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How Teachers Can Work With Police to Support Young Black Lives

Aug 22, 2016 12:00:00 AM

by Michael Meadows

Earlier this month, the Justice Department issued a report of its investigation into the Baltimore Police Department. The news is not good. I live in Maryland and, every time I read about a murder of a young Black man or woman, it hits me hard. I teach in a mostly minority school in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and I worry that someday one of the kids in my classroom might be the next statistic. And when calls go out for more collaboration between police and the communities in which they work, I wonder why the teachers in those same communities are not called on to help too. I think this is because teachers in urban minority schools and the police are working with the same Black youth. Teachers like me regularly handle the threat of violence at work—and we need to use classroom management strategies that both maintain order and respect student rights.

Classroom Lessons

Early in my career, I came upon Shawn, a seventh-grade Black boy, who was repeatedly kicking a locked door while his classmates egged him on. Their teacher had just stepped a few feet away to look for a key. I asked what was going on, and almost immediately Shawn and I got into a shouting match. “What are you doing here? Go mind your own f***ing business," he yelled. I yelled back. Later, I found out that Shawn got suspended for disrespecting me. I know now that I could’ve done things differently. Shawn had a difficult home life; I made things worse by reacting with hostility to his bad behavior. Instead of allowing the situation to escalate, I could’ve applied the best classroom management practices I’ve learned after teaching for eight years. Shawn wouldn’t have been suspended. He would’ve learned to trust me as a guardian of his welfare and safety. So what do teachers know that can help?
  1. It’s important to recognize that poverty has just as much of an impact on student behavior as it does on a child’s ability to succeed in school or society at-large. This awareness helps teachers to understand that a child’s motives for acting out are incredibly complex and too difficult to process in the heat of the moment.
  2. Teachers know that their own behavior largely determines how a child will respond. If I want a student to calm down and listen to me, no matter how tense the situation, I need to demonstrate that same calmness and ability to listen.
  3. Teachers have to follow up for mutual understanding after every incident. Parent contact is critical and I always need to remember that even if a child can’t offer a good explanation for their actions, they deserve to hear mine so our future interactions can become more normal, predictable and trusted.
This last point is incredibly important because research shows that struggling students don’t see a connection between their actions and behavioral-academic outcomes. In other words, we need to teach children, especially poor children, that they have the ability to influence events in their lives and in the lives of others. This means that the lion’s share of a teacher’s work with disruptive students comes on the back end, helping children to understand the consequences of their behavior, whether positive or negative. The real work that teachers do is not simply a matter of stopping bad behavior when it happens. It’s all that we do after an incident that makes the difference in a child’s life.

We Are the Adults

One of my sixth-grade students is a Black girl named Ariel. Ariel consistently does good work but she also overreacts to even the most minimal corrective action. Ariel’s mother and I frequently discuss her behavior over the phone and I always have to remember that no matter the disrespect or disturbance, Ariel’s behavior is almost never personal or ever meant to be threatening. On any given day, she could have been bullied, she could miss her father or she could just be hungry. So each time she has an outburst, I strive to show her that I can remain calm and that my response to whatever she’s done will be entirely predictable. [pullquote position="right"]When it comes to children, we—teachers and police—are the adults.[/pullquote] It’s our responsibility to think and act judiciously, even when a developing young mind is struggling or confused. That is why we need to find ways to put the professional knowledge and personal connections of teachers to greater use, especially in minority communities. If we are ever going to put a stopper in the school-to-prison pipeline, teachers and police who are working with the same kids need to be on the same page. Even though Shawn got suspended at the end of our terrible interaction, he found it within himself to apologize to me at the end of the day. But I was the lucky one; I had another chance to make a positive difference in Shawn’s life. I had a chance to show him that I was really there to help. I want the same opportunity for every other teacher and police officer who works in our community and across the country.
Photo by Nicholas Upton, CC-licensed.

Michael Meadows

Michael Meadows teaches Italian at Hyattsville and Greenbelt Middle Schools in Prince George's County Public Schools, Maryland. He is the world language department chair at Hyattsville and leads a self-started classroom management improvement program, designed to maximize consistency among teachers and academic achievement among students. Michael previously served as director of the High School Cooperative Language Program at Yale University's MacMillan International Center and program coordinator at the Yale Teaching Center. Michael has taught courses on Italian language, literature, and cinema at Gateway Community College and Yale University, where he won the Associates in Teaching Prize in 2012. Michael graduated from Cornell University with a B.A. in Architecture and received his M.A., M.Phil, and Ph.D in Italian language and literature from Yale University. He is a Teach Plus Teaching Policy Fellow.

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