"Getting out"

As I'm working on my final paper, I've been re-reading some notes I made during this last semester from two ethnographies of urban public high schools -- Framing Dropouts by Michelle Fine and Subtractive Schooling by Angela Valenzuela. Among the critiques they offer is the pervasive idea among teachers and schools that to succeed for these students means to "get out" of the neighborhood. There is a sense of teachers feeling like they are engaging in "educational triage," identifying those students who can still be "saved" and helping them to "escape" the fate of their peers by leaving their families and their communities behind.

I couldn't help but think back on this past weekend and the comments by many well-meaning teachers and educators echoing this idea. As the entire staff of the workshop sat around discussing each student individually, I heard suggestions that students needed to get away from the negative influences in their neighorhoods, in their homes, and "make a life for themselves" away from it all. I, for one, am all for students going away from home for college--to explore what's out there, and challenge themselves and others. I went just about as far as I could go and in some ways, continue to do so.

But what I resist, I suppose, is the idea that we focus all our efforts on getting these young people "out." Perhaps we need to get them out now, but we also need them to come back. To come back and effect change in their communities, to serve as role models for those that follow and make "getting out" not the only option. Otherwise, what are we left with?

I was pleased that a few leaders of the workshop tried to make this point, even if rhetoric among the teachers did not fall completely in line. I worry, I suppose, because the teachers and counselors are the adults who support and advise these young people year-round, while the workshop staff are people they see for a mere four days. Nevertheless, I have the utmost faith in these students. The young people I met this weekend--and the ones I met last year--serve as a real inspiration to me. All of them have struggled hard to get where they are, but with their fierce and largely quiet determination, I know they're going to get where they need to go and make us all proud.