kids what I was deprived of in second grade: knowledge of the social injustices that cripple us and encouragement to challenge the system.

“How long will prejudice blind the visions of men? How long? Not long! Because no lie can live forever. How long? Not long! Because you shall reap what you sow.” Today King’s words ring more true to me than ever.

Posted by Jim Randels at 8:33 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

One fear we have about public education in post-Katrina New Orleans is the over-reliance on simple solutions. Many of our policy makers have touted “school choice” as the primary approach that will make our schools better.

The neighborhood school that Kirsten experienced before the storm and dreamed about before and after is in danger of remaining a dream, not a choice.

I Don’t Want to Go to That School
By Kirsten Theodore

“Why can’t I go to Douglass, Auntie Nise?”

“Because it’s not the school for you.”

“What do you mean not the school for me?”

“Look I’m not about to explain myself to you. You’re just not going.”

“Damien and Shannon went. And Damien’s already finished two years of college successfully. Why cant I go?”

“They didn’t have options, and you have two, so I’m choosing one for you.”

“So what. What’s the difference between Douglass and Signature? Can you answer that?”

“Signature is better.”

“How do you know? There’s no proof. Douglass has had ups and downs and you judge it, but you don’t know anything about that experimental school that’s been open less than a year, and you’re ready to send me there.”

“Yep.”

I was in eighth grade when we had that conversation, and I still remember it like it happened this morning. To people like my Aunt, who had never been there and just looked at the test scores, Douglass didn’t have much to offer. But I wanted to go there for several reasons: 1) My cousin and sister went there and always came home excited about their writing class or the journalism club or the choir. 2) Douglass was only a hop skip and a jump away from my house. And most of all 3) I had spent most of my afternoons in an after school program called Urban Heart that was set up and run by the community, teachers, and high school students like my cousin.

Urban Heart is also where I discovered that I wanted to be a teacher at Douglass. I wanted so much to be a part of the Douglass family, but it was ripped away from me when I was sucked into Signature High.

At this “choice” school my dream to be a teacher slowly faded, because the majority of my teachers told me I was crazy for settling for something so low and I shouldn’t want to help students who give up on themselves and would end up selling dope. I kept wondering how my Auntie could think Signature was better than Douglass when all Signature did was put down people like me.

For my tenth grade year my Auntie dragged me back to Signature, but that was cut short because of Hurricane Katrina. We evacuated to Copperas Cove, Texas, where I went to school with all the high school age students in that town for over a year.

When we returned to New Orleans in October, 2006, a couple of months into my 11th grade year, one of the only open schools with space for students was Frederick Douglass. So now it was my Auntie who didn’t have a choice. My whole world lit up when I found out that I’d be going to Douglass, my dream school.

Like most things in New Orleans, however, Douglass had changed after the storm. Now the state, which had never run a school, much less a school system, before, had taken over Douglass. Only five teachers who taught at Douglass before Katrina were left. About half of the teachers were uncertified and teaching for the first time. And there were security guards everywhere. In fact, at the beginning of the school year there were more security guards than there were certified teachers. Even my favorite part of the day, whether I was in Texas or Louisiana, at a “choice” school or a neighborhood school—I’m talking about lunchtime—even that was a disappointment. When I got to the cafeteria, the lines were longer than I had ever seen, even in my imagination of Great Depression bread lines. I didn’t even eat lunch that day, because they ran out. But I became happy I didn’t, when I found out that all students were receiving were ice sandwiches that would freeze your throat when you try to swallow.

Despite all those ways that the state takeover has made Douglass worse than when I dreamed of going there, I’m actually happy to get out my bed every morning to learn from the half of my teachers who are certified. These veterans of neighborhood public schools in New Orleans are always there to help me where I lack. If it wasn’t for Ms. Adams, I would not know that Huey P. Long and Claiborne were governors, not roads. Ms. Haines taught me not only what a parenthetical citation is but how to blend many sources and stories together into a unified essay. And Mr. Randels, the same writing teacher with Students at the Center who taught my cousin Damien six years ago, has trained me to go to the elementary school across the street, the one where Urban Heart used to be, and lead writing workshops for 7th and 8th graders with my fellow Students at the Center members.

