“The Girls in the Back of the Class” is LouAnne Johnson’s account of her four years teaching English to students in the Academy program at Parkmont High, in California. A team of teachers created the Academy program with the hope that students would be able to go on and do great things with their lives. Many of the students were living in East Palo Alto, a rough neighborhood where guns, drive-bys and drugs, were more prevalent then education or jobs that would allow them to pursue their dreams. LouAnne wanted to change this. Through the help of other teachers, the Academy program was born. Students would enter the program as sophomores. They would have the same teachers, the same group of students, for their junior and senior years. Juniors have mentors from around the community, and seniors would participate in a work-study program with many local businesses. Money from a grant helped the school to create a modern computer lab (well, modern for the late 1980s), to give the students an opportunity to have three years of training in different computer applications (Johnson, Introduction).
Although Ms. Johnson realized that this program would make a difference in these kids’ lives; she realized what they were up against out in the real world. In chapter one, for example, she writes of Raul Chacon, who took a $100 loan from Ms. Johnson in order to buy back his jacket. A bunch of gang members attacked him, and stole his jacket, and they would not give it up unless he paid them exactly $100. Johnson agreed to this on one condition: that he would graduate high school, two and a half years later (at the age of 20). She did not want him to retaliate in violence and ruin his life. She believed in him, and this is why she loaned him the money, even though she made very little money as a high school English teacher (Johnson, 4).
When students revealed their private thoughts or their personal lives to her, she tries to remain nonjudgmental. She felt that if she remained nonjudgmental she could better understand her students—and perhaps even be able to help them (Johnson, 16). Johnson was also not afraid to express her emotions—to demonstrate how much she cares for her students. In fact, there are times when she tells her students that she loves them. On page 25, she tells one student “you know I still love you, no matter what you did” (Johnson). In all my years of schooling, it is hard to imagine any teacher of mine who would say something like that to students, but Ms. Johnson was not concerned with how others thought. Her number one priority was her “kids,” the students that she saw everyday.
As much as she loved her students, she knew that sometimes that they could be their own worse enemy. This is why she created a rule for herself: do not let the kids suck her into confrontations. Ms. Johnson knows that she is stubborn and has a bit of a temper, so she realizes that she needs to keep these two facets of herself in check. She does not want to humiliate or anger any of her students. She also feels that it is important to give her students lessons about racial slurs—especially since the majority of students are Hispanic and African American. One of the quotes that she has tacked up on her wall is Eleanor Roosevelt’s “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent” (Johnson, 99). She also did not allow racial, religious, or sexual put-downs in classroom. Her goal was to create an environment where her students felt safe and could learn.
She is also a big believer in giving students “one more chance.” This stems from her experience in the Marines. While she was training in the marines, there was the incident of the missing rifle. Such an offense made it possible for her to be dishonorably discharged from the marines, but instead her sergeant decided to give her just “one more chance.” However, she realized that sometimes she had to let the students make their own decisions. She sights a student named Araceli Andrade as being her teacher for this reflection. After all, Araceli helped her to create the “four options,” and realize that they, the students, make their own choices. She stopped making herself responsible for their success or failure (Johnson, 66).
Although she sights Araceli as being her teacher on more than one occasion, she focuses more on the boys and her experiences with them through out the first half of the book. For her, it takes looking at an old class photograph to realize that there were hardly any girls graduating from the program and Parkmont high. In this picture, there was only a few number of white gowns (girls wore white). The majority of the gowns were black, meaning that most of the students who were graduating were boys. This realization shakes her to the core, and she cannot help but to question herself. She reads an article that states, “Most teachers favor boys over girls. They spend more time with boys, and pay more attention to them during lessons. She wonders if she had fought as hard as she had to keep the girls as she did to keep the boys, and if she hadn’t fought for them, then what were the reasons for why she hadn’t”(Johnson, 124). While creating the list for recreational and cultural activities, she makes a point to put the girls at the top of the list.
Just through this short summary of her book, I can see how willing she was to go beyond the normal responsibilities of a teacher, in order to create a safe and trusting environment. By holding herself to a strict set of rules, she also enabled herself to self-reflect on what she was doing right, or what could go wrong. Teacher self-reflection or evaluation is a key component of our class. She also makes a point to except her student’s frames of reference. Ms. Johnson clearly knows about their home lives, as well as their lives outside of class. She also asks questions publicly and lets her students answer them privately. The best example of this is on page 127 when she is talking to two male students who refuse to include themselves in class:
“I promise never to embarrass you in this class. You don’t have to read out loud.
Nobody else will see your essays. You aren’t competing with anybody but yourselves.
And I know you’re intelligent even if you don’t know it” (Johnson).
Her way teaching is definitely not the IRE method of questioning! She is tough, but she knows that in this type of environment she has to be. She is also soft, in the respect that she is willing to share her own emotions as well as hearing what her students have to say. In the end, she leaves Parkmont and the Academy, but she never forgets her kids and what they taught her: that “teaching developmental English literature and composition to kids who would rather undergo major surgery without anesthetic than read a book or write an essay, is what she is meant to do as a teacher”(Johnson, 262).
I would recommend this book to any teacher, novice or experienced, who wants to rise to the challenge of the most “difficult” students. Ms. Johnson realized there was more to her students—that it was not always what it appeared to be. This book would help teachers know that there are more factors to student’s lack of learning. Ms. Johnson gives teachers the tools to help break down this barrier.