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    Teacher: Two Years in the Mississippi Delta
    Teacher: Two Years in the Mississippi Delta
    Teacher: Two Years in the Mississippi Delta
    Ebook225 pages3 hours

    Teacher: Two Years in the Mississippi Delta

    By Michael Copperman

    5/5

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    About this ebook

    When Michael Copperman left Stanford University for the Mississippi Delta in 2002, he imagined he would lift underprivileged children from the narrow horizons of rural poverty. Well-meaning but naïve, the Asian American from the West Coast soon lost his bearings in a world divided between black and white. He had no idea how to manage a classroom or help children navigate the considerable challenges they faced. In trying to help students, he often found he couldn't afford to give what they required--sometimes with heartbreaking consequences. His desperate efforts to save child after child were misguided but sincere. He offered children the best invitations to success he could manage. But he still felt like an outsider who was failing the children and himself.

    Teach For America has for a decade been the nation's largest employer of recent college graduates but has come under increasing criticism in recent years even as it has grown exponentially. This memoir considers the distance between the idealism of the organization's creed that "One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education and reach their full potential" and what it actually means to teach in America's poorest and most troubled public schools.

    Copperman's memoir vividly captures his disorientation in the divided world of the Delta, even as the author marvels at the wit and resilience of the children in his classroom. To them, he is at once an authority figure and a stranger minority than even they are--a lone Asian, an outsider among outsiders. His journey is of great relevance to teachers, administrators, and parents longing for quality education in America. His frank story shows that the solutions for impoverished schools are far from simple.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity Press of Mississippi
    Release dateAug 25, 2016
    ISBN9781496805867
    Teacher: Two Years in the Mississippi Delta
    Author

    Michael Copperman

    Michael Copperman taught fourth grade in the rural black public schools of the Mississippi Delta with Teach For America from 2002 to 2004. Now, he teaches writing to low-income, first-generation college students of diverse backgrounds at the University of Oregon. His work has appeared in the Sun, the Oxford American, Guernica, Creative Nonfiction, and Copper Nickel and has garnered fellowships and awards from the Munster Literature Centre, the Oregon Arts Commission, Literary Arts, and Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.

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    • 5/5
      Michael Copperman writes about teaching with an appealing blend of confidence and humility. In my experience, no teacher can succeed without both of these. As a teacher I always long to discover and develop every student’s unique gifts, and above all to grow alongside them. Copperman leans his full weight into the shoulder at the wheel in his two-year Teach for America assignment, then shows us how his failures are his greatest life lessons. He writes as a mixed-race Asian American, as a Stanford graduate, as a man of slight build that black kids in Promise, Mississippi call "Chinaman" and white folks in the Delta stare at with suspicion.He confronts his own privilege as a Stanford graduate, and the racism ingrained in Promise’s poverty and unequal education system. Most of the black Mississippi fourth-graders of his classroom come from impoverished and broken homes, but rise above stereotyping as imaginative boys, bookish girls, enthusiastic, shy, and sometimes tragically brilliant and angry in Copperman’s individual portraits of them. I feel privileged as a reader to know their stories through his work, and inspired as a teacher to turn my doubts into challenges.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Privilege. That word tends to elicit an emotional response, especially from those who have it but don't want to acknowledge that fact. Since I moved to Mississippi 8 years ago, I've had my own privilege stare me in the face multiple times. The stark reality is that thousands of children in Mississippi are severely underprivileged. According to Jackson's Clarion-Ledger, 34% of children in Mississippi live in poverty, and 79% of public school fourth-graders are reading below grade level (compared to the 66% nationally, which is a whole other issue). Our public schools are ridiculously underfunded, and the legislature continues to cut the education budget. Which schools take the hardest hits when it comes to funding? Yep, the Delta, home to the blues, cotton, and paralyzing poverty. Mike Copperman spent two years teaching in the Delta as part of the Teach for American program, in which new college grads commit to teaching at underprivileged schools around the country. In his memoir, Copperman - a half Japanese, half Jewish athlete from Stanford - describes those two years and his struggle to connect with kids whose backgrounds couldn't be further from his. He has obviously changed the names of the town and likely the children, but the book could have described any number of public schools in the Delta. Copperman taught not far from Cleveland, MS, which was ordered to desegregate not three months ago. He describes the White football players practicing at the Academy football field, a stark contrast to the overwhelmingly Black students in the public elementary school. He discusses his own experience as a minority among minorities, the stares and jeers toward the "Chinaman". He describes the rundown homes of his students juxtaposed against the large colonials on the other side of town. I was particularly struck, but not in the least surprised, by the lack of resources the school provided for kids with behavioral or learning disabilities. I have dealt with the public schools before, provided very specific recommendations to help students succeed, and been completely ignored, whether because the school district doesn't have the staff to help, or whether they don't feel that the special accommodations are warranted. I have assessed high school aged children who have an obvious learning disorder but were never diagnosed, instead labeled as "lazy" or "problem child". I've even had a school counselor tell a patient's mother that her child's difficulty in school was due to laziness, not residual impairments caused by his BRAIN INJURY! So, yeah, special education and accommodations for students who need them are severely lacking in Mississippi, and likely Mississippi is not unique in that regard. End rant.What sets Copperman's book apart from many discussions of inequality is the stories. The stories of children who have grown up with very little, with broken homes, tossed from foster home to foster home, those that endure bullying, those that bully, those that are beyond his ability to help, and those that welcome his help. He vividly portrays the frustration and the feelings of inadequacy in the face of overwhelming obstacles. Amazingly, I don't believe Mr. Copperman ever completely lost hope for these children, and for every child lost to the chaos of their lives and circumstances, there is a story of triumph, of a child that the author was able to reach, even for a brief moment.I cannot recommend this book enough. I wish I could make every Mississippi lawmaker (hell, every national lawmaker), every person who denies the presence of privilege, every teacher who has lost hope, read it. Yes, there is such a thing as pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, but when those boots are stuck in concrete, that is much, much easier said than done. These kids deserve better. Kudos to the many, many teachers throughout the nation that try to reach these kids, even for that brief moment.Thank you to the University of Mississippi Press for providing me with an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

      1 person found this helpful

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    Teacher - Michael Copperman

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