Holler If You Hear Me

Keith Benson Urban Education Dr. Beth Rubin 3.18.2007 Response to Holler If You Hear Me: The Education of a Teacher and His Students For my reading I chose to read Holler If You Hear Me by 1996 Golden Apple Award winner, Greg Michie. This book is about the experiences of a white, middle-class southerner teaching in an urban Chicago middle school. Throughout the book, Michie, intertwines prose about his past days teaching in Quincy Middle School, with presenttense narrative about students whom he has taught. While it was surprising and interesting to see a teacher reach out to students of years past to see how they are faring in life currently, it came to my realization that this was probably done for the purposes of writing this book. Having said that, allow me to respectfully declare this book a waste of time to read, and waste of ink to write. While this may seem harsh, as a teacher in an urban area, this book accomplishes nothing more than what Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers had done on the big screen; congratulating altruistic whites teachers, while sympathizing for minorities who don’t have a chance. In book form, however, we are acquainted with a white teacher wants to teach in an urban area to “help out.” At book’s end, Michie struck me as the prototypical Teach for America “teacher.” For one hundred-seventy six pages, Michie rehashes the ills and pathologies of urban America and urban education. He comments on the aging buildings, apathetic veteran teachers, high priority given to standardized testing, lack of resources, and of course, the dysfunctional families. This book is reads like a screenplay for a made of TV movie.

What is ironic is that while reading this book this week, the Courier Post, my local newspaper, ran a front page article hailing two white elementary school teachers for giving up high paying job opportunities to “teach kids in Camden.” I was nearly sick to my stomach that day, and to further my nauseating feeling left by that article, I had to continue reading Michie’s propaganda. (I truly believe, that can stay in the district an teach until I’m sixty an never see a sentence written about me. And also, I’ve never seen an article like that written about a black or Puerto Rican teacher in Camden. I don’t think that is a coincidence; though I might be mistaken.) In my opinion, Michie’s book is most flawed in that it does not address anything more than classroom level observations. No analysis is given as to the origin of the problem he decries; only “pie-in-the-sky” solutions and slogans like, “We can make a difference. We can change the world. (181)” What is a teacher in an urban area supposed to glean from reading this book? That the school systems aren’t helping all children? That teaching in an urban area is tough? I could have said that in a three sentences. Furthermore, Michie’s premise of teaching in an urban area to “help out” seems utterly insulting to the teachers already teaching and, to the students attending school in urban areas. Urban students are not charity cases in need of pity or charity from white teachers, but what is needed is a legion of instructors dedicated to students’ well being – white or black. I sensed an inherent racism in Michie’s “It’s not their fault” voice or stance that, from my perspective, equates to him calling his black students “niggers” or Mexican students “wetbacks.” While the terrain and tactics maybe different in teaching in an urban area, every student deserves and needs the same thing from their teachers – their best.

Holler If You Hear Me’s goal is to entertain a reader unfamiliar to urban America. But to teachers already in the field, nothing is learned and nothing is gained except reading more of what is visible, daily, in our own classrooms.