Rochester, New York, 1971-reorganization

I've talked to my mother a bit about my experiences in first and second grade. As I mentioned she was a teacher at #2 school and had elected to have me in the reverse open enrollment class, as I've learned the official title was at that point. My impressions of these two years are rather idylic. I remember being in integrated classes, having a diverse pool of teachers, and being told by all of the adults around me that black students and white students should get along. My parents had a black and white together sign on their window. But things were not so idylic behind the scenes.

The open enrollment program was just one in a series of attempts by The Rochester City Schools, to integrate the students of Rochester. My mother was able to add an additional perspective. She attended meeting both as a parent and as a teacher. While many families supported the reverse open enrollment programs, some black families found the concepts paternalistic. They wanted their schools improved not by the presence of white students, but by qualitatively better instructional programs. Mom says the meetings were hard and at times confusing for a well-meaning white liberal. I knew nothing of any of this. However, I do know that what happened the next year was not a step forward!

According the the book, Achieving Racial Ballance, by Sonia Astor Stave, Rochester "divided the 43 elementary schools into primary schools (grades K-3) and intermediate schools (grades 4-6). ...the districts were designed to also balance socio-economic differences as well as those of race." This moved me from #46 school, my little grassy oasis of calm and tradition, to #14 school--a bleak rectangular school surrounded by hardtop and in the inner city. Since reorganization affected all of the students in Rochester, most families experienced busing with some of their children when they had formerly been able to walk to school. "Rich white" schools had to welcome children of color from less affluent circumstances, and vice versa. I'm not sure how the primary schools did, but the intermediate school I attended was full of stress and racial tension.

Many perfectly awful memories accompany this year. While my teachers were diverse and nice for the most part, they looked stressed. Behavior in the classroom was worse than anything I'd ever seen. It was the first instance in which I remember feeling bad for a teacher and mad at students for wasting our collective time. But the most confusing thing to me were the instances of racial hatred. I had been told from an early age that all people were equal. I knew my parents supported integration, as had other adults I respected. Unfortunately, the atmosphere surrounding a forced integration, no matter how well meaning, was just not the right atmosphere for tolerance and mutual appreciation. And I was just very, very white.


It was common practice for some students to spit down stairwells at students ahead of them in line. I guess I'm not completely sure who was spitting at whom, as once I realized this was a danger, I stopped looking up. But it made any trip around the school potentially disgusting and stressful. I was the target of racial hatred several times over the year. Sometimes the incident was very minor. In one I remember, a black girl put her sneaker on the seat of my chair. I asked her to remove it and she replied, "you're prejudiced!". I said I wasn't, but didn't like sneakers on my chair. In this instance, she seemed satisfied and removed her foot. A more serious incident occured in the bathroom--always a scary place. I was in the bathroom when two black girls grabbed me. They weren't quite sure what to do with me. One suggested they should knock my head into the door of the stall. But the other said, "I've never heard her say anything." The first asked, "What do you mean", and the second replied, "I've never heard her say anything bad." Thanks to the second girl, who wasn't about to beat up a kid just for the color of her skin, they let me go. But I was hysterical. My teacher noticed and I told her what happened. What happened next was very artful, and I've never forgotten it. Rather than punish the two girls, someone--a councilor or assistant principal maybe--met with the three of us. We sat and talked, and they agreed to leave me alone. We never became friends, but we did say "Hi" in the hall, and I had no more difficulties. If the girls had been punished, I'm sure I'd have a worse tale to tell.

Little and big incidents like this were really confusing to me. I always felt somehow that they were my fault. I never told my parents because I was ashamed. Later in College, I read Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and felt like perhaps I understood in retrospect a little of what was going on. In one scene of the book, a girl destroys a white doll with blue eyes. It is a response to the racism around her and being told by society that the blond and blue eyed doll was more beautiful than she was. While these girls could not have articulated these issues any more than I could have, I think we were all caught up in the swirling racial tensions around us. I stuck out because I was blue eyed and had waist length blond hair. I also sang and had a solo in the school concert. Teachers liked me because I was always well behaved. So I had a lot of strikes against me. Racial tensions continued to lead to incidents like the one above through grade 6, even when I was not in a school with forced bussing. By middle school, I was active in music programs and had black friends. Music was a wonderful equalizer, bringing students of all races and academic abilities together . So while I remember racial tensions from older grades, the hatred was no longer projected onto me personally.

