A friend I used to work with nine years ago recently contacted me in response to my post Amber Alert: Teenage Boy Mentally Kidnapped by Gangs. He wondered if the 20-year-old man in the post who was killed in an apparent gang shooting was the same student he had taught in 2004 when the deceased was in 6th grade. The answer, unfortunately, was yes.

I invited that friend, Faren D'Abell, to guest blog for me this week. Faren is a critical thinker and offers his thoughts on urban education from the perspective of an African-American man. Faren is a former Chicago Public Schools teacher and administrator and is now a school principal in Indiana. He can be reached at fdabell@schoolsleader.com

Four months ago I made the decision to move my 12-year-old son out of Chicago, thus ending my successful career in Chicago Public Schools. It was a tough decision. We've lived in Chicago his entire life. But two factors pushed us to make the move.

Being a Chicago Public Schools educator, I knew that my sixth grade son would soon be faced with the Chicago oddity of having to apply to get into a high-quality high school. Not being in the top 10 percent of Chicago students, my son had little chance to get a quality public high school education in Chicago. His best-case scenarios would be admission through one of the few random spots at Noble Street Charter or at a magnet school, or me paying upwards of $25,000 annually for private school. The neighborhood high school warehouses were not viable options.

The second factor that made the decision to move a reality was the continuing lack of safe neighborhoods in Chicago. Our Chicago home is about 10 blocks west of Obama's Chicago home. In the span of about a year, our car was stolen, our garage was broken into twice, my son and his friend were threatened, and a new baseball cap was stolen from his friend's head in front of our house during a birthday party. The police were called each time and the only crime that resulted in a visit, oddly, was the theft of the hat.

I try to be a positive force in the lives of the youth I serve. I have mentored dozens of young men over the last 10 years, taught in a juvenile detention center, and taught in some of the toughest schools and one of the best schools in Chicago. In every case I always saw hope.

Six of my former students are like sons to me. I help them make connections, try to get them on the right track when they wander, and expose them to cultural and educational opportunities that they wouldn't otherwise get. Many more former students have connected with me on Facebook. One student, Alex, was in my sixth grade class eight years ago. He recently found me on Facebook and started an e-mail conversation.

The conversation went like this:

He never responded. Ten days later he was dead. He was shot in the head in an apparent gang attack—a block from the school he attended as a child and between two church buildings.

After the senseless death, I started talking to more of my former students - students in Alex's class. Some didn't remember him; some were posting "RIP" on his Facebook page. I urged my former students to get out. One is working on his associate's degree so he can apply to the police force. He said, "It's hard, sir. Me and other people who are blessed like me are lucky to be given the opportunity and chances we get. Everyone underestimates us because we're young with no experience."

No experience, a bottom-notch education, and little hope: Is this the legacy Chicago provides for our young, mostly poor, mostly minority children? After I made my off-the-cuff recommendation to "get out," I reflected on my own decision to get out. I realized that, like Chicago's mayors and our President, I have the education and resources to get out or to make additional sacrifices and put my child in private school. The families of most Chicago Public School students don't have these luxuries.

Big cities introduce ways for a couple of schools to be high quality through magnets or charters but few have addressed the systematic problems. Even when magnets and charters work, it forces families to abandon their neighborhood schools. Schools are the glue that keep neighborhoods together. When they fail, neighborhoods fail. It's a vicious cycle that results in helping the few succeed and the many continue to fail. The answer has to be holistic involving many more players than just the schools. That's usually where failure starts.

I remember watching a video of a student from one of Chicago's first turnaround high schools. He told the Chicago Board of Education that if they wanted to give high school students a chance they should open up spots at Jones College Prep and the public schools middle class families are willing to send their children to rather than "turning around" another bottom notch high school.

I don't endorse continued support of a system that's broken: a system that allows a school to have less than five percent of its students meet state standards. But I also don't endorse continued economic, ethnic, and racial segregation in schools that results in a concentrated "haves versus have-nots" education.

In my effort to find a better life for my son, I accepted a position in an urban district in Indiana that believes all children should have a high quality education. I'm the principal of a school with similar demographics to the schools in which I worked in Chicago, but there are no tests to get in to our high school.