Best of all, being at my neighborhood school has me back on track with a vision and purpose for my education. Once again I want to become a teacher, and I’m really glad to be in a school that supports me in this vision rather than looking down on me for it.

Posted by Jim Randels at 9:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday in class when we talked about posting Tyeasha’s essay on this blog, some of the students suggested sending Kenneth’s essay on the same topic. Kenneth’s a senior at Douglass. He attended a different public high school in New Orleans before the storm.

What’s Good Living in My Hood
Kenneth Sip

Ah man, my neighborhood was very fun, watching myself grow up with all my friends. While I was growing, there was nothing but trouble with my friends and me. Every day we were always doing stupid things like breaking people’s house window glass and car glass with rocks and broom sticks at the age 9 and 10. You know kids are going to be kids. When you’re a kid, you don’t know what you be doing. Everything you think of is going to be stupid, but at the same time you think it’s going to be fun. You grow out of it.

One day we broke this lady’s glass: Mrs. Dianne the Candy Lady. That’s when we got into trouble. We ran into these two men. They worked for housing. They had their
Housing Authority of New Orleans uniforms on. They stopped us and said, “We are two good Coaches from two good colleges.” Coach Chinese was from Louisiana Tech and
Coach Ski from Southern University. That’s when they said, “We are going to keep y’all little asses out of trouble.”

The Coaches were talking about getting a team together, and we all were happy. They told all of us to meet at practice the next day for 4:00 p.m. across the street from the project, and the coaches told us everything was free. And for every time we do something stupid we would have to do 50 push ups and Front Flip the whole field. I really wasn’t expecting that to happen: two grown men to help us bad ass kids to stay out of trouble.

I really appreciate that they took some of their time to help us. My Momma really appreciated them a lot by buying both of my Coaches beers and something to eat. Without my Coaches coming, me and all my friends would really be in a lot of trouble like stealing, cursing older people out, no respect. When my coaches came they changed everything in the project. A lot of people started to support us a lot. What I mean is every game we had the whole project coming watch us play football. That’s what affected my project. The crack heads and the drunk people were taking us seriously.

That’s what touched me, because my people had something to do other than being drunk or being on drugs. Come to think about it, the coaches just didn’t help us, they helped everybody in the project. That’s why I want to go to NFL to make money and give back to honor those who helped me with my problems. I really thank both coaches for helping me.

Posted by Jim Randels at 3:52 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today we feature a writing on the same theme of returning home to New Orleans after Katrina. This essay is by Tyeasha Green, who graduated from Douglass in June 2007. The story of Tyeasha’s graduation illustrates some of the struggles all students and schools have had in public education in the last two years.

What should have been a senior year in which Tyeasha set an example for younger students at Carver Senior and Middle schools, which shared a campus, became a scramble to maintain sanity, find a new community, and graduate. Her essay, reprinted below, testifies to the insight, determination, and ability of young people who persevere in schools that are labeled “failing” and neighborhoods that no longer exist.

Missing Project
Tyeasha Green

When I’m down or confused, I find myself driving back to Mazant Street and looking at the blank windows of my old apartment building.

I miss walking outside, always seeing somebody I know. It was like a family that you were born with. Because no matter whom you fussed with, fought with, liked or didn’t like, or anything like that, it didn’t matter. When you were hurt or someone was messing with you outside the neighborhood, the other Florida Project residents always had your back.

Yes, there were killings over the most stupid things like a dice game, a dogfight or the most stupid of them all “he said, she said” mess. But still the project was a place where people lived, learned how to bond, and understood what a community should be like. We learned how we should stick together as a black family and how we should respect other blacks as people not like dogs or someone you walk over and don’t care about. We learned not to mistreat other people just because we could.

My old neighborhood taught me so much. I would really hate to see it go. That’s why I hope that officials from New Orleans, the state, or the federal government do not tear down my old home. The project is a place where people can go and learn so many new things about the people who live there.

