Seeing Students, Not Threats

My third-period students rushed in at the start of class, wide-eyed and excited. Something had happened.

“Quentin hit Ms. Combs!”

Helen Combs was my friend. She taught language arts. “He knocked her down,” one student reported. “They took her to the hospital, and the police took him away in handcuffs!”

For a while, nobody could talk or think about anything else. After the kids “vented,” I refocused them to work on their projects.

As soon as I had a free moment, I called my friend’s cell.

“I’m ok,” she reassured me. “The doctors say I’m fine.”

She sported an impressive shiner for about a week after returning to her classroom.

She was known in our middle school as a strict teacher who held her students to high expectations. As far as I could tell, most students respected and liked her. I didn’t know the boy who attacked her, but he didn’t have a reputation as a troublemaker.

By the weekend, Helen had been going over and over the encounter in her mind. She said Quentin had been talking back and “having an attitude” all week. His attack surprised her. We later learned that Quentin’s father had recently lost his job and the family was about to be evicted from its home—things no one at school knew, before the attack.

“My aunt asked if I’m ready to quit teaching,” Helen told me, before her return to the classroom. “I have to admit, I considered it—but I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.”

People sometimes ask me if I’m afraid to teach in urban schools, or if I am frightened of my students—by which they usually mean my black, male adolescent students. The question always saddens me, because it is part of a wider problem.

I was shopping with an elderly neighbor once, when three black teenagers came into the store. They were in high spirits, laughing and kidding with each other, but my neighbor shrank back.

“Do you think they look like trouble?” she asked.

“I think they look like many of my students,” I answered. “And no, they don’t look like trouble.”

The kids made their purchases and departed peacefully. But as long as there are people who can look at three happy teens and see a potential threat, we have set the stage for some young people to receive stiff penalties instead of help and guidance when they make adolescent mistakes.

I don’t know how Quentin’s story turned out. He was expelled from the district, and we heard no more. I hope he got help, but our district certainly didn’t offer him any. My friend Helen returned to teach again, after taking time to think about things. She is still teaching, and still holding her students to high expectations.

Gephardt teaches private art classes in Kansas.