All students go to the same high-quality public high school that produced the likes of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, singer Babyface, NBA player Eric Gordon, McDonald's president Don Thompson, and thousands of educated students of whom you've never heard. The district does not rest on its laurels. All of the elementary and middle schools have embraced the International Baccalaureate Primary Years and Middle Years programs. Indeed, every student in the district has the opportunity to receive an International Baccalaureate education.

I still believe the "get out" advice is sound for my at-risk former students. Students should get out, if they're able, for at least a few years to see what could be. College is expensive, but student loans and grants are available. The problem is that even if our children are emotionally and financially ready and able to get out, they're not prepared by our neighborhood high schools.

In a Chicago public school like Crane Technical Prep where only four percent of students met state standards last year, we're left to come to only two conclusions: Either 96 percent of the students in this school don't care, or maybe, just maybe, there are students who wanted to learn, but were let down by their schools.

Even the public charter high schools in Chicago don't post much better results when it comes to preparing our students to get out. Only 10 percent of Ford Powerhouse High students, 15 percent of Urban Prep Academy students, 19 percent of University of Chicago Charter School* students, and 37 percent of UNO Charter School Network* students met state standards on the PSAE test. Only Noble Street Charter can boast that 50 percent of its 11 graders met standards on the college readiness exam—on par with the state and twice as good as the Chicago district.

More opportunities need to exist for the vast majority of Chicago students so that students like Alex can envision a way out. The process of allowing only the best students access to a quality education is fundamentally broken. Only those with resources—intellectual or financial—can get out. Alex doesn't have a chance to get out any more. Even those who make all the right choices often don't have a chance to get out. What can we do to ensure that at least a few more students do?

While Faren's experience with urban education has been mostly in Chicago, I know the challenges facing these kids and schools are not limited to Chicago. Sadly, similar stories abound in cities across our country and that is why, as a nation, we need to face this crisis head-on.

*These charter schools have elementary and high school data comingled. Data listed is based on high school PSAE scores only.

Posted by Marilyn Rhames at 5:47 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Since NATO is a peacekeeping, treaty-making organization, I submit that it comes back to Chicago for another round of negotiations. With youth violence running rampant in minority, low-income urban communities across America, Chicago is the poster child for a new NATO mission:

Not Another Teenage Obituary.

Now that's the kind of summit no one but the crazy people would protest over.

Posted by Marilyn Rhames at 6:24 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Did you know that this week is the official Teacher Appreciation Week? If you didn't I'm not surprised. I taught in Chicago Public Schools for four years before I learned that such a "holiday" existed.

In my fourth* year of teaching, I remember receiving a certificate from the then-CEO of schools Arne Duncan saying thanks. But every teacher in the building—in the entire district—got a certificate and the school clerk put ours in the staff mailboxes without any context to it being Teacher Appreciation Week. Some teachers tossed it immediately, but I held on to mine. I found it again a few years later amid a stack of papers in my basement office. Seeing the certificate took me back to that year, then I ripped it up and tossed it in the trash.

That year was the worst year of my teaching career. I felt betrayed by my administrators. I was lonely, too. My grade level cluster team was made up some of the coolest people you'd ever want to meet, but they were reluctant to join me in taking a stand for what was right for fear of losing their jobs. And I had the class from hell with no support. It took me three months to figure out how to manage 33 third graders who all seemed to hate each other.

Needless to say, I didn't feel appreciated. I almost quit teaching altogether.

Fast forward to this week: On Monday, the entire staff ate a homemade breakfast provided by the administrators. Our pancakes were cooked right there on a griddle in the teacher resource room. There was an egg casserole in a Pyrex dish, along with yogurt and granola, fresh-baked zucchini and carrot breads, fruit, coffee and hot chocolate with an optional whip cream topping.

On Tuesday, our staff feasted on a Mediterranean lunch that included falafels, chicken wrapped in flatbreads with tahini sauce, Greek salad, grilled vegetable kabobs, couscous, and an array of delectable cookies.

Today, teachers are told to expect a surprise on our desks when we arrive to work. (Turns out that it was a cool water bottle with the school name on it and the William Butler Yeats quote, "Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire."

