Mugged by reality in the classroom

It’s one of our favorite stories, often “based on a true story”: Idealistic second-career teacher (Stand and Deliver) arrives at a tough school (Dangerous Minds), encounters inner-city violence (Freedom Writers), struggles with failure (McFarland, USA), employs unconventional methods (The Ron Clark Story) and wins respect, with final triumphant fadeout (Music of the Heart, Mr. Holland’s Opus). That narrative was firmly cemented in Ed Boland’s mind when he decided on a midlife career change. After 20 years as developmental director of Project Advance, a nonprofit group that sought out promising low-income students and groomed them for the Ivy League, Boland decided to put his mouth where his money was and join the ranks of New York City teachers. He knew it would be a rough start, but he didn’t know how rough.

Students taunted him with overt sexual jibes, tossed expensive equipment out the window, ignored his creative lesson plans—and that was the first day. Staring up at a 14-year-old sex bomb who stood on her desk and leered at him, Boland felt his charmed life unravel: “I was so unfamiliar with the feeling of fear that I barely recognized it.” One year was all it took. Frankly admitting his failure, Boland went back to the nonprofit fundraising world and chalked it up to experience—enough experience to write a book. The Battle for Room 314: My Year of Hope and Despair in a New York City High School (Grand Central Publishing, 2016) is as revealing of its author as it is of the subject.

It’s easy for a hard-nosed conservative to sneer at Boland, a Catholic-turned-atheist with a six-figure income, a shrink, and a handsome, athletic boyfriend (now husband). He wanted to “make a difference” with his personal version of the white savior narrative. But Boland wins points for honesty, and he learned some valuable lessons, enough to take a stab at educational reform in the book’s last pages. Some of his suggestions sound worthwhile, like long-term mentorship for student teachers, re-integrating urban schools, setting and enforcing disciplinary guidelines, and revising certification requirements to include courses in classroom management (he says he didn’t have any). But his overarching theme blares out his liberal bias: “End poverty, the root of educational failure.”

His own story belies that thesis. Yes, almost all his students were from low-income backgrounds, but they were even poorer in family relationships. Throughout the book he tells of absent parents, dysfunctional parents, or no parents—kids roaming from one distant relative or friend of a friend to another, while looking to their peers for tips on behavior. Boland believes that poverty wrecks families, but all he had to do is look a few generations back, to dirt-poor immigrant parents who kept it together long enough to give their kids a step up. Broken families perpetuate poverty.

Boland salutes the successful teachers in the school system while ruefully acknowledging that he’s not one of them. Dedicated teachers can make a difference, but there will never be enough of them to make the difference—and it’s not their job anyway.