Another vivid and disgusting memory from this year involved dirty gym suits. Generally if students forgot their gym clothes, they would have to stand at the side lines for the whole gym class. I had the misfortune of forgetting my clothes on the day that a couple of girls had forgotten for the third or forth time. In disgust, the teacher told us all to change into some gym suits. We walked into a room behind the "stage" which was a part of the gym and found a box filled with blue cotton one piece gym suits. The crotch of just about every suit was caked with dried menstrual blood. I hadn't even seen "the movie" yet, so I was really shocked. This type of cruelty on the part of a teacher seemed mostly reserved for gym teachers. We found the suits with the least visible blood and joined our class.

One thing that made this year so stressful, was that you never knew when something really unpleasant or even scary like this could happen. I had a headache for most of the year, and a case of hives on my forehead. The results in most Rochester schools this year were equally poor. A black advocacy organization, FIGHT (Freedom, Integration, God, Honor, and Today), was not happy with the results of the reorganization plan and asked that the focus be shifted to improving inner city schools rather than busing black children to schools where they were not welcome. (Stave)

So the program was scrapped after just one year. I did not return to #46 school, though. I was selected to attend the MAP program for grades five and six and instead attended #31 school. More about that another time.

And now for something completely different....

While I have interesting stories to tell about second grade, they are mostly stories about my own somewhat twisted psychology and have little to do with the history of American Educational Movements. Just know that I stayed at #2 school and was still a part of the voluntary integration program and that it was still harmonious .

However, for reasons I won't go into here, I decided that I absolutely needed to go elsewhere for grade 3. So I convinced my parents that I should switch schools.

My mother was an educator, and had been rather intrigued with Summer Hill and the Free School Movement. The basis premise of these schools was that children are naturally motivated and good, and when the restraints of a classroom are removed, they will blossom and learn through their own volition. Unfortunately, she hadn't read Lord of the Flies, a novel which also looks at the core of children and what happens when children are not supervised and directed. The truth about children is probably somewhat in the middle of these two extremes, but my experience at a bonafide 1970s Free School was more on the Lord of the Flies side.

The Atkinson School, a private Free school, was just opening when I was in the third grade. It was housed at the local Unitarian Church. The portrait of Mao Tse Tung on the wall could have belonged to the church, or the school. An accurate accounting of the Cultural Revolution was not yet part of the news. The school was run by Hippie teachers. It was pure chaos.

While there were teachers at the school, you had to round one up to actually learn anything. The day began with a morning meeting at which they talked about the trials of draft dodgers and other topics beyond a third grader's comprehension. The rest of the day was just wide open space and time. The math area had cuisinaire rods. Never got a sense of what one was supposed to do with them. An ELA section had books and some paper. At one point I remember asking someone to teach me cursive handwriting as my friends were learning how to do it. They obliged and I did learn my basic letters, although there was no practice after the initial demonstration. My favorite area was the art area, where a British lady named Denny would let me make all kinds of things. Kids also ran around in the field surrounding the school. Third graders were smoking cigarettes.

In fact kids of all ages were doing all sorts of things, sometimes in the presence of teachers and sometimes not. This was the first place that I experienced racial tension. An older black girl told a black boy my age to slap me--and he did. I don't remember what happened next--or even what had happened before. I do remember a teacher giving me ice for my face and sitting with me.

Quite honestly, the things going on defied description. I'm actually not comfortable sharing several incidents. And there was next to nothing of educational value. It was actually very, very, very scary. I finally used the skills I had used to get out of #2 school to get the heck out of the Atkinson school. The only option was school #46, my old neighborhood school.