On Thursday, the principal will bring in her personal masseuse. NO KIDDING. Every member of our staff can schedule a 10-minute massage in a quiet, darkened room with soothing music playing. We can also get coverage for our class, if our lunch or prep times are booked. And as an added bonus, a faithful supporter of our school will distribute goodie bags full of random but useful things (i.e. chocolate, deodorant, herbs and spices)

On Friday, the teacher massages will continue, but the day's new treat will be a visit from the Starfruit truck before our professional development session begins. We will go outside to make our own frozen yogurt treats with unlimited toppings!

Now that's celebrating Teacher Appreciation Week! And my principal does a variation of this every single year!

In fact, many parents at our school also join in the festivities by giving teachers flowers or gifts. Sometimes parents make dishes and ask that it be shared with the entire staff in our teacher resource room.

This week comes at a good time for me; my morale was sinking. You could probably tell from my post last week on why I hate lesson planning. It wasn't because I didn't feel appreciated; I was just plain old tired (and still am, quite honestly).

But the way my principal acknowledges Teacher Appreciation Week would make even the most burned out teacher perk up. She is always a supportive presence in the building but she uses this opportunity to "go all out." I think the memory of this week will carry me gracefully through the stress and chaos of closing another school year.

Administrators out there: I hope you were taking notes.


*Updates: Originally titled, "Don't Hate Me Because I'm Appreciated!"; it was my fourth year, not my third year of teaching

Posted by Marilyn Rhames at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

What would you say is the hardest part of teaching? For me, it is lesson planning. It takes me on average six hours a week to plan instruction for the nine science units I teach each year.

It's not just the writing of the plans that is laborious; it's the intellectual contemplation that goes into it. I must figure out ways to make my instruction clear and engaging. I have to be skilled at knowing when to skip portions of the curriculum and supplement other parts on my own. I must also differentiate the content, pedagogy, and assessments based on student learning needs.

The lesson plans at my school are officially due on Thursday for the following week. But who has an extra six hours lying around in the middle of the week to write them? When I leave school, I begin my other full-time job as wife and mother. I also need a little leisure time alone—and that doesn't include sleep! My official workday ends at 4:15, but I stay an hour or two after work everyday to clean up the science lab, put posters on the wall, or grade papers.

Needless to say, I am always turning in my lesson plans late. I either get up at 5 am on Saturday to write my lesson plans until around 11 a.m., or I sleep in on Saturday and fly home after church on Sunday to work from about 2 to 8 p.m. When I've been really rebellious, I'm up at 4 am on Monday trying to finish up. Neither option makes me happy.

Lesson planning for me has to be done in the right state of mind. I need solace. I need to zone out on all other responsibilities. I can't write them on my prep in between classes. I can't write them on my lunch break. If I do, I'm distracted by all the worries of the day, writing them more for my boss than for me, making my lesson plans virtually useless.

I write the best lesson plans when I am in my bed, with my bedroom door closed, and my computer on my lap and papers scattered around me. My husband's job is to keep the kids fed, happy, and safe until I am done.

This may sound over the top, but lesson planning is almost a spiritual ritual for me. I have to imagine myself standing in front of my students, foreshadowing the responses students will give me. I need to know that I have all my supplies that I need to do each lab. If the batteries in the flashlight, for example, are not charged, then my whole lab could fall apart. So I have the added responsibility of searching through the cabinets and containers in the science lab each morning to make sure everything I need is there. I am blessed to have an assistant this year who helps me do this!

I look forward to the day when I've taught all the new science units at least once and the lesson plans are already written. I wrote meticulous lesson plans for three units last year, but then my administration gave us an official lesson planning template this year. Converting last year's plans into this year's template takes longer to do than just writing them again from scratch. So I re-write those plans, as well as write the plans for other units with the hope that next year the template will remain the same.

As hard as lesson planning is for me, I wouldn't want to teach without them. They make the actual act of teaching so fun and easy. The plans take the pressure off of me when I am standing in front of the classroom. I know what my students' learning objectives are, and I know exactly what to do to get them there. If I go off on a tangent, which I sometimes do, my plans gently guide me right back on track. And if I need to take a major detour, I give myself permission to do that.

I would say that lesson planning is a major contributor to my constant sense of burnout. I honestly don't know how long I can continue to teach because it seems that the workload only gets heavier—not lighter—with each passing year. But I also realize there are no shortcuts for being ready.

That's why I have this love-hate relationship with lesson planning. I loathe doing it because it takes so much of my personal time and requires such a high level of intellectual rigor and forethought.

