Give Me An F

Hi. My name is Ms. Deaton. I work at a failing school.
Officially. My school was given its grade last week.
We were given an F. For failure.
We didn’t meet someone’s expectations for us.

They saw our data.
They analyzed our test scores.
They locked in our before, middle, and after.
They looked at papers and numbers and statistics black and white,
And they definitively decided that we weren’t good enough.
They gave us an F. For failure.

But here’s what they don’t know:
We’re not failing.
We may not be thriving.
But we’re not failing.
We’re figuring it out.

We’re figuring out how to
Feed students who do not eat unless they are at school;
Find shoes for students walking on holes or hanging onto soles with duct tape;
Fit shirts, pants, coats, and underwear to students who are in need;
Finance the treasure box;
Fix discipline issues with limited options for consequences in a society centered around the rights of “me”;
Finagle the daily schedule to include childhood;
Fabricate lessons with no textbooks;
Free generations from bonds of illiteracy;
Fell the fences that separate rich from poor, haves from have-nots;
Fill classrooms of twenty-eight students with positive energy and love when the deficits of some are so great that they fight to get their fill.

Learning doesn’t happen in a bubble.
Intelligence is not all test scores and black and white.
Knowledge is not all facts and figures and strategies and tools and rules and data and samples and bubbles and statistics and interventions and
Students are not robots who objectively regurgitate information during pencil-and-paper-sit-absolutely-still-in-the-absolute-quiet-that-absolutely-never-happens-in-this-absolutely-overstimulated-world tests.

My name is Ms. Deaton. I work at a school that they say is a failure. An F.
Well let them give me their F.
I’ll give them mine.
And I’ll stand with some of the most courageous heroes that I know and boldly proclaim that our school is figuring things out by
Failing to believe that we can be reduced to or diminished by an F.