“Where y’all teachers at when we need you?” Expectations of city public school teachers beyond the schoolhouse

ABSTRACT: While the geographic focus of this article is Camden, the needs of urban communities and the marginalization of its residents are universal. The concerns of Camden residents, safe streets, quality housing, and education, and access to decent employment, are nearly identical to those of Harlem, Liberty City, East St. Louis, Compton and everywhere in between. Thus, this article is not so much a conveyance of
Camden’s unique deficiencies and residents’ unreasonable expectations of its educators in helping to facilitate local change, as it is intended to spur conversation in education literature that highlights urban residents’ expectations of
their local educators, in a similar fashion in which expectations are communicated to them.

In the late hours of January 7, 2016, a sixteen year-old girl shot a thirteen-year-old boy, Nathaniel Plummer, Jr., to death in Camden, NJ. “Lil Nate” was an eighth-grade student and was the first person to die in the city in 2016…

Following Plummer’s murder, an outcry of public sorrow and calls for change to “take back the community” momentarily took over Camden, a city that often appears accustomed to bloodshed and struggle. Perhaps what made the response to “Lil Nate’s” murder different was the fact that his father, “Big Nate,” is a city celebrity of sorts, primarily for the basketball skills he exhibited during his state championship days at the city’s flagship high school, Camden High. “Lil-Nate” was also well-known in his own right and roundly adored by his many family members and peers spanning every corner of the nine-square-mile city. Certainly, the ages of both the victim and suspect caused many in the Camden community to collectively ask introspective questions like, “what’s happening to our youth?” and “what do we need to do to improve the realities in our community?”

To residents’ credit, many took action. Some, informally, to be more present and accessible in the lives of Camden’s youth, and others committed to taking more formalized action. As a direct result of “Lil Nate’s” death, a new Camden civic organization was formed. It’s called The Village, deriving its name from the oft-repeated proverb, “it takes a village to raise a child.” The Village is a grassroots organization comprised entirely of Camden community members and expatriates. Some members lead their own local activist civic organizations. Some members are youth athletic coaches. Others are simply concerned residents looking to improve the lives of their neighbors.

The Village holds weekly meetings where community-based concerns and plans for solutions are communicated. Thus far, the organization hosted the “2.4 Mile Walk” in efforts to expose Camden City School District officials and state lawmakers with the reality of how far some Camden school children must walk to and from school—often contending with inclement weather and traversing dangerous neighborhoods. The Village has also facilitated the first citywide spelling bee for elementary and high school students, held a symposium on human trafficking, and conducts weekend camping trips in the summer for nearly eighty city children as an expression of familial love to the city’s youth.

Though “Lil Nate” was one of the seemingly countless Camden victims of violence, and other embodiments of oppression (including chronic under-employment of residents, poor housing conditions, predatory urban development policies, and abusive policing), not only was he a Camden citizen, he was also one of the nearly 10,000 students attending Camden’s public schools. Every day, thousands of students, like
Plummer, walk into Camden’s public schools where city teachers, presumably, are there to educate, care for, and mentor the city’s young people. Despite the narrow role with which some city teachers approach their profession, deliverers of course content and facilitators of classroom events, research frames teaching as inherently political, with educators either pushing back against normalized oppression and marginalization or passively sustaining it. And while Camden residents following the death of
Nathaniel Plummer Jr. mobilized to find answers and chart a path forward in their struggle against violence as well as sociopolitical and economic marginalization, Camden’s public school teachers have largely been absent from the community’s fight for greater social justice—a void long noticeable to Camden’s citizenry.

As urban educators are often referred to as “change agents” and Dreamkeepers,1 Camden’s public school teachers need only look out the classroom windows for abundant opportunities to engage in needed, meaningful community-centered social justice activism.

While the geographic focus of this article is Camden, the needs of urban communities and marginalization of its residents are universal. The concerns of Camden residents, safe streets, quality housing, and education, and access to decent employment, are nearly identical to those of Harlem, Liberty City, East St. Louis, Compton and everywhere in between. Thus, this article is not so much a conveyance of Camden’s unique deficiencies and residents’ unreasonable expectations of its educators in helping to facilitate local change, as it is intended to spur conversation in education literature that highlights urban residents’ expectations of their local educators, in the similar fashion in which expectations are communicated to them.

To continue reading… https://www.academia.edu/33509403/Where_yall_teachers_at_when_we_need_you_Expectations_of_city_public_school_teachers_beyond_the_schoolhouse