But I love to have done it because good plans help students learn. Plus it allows me to shine as a well-prepared, rock star science teacher. Well, at least in theory.

Posted by Marilyn Rhames at 1:18 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Twenty years ago, the guidance counselor at my school was in middle school. His house stood on a corner lot in a gang ridden, Hispanic neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. He told me he would be doing his homework in his bedroom and hear shooting outside. Instead of getting down low, he would go to the window to see the action. He'd see the shooter, the runner, and the get away car. Then he would go back to doing his homework.

Last week, exactly one block away from the counselor's childhood home, another shooting occurred. This time our student's older brother was killed. He was shot in the head. He was 20 years old.

That young man was either in the womb or a newborn during the time the guidance counselor watched gang shoot-outs from his window. Same couple of city blocks, same neighborhood. The cycle of violence passed down to the next generation. Nothing has changed but the dates on the calendar.

So now my 8th grade student is left to grieve. Will he join the gang and retaliate? Or will this tragic episode make him all the more repulsed by gangs? Only time will tell.

The bigger question is why hasn't this gang activity been stopped by now? Are there babies in the womb right now destined to join a gang and be murdered (or be a murderer) by their 21st birthday? Is this the life that their world will offer them? Is violent death by age 21 an acceptable American norm?

We want jobs. We want to fix the economy. We want to end the war in Afghanistan. But there is no major demand to end the local civil wars that have played out for decades in the urban centers of America. These killings get a blurb in the newspaper, if any press at all. Where is the outrage? When a gang kidnaps the mind of a teenager, not much is done about it. The family of the child weeps, but the general public just shakes its head. Not my kid, not my neighborhood, not my problem.

But it's all of our problem. The police, with the approval of the parents, need to send Amber alerts when a child is known to have joined a gang. The community needs to be made aware so that we can apply as much pressure as possible to break the chain of violence and get a kid back on track. Maybe someone would sign up to be his mentor. Maybe someone else will offer him tutoring or a part-time job.

If we don't, the corner shoot-outs just beyond the guidance counselor's old bedroom window will continue another 20 years. And state prisons and local funeral homes will continue to welcome young, talented, lost teenage boys.

Posted by Marilyn Rhames at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Sometimes I wake up to the sweet sounds of Cameroonian children singing in my head*. They are singing, "Oh, we thank you for what you've done for us!" Then I ask myself, what did I do for them? They have changed my life!

If you have followed my blog for any amount of time, you probably know my story: Grew up poor and in the 'hood on the South Side of Chicago. I was the 6th of eight of children; my mother stayed home to raise us while my dad drove tractor-trailers across America. Except he didn't always bring the money home. In my freshman year of high school, my father asked his devoted-to-a-fault wife for a divorce. (Oops, I never told that before!) It was the darkest, ugliest chapter of my life.

But now the way I see my childhood is changing. My fundamental identity—the story I have told myself for years and years—is now becoming more foreign to me. And it's all because of those marching, singing Cameroonian children from a village in Belo*; because of the orphans from the Helping Hands Orphanage in Bamenda who sang about Jesus' promise to give them "food right now"*; and because of the singing women of a village in Ndop*, who, after tending to their husbands and children and working in their fields all day, spent the last dim hours of daylight in an abandoned school building trying to learn how to read. Almost everywhere I went to help, people gifted me in song.

I now refuse to say I grew up "poor." My poor had electricity. My poor had a toilet. My poor had a public library. My poor had free lunch. My poor had pillows on the bed—with pillow cases. My poor had maxi pads that allowed me to go to school every day of the month. I know now that I was not really "poor."

Now that I have seen African poor, I feel too ashamed to use that word to describe myself or my family. Our food stamps and government cheese were Apple Computer stocks and caviar by comparison.

Travel to places like Cameroon offers the potential for serious professional development for teachers. We need to leave our classrooms and schools from time to time to get some perspective on life outside of our comfort zones. It might impact us personally, causing us to reflect on and question who we are and who we want to be. It might also cause us to re-evaluate the way we view our students. The messages we tell ourselves might change, including the lies we have so effortlessly believed.

