He lost his street cred.
Via The College Fix:
The Philadelphia School District deals with a lot of the same problems facing other large urban districts, but a recent story in Philly.com illustrates just how bad the situation is in the City of Brotherly Love.
Quamiir Trice served time for selling crack while he himself was a high school student in Philly, yet managed to do a one-eighty: He ended up graduating from college and became a teacher in city schools.
His story is an academic’s dream — a black male returns to his neighborhood to teach.
But Trice’s first year at Bethune Elementary was like that which way too many educators — of all colors — face.
“It was chaos,” he said. “I was just treading water; things just didn’t feel good. There were so many students, and so much going on, that it was impossible for me to reach them.”
He said that he “felt lost about everything from lesson plans to teaching reading.”
Hey, how about that? A black male teacher can suffer from wrong-headed policies just as much as other educators.
Roughly half the nation’s teaching force ends up hightailing it within five years. The figure is greater for minorities.