I feel that the city officials are not trying to tear the project down because they are old and non-live able. The officials say that they are tearing them down to stop the violence. This will never happen because the projects don’t kill. I wouldn’t even say that the residents in the project kill. People who kill can live anywhere, not only in the projects. People period kill people. I know this for a fact: projects do not kill people. For example right after the storm when New Orleanians started to come back to the city, there were killings going on while none of the projects were open.

The government officials should be building up not tearing down. Most of the teachers at my school are not even living in their old homes. A lot of them are staying on university campuses or with friends. Restaurants and other businesses are looking for workers, but most low income workers don’t have an affordable place to live.

It’s been over 18 months since Hurricane Katrina, but it feels like years. Now, people like me who love our old homes in the Florida and other projects are living in new neighborhoods. We have to deal with new schools and lots of loss—of people not just property. So we’re depressed, confused, and lost. And in the middle of those struggling feelings, we don’t have the old neighborhood and family support, which is really the main thing poor people like us have to keep us sane.

Posted by Jim Randels at 1:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Welcome to the Students at the Center (SAC) blog, where teachers, students, graduates, and friends from our school-based writing and digital media program will reflect on our experiences in public education in New Orleans.

Her writing reminds us of the importance of schools, particularly to young people experiencing personal and community trauma. Many of our students have thought and written extensively about the nurturing they receive when returning home to schools and communities they know and trust.

Katrina Homecoming
by Janay Barconey

New Orleans became dark and empty, when a wind full terror, Katrina, came through our joyful city. After three months passed, I had to go back to the place I called home.

While my mom was driving towards the house, I began pretending to fall asleep, because I didn’t want to see anything terrible. It was bad enough seeing houses sitting in the street and uprooted trees resting in the middle of the street.

I heard on the news, “The 9th Ward is the hardest hit.” “At least 10,000 people are going to die.” “The people are stranded.” “The levees broke.” As these news reports flashed through my mind, I worried that my house may be gone, even my life.

Then we arrived at our house. I popped up like a rabbit out of a hole, and I began searching; I noticed that my house wasn’t any different. We got out the car and walked up the stairs. My mom put her key in the door. My facial expression was of anxiety. I just couldn’t wait until my mom opened the door. I wanted to know all the answers to my questions. Finally, my mom opened it and Poof! Out of nowhere all the news stories came true. Everything in my house was a total loss.

I walked around in the living room, where nothing looked like it was living. I looked at the movement the water made. My sofa wasn’t the way it was. It was turned into the hallway and flipped back like a gymnast. Then the TV was almost into our mantle, but we had left it in front of the opposite window. I started walking towards my room, climbing over the sofa, and I smelt a green perfume coming from the kitchen. I began to gag and cough; the smell was so horrible that it could have been the main character in a horror movie.

I was in my room, with only the light shining through my windows, looking for pictures of my friends and me, but all I saw on the wall was a gray, dark line that was taller than me, and I’m 5’5”. I looked around the room; my computer was lying on the floor like a dead rat with its back to the ceiling. My bed wasn’t moved, but the bedposts were bent and looked like twigs breaking in half. Worst of all was my clothes. All of them were wet and moldy; they even had green perfume like the kitchen. After I saw all of that I left out the house and went in the car and played my game as if nothing happened. I went back for my house, but there wasn’t much to go back to. I realized that I was ready to go to school to find what I didn’t find at home, now just a house.

When I first heard that McMain was re-opening, I jumped like a kangaroo. But there was a different feeling when I walked up those old raggedy steps again. I began to have a flashback about the first time I came to high school, and the same feeling wished its way back. I thought to myself, “nobody that I know will be here.” I felt alone, but I was proved wrong.

I walked through the wide open door that just wanted me to come in, and I saw many of my friends waiting in line to get their schedules. All of my friends didn’t come back, but at least a handful did. Now, my disappointed and alone feeling left, and a rejoicing feeling entered my body. All of my emotions ran like a waterfall; I couldn’t stop, and I couldn’t do anything but be happy.

But every time I step out of McMain’s door, I feel the same way the city feels, dark and empty. I found my home, but it isn’t a city anymore. It is just a place needing some light. And if you are looking like me, you’ll find your little speck of light, even though it’s surrounded by the dark. Having something you needed is better than having nothing that you wanted.

Posted by Jim Randels at 12:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)