Later this afternoon, unless something very drastic ... and positive ... happens, I'm telling the principal he needs to find someone else to fill my classroom.  My last lesson this morning included this quote from W.E.B. DuBois.

Why I came to Blank Schools –

In the fall of 1975, I was teaching at what is now Different School on Blankblank Avenue in Milwaukee.  One of the mothers of my students, Mrs. Roberts, stopped by one day and we were talking.  She said that she didn’t have much time because she was on her way to her second job, cleaning offices after the office day was done, so that she could afford the tuition she was paying to have her children go to the school

She said she hadn’t had any real education – that she left school after sixth grade so that she could take care of her brothers and sisters.  She did continue to read, and she said that she had read almost everything that W. E. B. DuBois had written.  She said she didn’t understand a lot of what he’d said, but that didn’t stop her because each time she read or re-read it, she did understand a little more.

“But,” she said, “I need to get going.  I really wanted to tell you what I want for my son.  I want him to ‘sit with Shakespeare’ like Mr. DuBois said.  I want him to be a man, not just a male old enough to drink liquor and be with women.”

I don’t know what Isiah Roberts became.  I know that one of his classmates is now a pastor in a church in Tempe, Arizona.  I know that another of his classmates is a teacher in Denver, CO.  I heard that another of his classmates owns a string of stores in St. Louis, but I can’t confirm that.  What I do know is that his mother, and the mothers of the other kids in that school, most of them working second and third jobs to pay for their children’s educations before the days of “CHOICE” schools, had deep hopes in their hearts and so much love that they sacrificed a great deal so that their sons and daughters could ‘sit with Shakespeare’.