Monroe: Honor kids through love, teaching
By Del Stover
Education has many of the same qualities and goals as a ministry, acclaimed educator Lorraine Monroe told attendees at Sunday’s National Black Caucus of School Board Members Luncheon.
“It means you believe not only in the cultivation of children’s minds, but you are changing hearts,” she said. “You are changing spirits. And, in a crazy, radical way, you are changing this country.”
Crazy was a word echoed many times during Monroe’s remarks. Founder of the Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem, N.Y., and a popular conference speaker and consultant, Monroe said educators need to be a little crazy at times. They have to be crazy enough to believe that disadvantaged students can learn. They have to be crazy enough to fight for the future of students.
And there will be a lot of fighting. “The children don’t believe what’s possible,” Monroe said. “You have to fight them. You have to fight some parents and principals who don’t believe your children can do it.”
A petite, distinguished looking woman, Monroe drew laughter when she emphasized her point by stripping off her jacket, mugging a tough stance, and using some colorful language to remind them that she had taught -- and served as a principal -- in some of the roughest urban settings in New York City.
Her success in teaching inner-city students has led to invitations to speak around the world. She described one trip to Norway and Sweden, where she was asked for advice on teaching disadvantaged students. Watching educators waiting with pens in hand, she offered to write the solution on the chalkboard: Love them ... and teach them.
“In a nutshell, that’s what it is,” she said. “If you can’t love those kids, honor them. And, by God, that means teach them.”
It also means putting an end to low expectations for students, Monroe argued. She recalled looking at one school’s library and being dismayed with what she called “Mickey Mouse” books. “I didn’t see any Shakespeare,” she recalled. “What is this crap?”
Expectations always should be high -- and those expectations need to start early.
“It’s not just about graduating from elementary school,” she said. “It’s not about getting into a great high school. It’s about getting into college and graduating, and going to graduate school. We should be talking to kindergarten children about college.”
At the close of her remarks, she asked the audience to stand and take an oath to go home and continue their good work. “With these hands, with this heart, with this mind, I can do anything.”
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