Barbara A. Sasso
I teach English Language Arts at Wilbur Cross High School, a large comprehensive high school in New Haven, Connecticut. Demographically, 62 percent of our students are economically disadvantaged. The graduation rate is 65 percent and about 57 percent of our students are proficient in English. Around 50 percent of the students are Hispanic and 36 percent are African American. These statistics also show that about 30 percent of our students take Advanced Placement exams, with about 51 percent scoring a passing grade.
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Statistics often say little about my students. They don’t reveal the large numbers of international students of various socio-economic status, who create the low “English proficiency” rate. Statistics do not show that in New Haven, many of the students in the Advanced Placement classes are children of Yale professors. The statistics don’t show that many of the students who are taking Advanced Placement classes are
not
children of academically enriched environments – just kids who are incredibly academically courageous. Statistics don’t reveal the traumas that students bring to school or the difficulties they have that are not academic ones. As an educator in an urban setting, my
in loco parentis
role is as important as my efforts to raise Lexile scores. In teaching literature, I have a duty to teach about life. Storytelling itself arose as a means of instruction for lessons that go beyond the ability to score well on SAT exams, or sometimes, even beyond the ability to graduate high school.
Over the years, my school has instituted programs to address deficits in social and emotional skills that often accompany students growing up in poverty and in disadvantaged environments. These programs try to help students address negative behavior, understand their anger or loss of self. My students need ways to address hopelessness, lack of parental support or guidance, an inability to cope with grievous, senseless losses, and an inability to respond wisely to betrayal, deception and perceived disrespect. But such initiatives tend to come and go with funding and political support. Our society’s motivation to support compassionate ways to respond to dysfunctional behavior of poverty-stricken people burdened by bias and racism does not have a stellar track record.
But the same lessons were always available through literature, and in an urban school, teaching life skills is a primary reason to teach literature in the first place. Shakespeare’s genius makes his plays a very rich source for helping students see in his characters their own fears and traumas, and find insight, understanding, and compassion that might help them cope with life in a productive way. In my experience, often students who have more challenges in their own lives have very important insights to offer, if inspired to discover them.