I though I'd died and gone to heaven. Structure! Spelling sentences! Math exercises! Sit in your seat and do your work! If you finish early, you may read a Happy Hollister Book! Miss Bisky, an energetic older lady, seemed happy to have me--and now that I know what it means for a teacher to receive a student mid-year, especially one who was now officially behind, I appreciate her all the more. I needed structure and routines and was thrilled. I felt safe and I was learning again. Just in time for the City of Rochester to institute Reorganization with a capital R the next year.

number 2

This goes with my first grade account. Not quite sure what happens when I push "post to blog."

First Grade

After the foreshadowing in my kindergarten account, you're probably expecting grade one to be a disaster. Well, it wasn't, actually. The year was 1968 and Rochester had begun a voluntary integration program at some city schools. It was a bit like METCO in reverse, except all of us lived in the city. They rounded up some white kids with liberal parents from the "outer city" and bussed us to an inner city school that was mostly black. They created integrated classrooms, not an integrated school. My mother, a teacher, was hired to teach sixth grade at this school, so I think the reasons we participated were two-fold. First, my parents were very liberal and believed in the value of integration. But I'm sure my mom also wanted us closer to her, as she was re-entering the workforce after eight years. Unlike the forced integration, which I experienced in fourth grade, first grade was actually quite lovely. Miss Mingo was black--I think she was from the Islands. She dressed in mini-skirts and wore huge hoop earrings. I loved having my mother at my school. My best friend Louise also entered the program and a group from my neighborhood participated. I don't recall experiencing any racial tension--and I probably would have noticed something because I've always been overly sensitive.

This weekend I poked around the web a bit looking for information about the Rochester schools and their attempts at integration. I did find a few leads through Eric. I've become very interested in this. I experienced this as a child, but I'd really like to know what it was like for the adults involved, and how they made the decisions to integrate the way they did. The fourth grade attempt, called reorganization, seemed like a total disaster from where I stood--and was ditched after just one year. I wish I had the time to really research this.

I've created an Xtra normal video to tell my story in a bit more detail. I'm going to try to post it here.

Let's hear it for tradition!

My introduction to American Education was in a traditional kindergarten right out of Ramona the Pest, a book I used to love to read out loud to my first graders. From the walk to school with sixth grade crossing guards, (think Henry Huggins), to the wake up fairy, it was at least my conception of a typical kindergarten experience. No one tried to teach us to read, but there was time for games, and learning our letters, and singing, and playing outside. I vividly remember a set of 26 white tubs filled with objects beginning with the 26 letters of the alphabet. I think I considered stealing a furry stuffed mouse from the "m " bin. I must not have, because I always get caught when I do something wrong. My school was set on a grassy lot with a large playground complete with a slide that looked like a castle. It was a city school, technically, but the demographic reflected my upper middle class neighborhood. The year was 1967 and the city had no idea what was ahead in the next few years. The only "crisis" I can remember was personal. My teacher, Mrs. North, had prepared a bulletin board with a telephone on it, and as we learned our phone number, she put our name on the board. Sadly, I was the last student in the class to learn my phone number. My mother finally taught me a little song to help me remember it, and I can still sing the song today. While I think this highly traditional start was good for me, I think the years to come gave me something that 12 years in this environment could not have given me. Things became very different just the next year when I went off to first grade. This will be the topic of my next blog--if something else doesn't grab my attention first.

My Education

I've actually been wanting to write about my educational experiences as a kid for a long time. I began public schools in 1967 and graduated from High School in 1980. My experiences ranged from traditional neighborhood school, to voluntary integration, forced integration, two year public school gifted program, large city high school, an alternative public middle school, and a half year at a Summerhill variety alternative private school. My experiences ran the gamut from very good, to pretty horrible. Education itself was undergoing many changes, as was the society at large. All of this had it's effect on the public schools and the students attending. So perhaps I'll use this blog for some posts on this topic.

The Flat Classroom

I remember Dennis mentioning the Flat Classroom project in class last week. I'm hoping to do something with my class which connects them to students in other parts of the world. The flat classroom looked a bit too ambitious for me and my sixth graders, but it looks really cool! I'm not quite done exploring the site, but want to share a cool video that they have on their website. Here is the URL--of the website-- I tried to figure out how tumblr could help me share, but failed.
http://www.flatclassroomproject.org/.