The Stories They Tell

The Stories They Tell

by Marsha Rosenzweig Pincus

I remember my students by the stories they tell.

For the past 33 years, I have been challenged, moved, and most of all transformed by the young people I have encountered in my inner city classroom.

There was Steve Woods whose angry outburst of “That’s whiteman’s bullshit!” during my introductory lesson on Cry the Beloved Country that sent me on a decades-long journey to re-educate myself. Or Carlissa Russell who during a discussion of feminism and African American literature, screamed at me –“Mrs. Pincus – to you this is just political. To me it’s my life!” Or Terrance Jenkins whose nearly twenty revisions of his play Taking Control taught me that it is often their very lives my students are trying to control and revise.

Then there was Duane.

It is April 1998. Duane is not doing the senior project that he needs to complete in order to graduate. Duane has been struggling. He has taken to avoiding me, the mentor he has chosen to marshal him through this complicated research process. And even though I know it won’t be easy, I find the strength to confront him.

At first, he will not look at me. His head is bowed and his chin is dug deep inside his chest. I talk in what I hope are soothing tones, trying to encourage and convince him to do the work. Suddenly he jumps up from his seat. What’s the fucking use anyway? Bull’s out there crazy! They gonna kill you. I have no future. What’s the fucking use? What’s the point in doing this? What’s the point of graduating? I’m gonna fucking die!!!!!

When he finishes, he sits back down, assumes the same tucked position while his words echo in the silence.

Slowly, he begins to tell his story. He has already been shot once, on his way home from a desegregated school in a white neighborhood, where he went before he was transferred here, his neighborhood school. He lifts his shirt to show me his scar

I take a deep breath and try to gather the pieces of myself that have been shattered by his story. What can I, a white woman, a mother whose son is the same exact age as Duane say to him. In telling his story to me, his teacher, in school, Duane has transgressed a boundary and ripped through the silence that separates students from their teachers. He has made the call. I must make the response.

Duane, I say, touching his arm. Are you positive you’re gonna die? Are you so sure that you’re willing to bet your future on it? At least consider the possibility that you could be wrong here. You’re not always right, you know.

There is a long silence because I have run out of things to say. I am overcome by a desire to get up and run away and never see Duane again. Then through the silence, his response. Thrusting his notebook towards me, he says, Show me how to do this. Step by step. I’m confused.

As I reach across to Duane, I suddenly remember another story – one from nearly thirty years ago. It was the first day of school of my senior year in AP English and Mrs. Laskin asked us to write an essay –something like how I spent my summer vacation. My friend Steve had died from a heroin overdose one month to the day after his 18th birthday on August 9, 1969 – one week before Woodstock, one month after men had landed on the moon as I watched the small black and white tv with a group of scagged out boys. I began the essay with the silent ride home from the cemetery, with his best friend Dock ripping the funeral sticker off the windshield. I wrote about my confusion and guilt – how I had spoken to him the night he died and he said he was just going to stay home and watch tv and how he must have changed his mind and how I should have known and been there for him.

Mrs. Laskin gave me a B-minus on that essay – a grade I now know teachers give when they don’t know what to say about a paper. It’s a safe grade. It will raise no eyebrows and cause no complaints.

Looking back, I wonder. What did Mrs. Laskin think of the young woman sitting before her who was in so much pain? How might my life have been different if she or anyone in that school had responded to what I was saying – the story of my life I was trying so desperately to tell her?

Right after the Columbine massacre, there was a flurry of public dialogue about making schools and classrooms more humane --- about making room for difference and listening to the voices of our often troubled teens. But the winds have shifted once again - a cold wind blows over our schools, particularly our urban ones. The new rhetoric of school reform is the cold calculating language of capitalism – bottom lines, per-pupil spending – accountability -- and -- yes – frighteningly --- profits. The call for new tests have replaced the call for humane environments. Stripped of their stories, like forests stripped of their trees, schools have become cold and barren places where nothing can take root and grow.

It is teachers who must make sure that our students’ stories get told- to policy makers, numbers crunchers, test writers and the pubic. Their stories of struggle, courage, hope and possibility must interrupt and challenge the dominant narratives that exist in our popular media about the failure of urban students and urban schools. The stories are all we have and they are what will save us.

Marsha Rosenzweig Pincus taught English and Drama for 34 years before retiring in 2008. She was one of 34 teacher consultants in the very first PhilWP Summer Institute in 1986.

Marsha originally wrote this piece for Project SOULL (Study of Urban Learning and Leading). This and other pieces can be found on Her Own Terms at www.marshapincus.com.