Before interviewing him, I was looking up some statistics, I found that Jefferson’s average proficiency for mathematics and reading were towards the lower end of the spectrum, and it was not close to making the top ten public high school in Oregon. In the past, I had heard him talk about the issues of education at the school he taught at and thought that it would be a good idea to talk to him about it. During the whole interview, I only asked three questions, he talked for most of the one hour I was on the phone with him. Ever since I first met him, I knew that he very much cared for the education of minorities and his views on Standardized Testing and private schools. One quotation in particular that stayed with me was – “Teaching is more than just a job, it is a life style. It doesn’t stop at the end of the day, or the end of the year. You have to stop thinking about it, and just do it”. As stressful as it is working in education, he sees that there is so much more to his job than teaching,
Dan discussed the issue of race, as it is very prevalent at Jefferson, a mainly African American school. He recalls looking down the hallway and noticing that he was one of the only white people at the school during his first day teaching. As an English major at the University of Oregon, he was taught a curriculum that was based around literature produced by white authors. He learned that at a predominantly African American school, he had to be more aware of the cultural differences. Knowing that they did know a lot about the white culture they lived in, he had more flexibility to teach culturally diverse authors. He had to change the curriculum so that the students would relate more to the authors and topics covered. In addition, he tailored his classes to be more of an inquiry based model of teaching so that he could better encourage and foster interest in the English literature.
Jefferson High School is nowhere near the top of the list of best public schools in Portland, and they would not receive the funding for what the teachers want only funding for what they need. The school does not provide AP or IB credits, but instead partnered up with Portland Community College and Portland State University so students could take higher level English and math classes. Dan literally said “Standardized Testing and common core are garbage, they are a waste of money and it serves no one”, he brought up the point that testing takes away from the professionals and makes it seem like students cannot trust them.
We veered from the topic of Dan’s profession as an English teacher and began to discuss the Jefferson Dancers program. In in the 1970s Jefferson became an arts magnet school in attempt to draw more white students into the school – they added a theater program, a television program, and a dance program. According to Dan, students could only transfer into the school if they were white, and people of color could only attend Jefferson if they were in district. Budget cuts caused everything but the dance team to be whittled away and the school changed to a coop program where students could be in the dance team even if they attended a different public school in Portland. The only flaw in this was that the academic records were attached to the home schools and did not benefit Jefferson whatsoever. The kids who participated in the coop program were mainly upper middle class white girls. Dan recalls seeing a “gaggle” of white girls park their cars in the parking lot after lunch, and walk through the school sticking out like a sore thumb. There were only a few students who actually attended the school and were on the dance team. This program stopped three to four years ago.
In an ideal world, Dan believes that the best way to solve this big mess of an issue of education is to remove race from the equation, but that’s just wishful thinking. He focuses on the student and their needs through small class sizes and the inquiry based learning system. In high school, I struggled with writing essays so I would go to him for help. Dan would always express his dislike for the many ways English classes were taught, as he asked students to continually rewrite papers until they achieved A level writing, this was a way to help students improve their writing instead of just turning in a paper and receiving a grade. Jefferson High School does not have any AP or IB programs, mainly because of lack of funding. Towards the end of the interview he told me “it looks nice to have students in AP classes, but everything is about being able to do the work to pass and get credits. This is the wrong paradigm, ideally in education you can get students to realize the intrinsic value of it, and make them forget they are doing it for a class”.
The last question I asked Dan was this: what is your favorite story of an encounter with a student? He responded with a memory from his first day at Jefferson High School. As a new teacher and a public school, all Dan was trying to do was keep everything going. The school was bad at scheduling so for the first few weeks some classes had 43 students and some had eight, and eventually everything would balance out. The bell rings for class, and students start filtering in, the class is predominantly African American and at one table sat all the football and basketball players. Dan was extremely nervous. He shut the door and stood in the corner of the room, he recalls feeling like the room was tipping towards him. He asked the class to get out materials to write on a short prompt. As he was walking around the classroom one of the football players, who had a great smile, said “Don’t worry Coffey, you’re going to be fine”. Through this story I saw his love for teaching, and it reinforced my appreciation for his focus on the individual rather than teaching just to pass students.
Links:
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/oregon/districts/portland-public-schools