For me, I now see enormous hope in the students who have the worst home life. The students who come to school dirty, smelly and unkept are the students with the greatest potential. Why? Because some of the Cameroonian students I met were smelly, too. They have to find a quiet spot in the weeds to use as a bathroom. Still, they found something within themselves to make them keep smiling, laughing, singing and dancing.

They paid close attention in class, for example, despite having 60 classmates in one electricity-free room and no text books. They were thrilled when I gave them a shiny colorful pencil and their own plastic pencil sharpener because they only see yellow lead pencils, if they can afford to buy even one.

I have not lost my mind. I know there is suffering and poverty in America, and some of our students find themselves in desperate situations. We have child abuse, hunger, and abandonment issues here, too. Our fight for social justice must never end. Still, situations in America are rarely as desperate as what I've witnessed happening widespread in Cameroon. When bad things happen there, there are virtually no governmental social services available to make things right. People I've met in the Northwest Region of Cameroon will tell you that their motto is "Yes, we can!" They go on working, striving in spite of their troubles.

I traveled for 10 days nonstop, and I only saw one beggar. The people of Cameroon don't beg. They find something—anything—to try to sell or trade. They don't expect to receive something without giving something back. That would be illogical to them.

We have to empower our students to give something—anything—even when they appear to have nothing and feel helpless. Everybody has something to offer, if only a song. Every student has a gift of some sort, and we have to help them bring out their gifts, without letting them know how much our heart breaks for them. We have to send the message that despite our struggles, "Yes, we can!"

I suspect I've always believed this. But before I went to Cameroon I was unsure if my position on education and poverty was truly legitimate. I would avoid debates with other educators who insisted that socioeconomic status determined academic success. But now I know better. Now I have an unshakeable belief that hope and determination are far, far more powerful than our American version of "poor."

I think my African slave ancestors would want me to believe that. I think Harriet Tubman and Dr. Martin Luther King would, too. They kept hoping, believing, and insisting that life for tomorrow's generation would get better. And if I ever forget the legacy of my ancestors, all I need to do is put on the video of the Cameroonian children singing, thanking me for believing in them.

Then their songs will play in my head first thing in the morning.

*Various YouTube videos added on April 19, 2012.

Posted by Marilyn Rhames at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

When I went to Cameroon, I was famous. Or at least a really important person. An American teacher who has come to see how educators there can improve their practice. First I did a live radio interview. Then I traveled around to schools, observing classroom instruction, and meeting with teachers and administrators afterward.

They had hard questions:

*How will the students learn the mandated dual languages—English and French—in school when their families speak only in Pidgin language and native dialect at home?

Questions like these were not rhetorical. They were not poised as covert excuses. The teachers wanted real suggestions for their real problems. I commended them for getting out of the bed each morning and coming to work to face such overwhelming challenges. I told them that I observed some excellent teaching when considering the circumstances.

I offered a few suggestions that they thought were plausible. For example, there was too much direct instruction; they should slowly implement self-sustaining small groups to engage and reinforce learning. More independent work time was also needed to more clearly assess student learning. In addition, I suggested working out a teacher residency program with the local teaching colleges to increase practical, pre-service teacher training while also lessening the teacher-student ratios.

We would always run out of time. I promised to keep in touch.

Now I'm back in the states. I am definitely not famous, and I'm only "a really important person" to my small circle of family and friends. My status as an American teacher is not a big deal. When I came back home there was not a parade of children singing, dancing and drumming to welcome me the way it had been in a village in Belo. (My husband did make dinner and give me a dozen roses, and my daughters did jump around and do a little dance.)

Here's the question that haunts me: Now what? Is it possible to mobilize a corps of American teachers who are interested in running workshops in the Northwest Region of Cameroon? The teachers there are hungry for help. They are not too proud to admit the educational situation in their country is desperate. They seemed to know very little about learning centers, integrated curriculum, or interactive read alouds. Would American teachers be willing to sacrifice their time, money, and energy during Spring Break or summer vacation to teach teachers on the other side of the globe?

One of the last things I did there was to read aloud Beatrice's Goat to a group of 150 or more children from Belo. The book is about a village girl in Uganda whose gift of a goat allows her family to earn enough money to send her to school.

Only some of the kids spoke fluent English, so a pastor in the village translated each sentence from the book in their native dialect. When I finished reading, I asked the children what was their favorite part of the book. "Beatrice went to school"; "she loved her goat"; "she helped her mother," were their answers. They LOVED the book.

