No Brothers

I thought that this essay brought up some very interesting points, and it portrayed them in a believable manner. I could picture most of the events happening exactly as they were described, and I thought that this was a welcome change from other things that I have read in the past dealing with student issues (not necessarily from this book).

During my fieldwork last year (it was just elementary observation - I havn't started my student teaching yet) I noticed a few of the things that the essay brought up, including the thoughts about whether some of the students were actually 'hard cases' or if the teachers assumptions about certain students bad behavior in fact instigated the bad behavior in the first place. This was described as a result of viewing certain situations through a 'problematic' lense from the onset which obviously led to problems. I had nothing but respect for the teacher I was working with (and I wouldn't presume to know better than she did) I just felt that with my unique position as a relative outsider and newbie I was able to see some of the problem students in a different way than some of the staff - and it sometimes seemed to me that they were unfairly picked out or punished for what some of the other students did on a regular basis.

I also thought that Kathe Jervis brought up some good points on the power relations between the school staff (including black vs white, and man vs woman) The situation with Derrick obviously brought most of these conflicts into light, and I appreciated the authors perspective on Don's role as a loud, confident, white-male teacher who, although he had a good teaching record, was generally unchallenged even when perhaps he should have been. Carrie, the black female counselor seemed to be the best at dealing with the tough problems, including the race issues and the assembly that she instigated at the end (with the fishbowl exercise) was the first real and important dialogue that was noted in the entire piece. However, two things that I would bring note, and this is probably just comming from my perspective as a white male (also with a loud voice) deals with the fact that the Jervis painted the situation as Don being a loud mouth and Jan agreeing with him. Also, the author and Carrie felt too powerless to stand in the way of the expulsion. This seemed a little bit like a cop out to me, in that Jervis didnt say anything to Don's face when it would have helped the situation - instead her and Carrie spoke about it privately (changing nothing) then she didnt hesitate to write about it in retrospect. I understand that the whole point she was making was that the power relations in place were at least partially responsible for her silence and I agree with this assesment whole-heartedly- I was just irked by the way I percieved the situation.