Likes Lambs to the Slaughter...

Editor's Note: As part of The Quick and the Ed's ongoing discussion of "The Wire," we'll be featuring periodic posts from Zachary Norris, who recently spent 4 years as a biology teacher and basketball/debate coach at a public high school in Southeastern Baltimore. Zachary can attest to the program's accuracy first-hand, as the producers and writers visited his classroom frequently as part of their research. Here's his take on the first episode, with more to follow. - KC

So The Wire is taking on education in Baltimore City? I tried to do that once; I was bright-eyed and optimistic with visions of systemic reform dancing in my head. "Like lambs to the slaughter," I had no formal teaching experience and no real qualifications other than a college degree and a strong desire to “close the achievement gap.” I joined the Teach For America program and ended up teaching in Baltimore for three years. The experience was humbling.

Like the teacher on the show, I was greeted by a dysfunctional buzzer upon arrival at my school. A fitting symbol of the system's disarray, they were desperately in need of teachers and couldn't let me in once I got there. Many of my peers in the program were “surplussed,” bouncing around from school to school until the district administrators decided where our services could be put to best use. Upon arrival at my school, I was placed in a classroom that had not been cleaned by the previous year's teacher, who I later learned was a first-year teacher that had quit in February. It is common in Baltimore for rookie teachers to quit during the school year. In fact, in my first year in Baltimore, only two out of the six first-years who started the year at my school actually finished. The result of this trend was a staff crunch, and my classroom role swelled at times to above forty students (ranging in age form 3rd to 6th grade, with up to 16 IEP students). It is criminal.

Speaking of criminal, how much of the City’s budget is spent on pointless professional development programs like the one shown on The Wire’s season premiere? Educational consultants with six-figure salaries rattle off clever acronyms like IALAC (I Am Loved And Competent) in steamy August auditoriums and cafeterias. I mean really, how many teachers actually use that stuff? I know I never did. As the frustration of the teachers builds to a crescendo, the professional development meeting devolves into a gripe session about the student population and the hopelessness of their situation. This in itself is destructive, perpetuating negative stereotypes of students and lending to the apathy of teachers. So in the end, the good intentions of administrative policies turn into a completely destructive activity. Welcome to education in Baltimore.

So how did the writers of The Wire get it so right where so many others have gone wrong? They actually spent time in the schools. In my last year in Baltimore a few of the writers of The Wire asked if they could interview my students and me and sit in on my classes for a couple of weeks. Bill Zorzi, one of the writers, and I became quick friends. Bill is a genuine guy who really cares about the children of Baltimore. In fact, he came to be a regular face at my school, taking several students under his wing, teaching a journalism class and helping out with our school newspaper and yearbook.

Based on my conversations with Bill and the other staff at The Wire, I am confident that we are in for a deeper social commentary than your typical shoot-em-up drug dealer drama. The Wire is concerned with the social context of the drug scene: the economic injustice that created it, the political corruption that perpetuates it, and the criminal education system that gives the children of Baltimore, and so many other cities like it, no other option but to be a part of it.

-Posted by Zachary Norris