I realized that my other book about an African American girl dressing up like a princess for her father wasn't appropriate. Most of the children didn't even have a single toy at home, let alone a fairy tale costume to twirl around in.

Then I passed out cards my students in Chicago had written to the Cameroonian children. I also passed out colorful pencils, erasers and pencil sharpeners. The children were so excited and appreciative! I was so moved that I had to walked away and cry.

I'll just end the post right here.

Posted by Marilyn Rhames at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Water. Every living organism needs it to survive.

One of my least favorite principals used water as a weapon. Of course he would deny that. The water cooler in the main office was expensive to maintain, he'd say, and it was a discretionary item, not a necessity. He told his staff to stop filling up our water bottles—only so much in a cup and not to keep coming back for more.

But what's a teacher to do when her throat runs dry from educating students all day? Apparently we were consuming too much of the water so the principal moved the water cooler into his office, just behind his desk. He kept the cups nearby, too. If a teacher wanted a sip, she'd have to catch the principal while he was in his office and then request that he fill the paper cup.

I worked in the adjacent school building and was so thirsty one day that I couldn't risk the chance of walking over to the main building and the principal not being in his office. Besides, the one time I did ask him for a cup of water, I felt so humiliated that I vowed to never do it again.

So guess where I turned? To the icky, I-know-I-shouldn't-be-doing-this-but-I'm-just-so-thirsty student water foundation. It wasn't 15 minutes before my stomach declared war on the germs. I got so sick that I could not come to work for two days.

Water-borne illnesses were occurring at Headmaster George Ntombova's school every day, except the children were getting sick, not the teachers. Headmaster George runs an elementary school in the remote Cameroonian village in the Northwest Region of Ndop Plains. The area faces abject poverty with scarce electricity and no sources of clean drinking water.

The only way to drink safe water in Ndop is to buy it bottled, and the people living in the 12 surrounding villages are about as poor as poor can get. So when they need a drink, they often find themselves at the same stream that they bathe in, that they wash their clothes in, and that cattle drink from and defecate in. Sometimes the nearest water source is a clear, flowing creek and other times it is a muddy brown pond. But because of the lack of sanitation, they are all contaminated.

Headmaster George is a proud native of the land. He grew up very poor but managed to go to college and for eight years worked as a PTA teacher, an educator who is paid a meager salary by the parents while hoping to get picked up as a government teacher. Now he is the headmaster of Government School Mbunkong and leads 350 students and 4 teachers. (In Cameroon, the class size limit is 60 pupils per teacher, but many public schools have more than 100 mixed-aged students in a classroom).

Besides the overcrowding; the daily issues with student hunger and poor hygiene; and the fact that none of the students can afford to buy their textbooks and teachers aren't given basic teaching tools—the children were getting sick. In fact, many of the students are orphans because their parents died from the lack of basic health care and from water-borne diseases like cholera and dysentery.

Headmaster George said he could no longer wait for the Cameroonian government to intervene. He and his PTA president attended a Water for Cameroon community meeting lead by Irish missionary Mike Toolan. Mike and Headmaster George worked together to dig a 18-meter deep well on the school grounds.

The water from this well, however, is still unsafe to drink. Water for Cameroon then donated two bio-sand filters that uses a specific type of excavated sand as a natural purifier that removes 99.9 percent of the pathogens from the water—even that brown, poo-infested water! At the end of each school day, students are able to fill up their water bottles to take clean drinking water home.

The filters were installed in December and from that time until February the number of student complaints of tummy aches fell from more than 300 to four (one of which was due to a non-water related medical issue.) This is evidence, George said, that these bio-sand filters work.

Plus the filters only cost about $30. This is one month's salary for a PTA teacher and even more costly to the village farmers who live from hand to mouth. Therefore, donations to Water for Cameroon are GREATLY needed to help end preventable deaths. Globally, about 1.1 billion people don't have access to clean water to drink.

I will be leaving Cameroon tomorrow to resume my comparatively lavish lifestyle as an American citizen.

I will drink directly from the tap.

I will take a long hot bath.

I will even water my neighbor's lawn if I think it looks a little brown.

