Skip to main content

No Child - The One-Woman Show

I'm not going to spend too much of my time in New Orleans writing on a blog, but I had to say a quick something about the one-woman show No Child that a friend and I went to last week.

The woman performing the show, Nilaja Sun, was (might still be for part of the year) a "teaching artist" teaching theater in a Bronx high school. I won't review it because it has already been reviewed eloquently in many places, including the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. If you have the chance to see it - anywhere - do so. It is the best portrayal of teaching in the inner-city that I have ever seen/heard/read.

A few similarities between third graders in the East Bay and tenth graders in the Bronx:
  • The curious phrasing of questions: "What time it is?" "What page it's on?"**
  • Kids kicking over chairs because they have no outlet for their feelings and their feelings are too overwhelming
  • Surprise expressed when a student mentions having a father
  • Teachers wanting to quit or quitting on a regular basis
  • Unreasonable expectations; I think in the show it was the kids having to pass 5 Regent's Exams in 3 days, at my school it was an 80% pass rate on the tests
  • Not enough time to teach things: in the show, a play was being prepared in 10 weeks, once a week, with some of the days taken over for various reasons. I was told one year that I needed to provide 3 hours of testing each day and "You'd better not cheat those children. I still expect you to provide 3 1/2 hours of language arts, 1 1/2 of math and 20 minutes of PE every day!!" In a 6 hour school day? Are you that unreasonable or just pretending?
  • Kids losing family members to violent deaths and other kids not even being surprised
  • The fact that no matter how ghetto the kids are, once you earn their trust, they'll do anything for you
Labels:

Comments

House Dreams said…
Similar to special ed.
Middle school, High school and K-3Same behavior, same frustrations...and we teachers have the same frustrations, too.

Sounds like a great play.
mmm
9:24 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Loss

  (I have been putting off finishing this blog post for months. You'll see why)  Today, I was cleaning a bookshelf and I found the journal from one of my third-grade students, who I call Fred in my book , in 2001. I still had it because he didn't come to the last day of school to get his stuff this year and I guess it got put in a pile and somehow I've kept it with me.  He didn't come to the last day of school, probably because his family was a mess: dad in prison, mom in an abusive relationship, all the kids (understandably) acting out violently. Fred was expelled from our school in second grade for hitting a teacher. Then he was expelled from the other school, I don't know why, at the end of second grade. He came back on the condition from the administration that he be in my class because I had him as a student in first grade and he listened to me and worked well with me.  We had a really good relationship, although Fred was definitely not easy to have in class....
Post a Comment
Read more

A New Prison, Part Two

  Second very long part of the prison visit report.   After we got all the paperwork filled out and went through the metal detector, we got visitation slips with the name of the inmate, and made our way over to the other building for visitation. This is not maximum security so thankfully you can just sit next to the inmates, and not be separated by glass or have to use a telephone to talk.    First, you get a gate unlocked and go into a holding pen that is of course in direct sunlight (or rain if it's that season) and surrounded by fences topped with razor wire. You wait there until the gate at the other end is unlocked. This holding pen was a little bigger and less claustrophobic than the other prison (I do not have any claustrophobia and I came very close to a panic attack once at the other place) and they opened the other gate more quickly. Then you walk, again in blazing sunlight (or rain) to the visitation building. This one was less of a walk than the other pri...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Best Mistake

I recently wanted to get a pedicure (I promise this will be important) and was looking at nail salons nearby. I knew there was a place called Kim's Nails near my exercise class, so I quickly googled to see if I could make an appointment online (I hate calling on the phone) and it let me, so I made an appointment for a few days later and went on with my day. Later that day, I got a text confirming my appointment and I realized that I had made the appointment at the wrong Kim's Nails! I meant to make an appointment for the one in my city and I made one at a nail shop in the next city over (Kim's Nails is a common business name). Because I had already made the appointment and they had taken the time to text me, I figured I'd just go with it. OK, if you're still with me, this is where it gets exciting! A few hours after I got the confirmation text, the owner of Kim's Nails texted me again. the text just said, "Are you a teacher?" I didn't know why they...
1 comment
Read more