And when I return to my current school, I'll fill my water bottle to the brim with the water from the water cooler in my classroom. Every classroom in my school has a water cooler for the teachers--and there are a couple in the hallway.

After I've consumed as much water as I want, I'll remember Headmaster George with his 350 students and 4 teachers. Then I'll say a prayer and make a donation to Water for Cameroon. I encourage every reader to do the same.

Posted by Marilyn Rhames at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I am staying in the port city of Douala, Cameroon, grand central station of the 18th Century, where kidnapped Africans took the dreadful voyage to the Americas to live out their lives as slaves—if they survived the Middle Passage at all.

For the first time in my life, I journeyed to the Motherland, U.S. passport proudly in hand.

As I traveled from Chicago to Brussels on the first leg of the trip, it was like any other flight. People minded their own business. They were polite, not asking too many questions. It was an evening flight so the passengers were laid back with their headphones on watching movies or just trying to catch a nap.

The trip from Brussels to Douala was totally different. It was almost like a cocktail party (wine was a free beverage option). About 75 percent of the passengers were Cameroonians who did not know each other, but that didn't matter. I was a bit surprised when a mother asked me to watch her two-year-old while she left to change her other baby's diaper. But I was shocked when she later asked me to hold her sleeping baby so she could go to the bathroom and take a much-needed nap. (I agreed.)

The Africans were standing around talking to each other; holding political conversations in English and in French. Some were laughing and joking while standing in front of the communal television screens. (No one asked them to move.) Parents allowed their irritable babies to crawl up and down the aisles to stretch their legs. And when the plane landed, the people exploded in claps and cheers. The sociable, hospitable atmosphere on the plane was a warm welcome to Africa.

I sat on a row with three native-born Cameroonians: Jackie, Eugenie, and Colin. We were all strangers but you would never have known. Jackie, 33, had an MBA and lived in Arkansas; Eugenie, who was in her early 40s, was a health care worker living in London, England; and Colin, 37, was a pharmacist living in Milan, Italy.

Because Cameroon is a patriarchal society, women cannot own property and even when college educated they face a corporate glass ceiling that is almost to the floor. Eugenie said she misses Cameroon deeply but she would only return to live here at age 70. Jackie said she would probably never return because the governmental corruption is just too "depressing."

Colin, the only male in our group, saw his central African country much differently. He argued that other nationalities—particularly the German, French, and the Chinese—are building industries in Cameroon that kept natives in poverty. He admitted that he left his country to find more opportunities, but said now that Europe—and especially Italy—is struggling economically, jobs and fair treatment of blacks in the workplace has declined significantly. He said that most of the young, college-educated professionals from Cameroon chose to to leave the country, but this habit prevents the level of economic development that could lift its citizen out of abject poverty. As for him, Colin's goal is to move his family back to Cameroon by 2014.

The idea of Africans being taken from their homes to become slaves in America has always intrigued me. As a child, I remember learning about Harriet Tubman and how she escaped to freedom in the North but returned to the South about 19 times to help other slaves achieve freedom.

I thought about this as I listened to these highly educated Africans say that they left Cameroons for opportunities but now they "don't feel at home" or "free" in Europe. Two of the three longed to "come back home" but home is not the economically vibrant place it needs to be.

I acknowledged the need for Africans to build up their own nations, but I could not go as far to advise the successful African women to give up her lucrative jobs in America and Europe to return to Cameroon, a place where cultural tradition keeps women as second-class citizens. I am learning that women need more educational opportunities in Cameroon; and when they graduate from college, they need more jobs that pay a living wage. (For example, teachers who work in government schools make only about $30 to $160 per month.*)

As these statements roll off my digital tongue, I realize that they also apply to me, to African Americans. We have to build ourselves up in America; it's a job that the federal and state governments cannot do alone. Once we achieve personal success we have to turn around and give back to others in our communities. This is precisely why I teach.

It doesn't matter to me if the students are in a charter or traditional public school. What matters is that every child in America gets a quality education, and that neither their gender or skin color limits the kinds of job opportunities they rightfully deserve.

I've only been in Cameroon for 24-hours, but I have learned so much about the country—and myself. I know that my life will forever be changed after I leave for the states in nine days.

*Updated 4/12/12 based on new information

Posted by Marilyn Rhames at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

She was so mad that her face was red, eyes tearing, and imaginary puffs of smoke were coming out of her ears. She didn't have an appointment with me, but there she was. In my classroom. Screaming. In my face.

Why did you fail my child? I tried to explain. Why did you fail my child! After unsuccessfully trying to finish a sentence about ten times, I realized that this angry mother was not really asking a question. She was demanding that I apologize, that I admit I made a mistake and change the grade.

It didn't matter that I sent home more than five notes—including a progress report—that chronicled the 7th grader's lack of engagement, little homework, and poor performance on tests. The mom loudly explained that the student gave the notes to the dad; he signed the correspondences and did not tell the mom—after all, he had moved out of the house. I asked: How was I supposed to know this? Why do you think your daughter told her father and not you? Why didn't your daughter make any effort to do her work when she knew she was failing?

I tried to excuse myself, explaining that my next conference was at the home of a mom who is recovering from having been run over by a car. You aren't going anywhere until you explain to me why you didn't tell me that my child was failing! It was not the best time to get flippant, but I asked her, So what? Are you holding me hostage in my classroom?

That's when she called me a b---- and blocked the door. It didn't help that she had an unidentified woman with her, stacking the odds against me in the event this mom wanted to fight. In the end, she chose to storm out of the room, shouting obscenities for all the parents and students in the hallway to hear.

That's my report card pick-up horror story. Oddly enough, my colleagues and I discovered that the incident was loaded with valuable information. First off, we needed to beef up security in the building! But seeing our parents in raw form also gave us insights on how we can better reach our students. For example, instead of asking how we can get more students to do their homework, we began asking how to free up some time in school or after school to allow students to do their homework. While the expectation for homework completion would not change, we realized that our students' homes are not always quiet, peaceful places in which to study.

Today I am holding parent-teacher conferences at my school, and my past experiences have caused me to expect the unexpected. I've listed below a few of my most memorable report card conferences, and I reflect on how they helped me change my approach with certain students.

• What Happened: A student's aunt showed up for conferences instead of the mother. Unprovoked, she explained, "His mother had an abortion this morning, that's why she couldn't come." I told her that I hoped she wasn't this forthcoming around my student and his three siblings, but she told me that they already knew. What I Learned: My third grade student's behavior problems and low self-esteem might be rooted in him needing more attention from his single mother. I understood why calling his mother when he misbehaved was unproductive, and began thinking of other ways to reach him.

• What Happened: The parent conference with one of my white families ended with the mother telling me that she blames her husband for her 4th grade son's behavior problems. She rolled up her sleeves and showed me several bruises she recently received at the hands of the man. In addition, she told me that when I call home the father is so polite and respectful, but he called me "The Black B----" around the house. What I Learned: The disrespect I got from the child is based on his father's racist and misogynistic views, not because I was doing anything wrong. I needed to stop communicating with the dad and show the student so much love and kindness that he would have a hard time rationalizing his hatred. Adding more lessons about the accomplishments by African-American women was also in order!

• What Happened: A mother kept falling asleep in her child's parent-teacher conference. Every two or three minutes, the mother would nod off—and even snore—and her third grade daughter would have to poke or shake her to wake up. What I Learned: At the end of every day, the girl would say, "Ms. Rhames, I am going to miss you." I told her that she'd be back the next morning and she would say, "I know, but I'm going to miss you from now until then." Now I knew why she missed me so: Her mother was a drug addict, and I didn't know that until report card pick-up.

• What Happened: The mother of my student with Asperger Syndrome explained how her 6th grade son cooks dinner for her when she works late and does most of the housework so she doesn't have to. She explained that he asked her if it was okay that he loved Ms. Rhames because he didn't want to make her feel jealous. What I Learned: Though this student had trouble expressing himself to teachers and peers, deep down inside he was the most thoughtful and loving child I've ever taught.

I encourage you to enter parent teacher conferences with your eyes wide open. It's more than just a time to tell the parents how their child is doing in school. It's your window into the private world of a child. Ask good questions. Be open and honest. Be willing to listen to the parents—even if they are too angry to hear anything from you. Most times nothing memorable happens at parent-teacher conferences, but when they take an unexpected turn‐ and inevitably one will‐ you're sure to get an education.

Posted by Marilyn Rhames at 1:49 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend