Illustration by Tim Bower
Illustration of people flying on books
Last year Tom Rademacher left the classroom. He was finishing his teaching manifesto, It Won’t Be Easy, and was trying a new gig: teaching coach. “I could go to the bathroom when I wanted to,” he marvels. “I could take a full 30 minutes for lunch instead of shoveling food in my face. I didn’t have 16 hours of teacher work on weekends.” Unfortunately, the teacher the kids call Mr. Rad admits, “I was miserable.” This year, he’s back teaching 7th grade English at the FAIR School in Crystal. Sitting down with him on a Friday during the school year, you get a sense of how crazy he is for the profession that’s made him a little crazy.
This is such a funny teaching book—was it difficult getting interest from publishers?
I had two or three publishers who were into it, but they wanted to drastically alter it. I remember one telling me, “OK, you have two books here: one about teaching and one about race. And you have to pick one.” And I’m like nooooo, I don’t think so. I still find it amusing that anybody would write a book about teaching that doesn’t involve race at all, because then you’re ignoring one of the most significant issues in schools right now. When I found the University of Minnesota Press, the first meeting I had with the editor before he had seen my manuscript, he said, “I’m kind of looking for a profane book about teaching.” And I’m like, “I have that in my bag!”
When you write, “I make enough money as a teacher,” I thought, that’s going to get you in trouble.
The meme that goes around is “Live your life with the confidence of a mediocre white man.” I am that mediocre white man! I’ll say the things that aren’t necessarily super popular. And right now, in Minnesota, if you’re at a public school, I feel like we do pretty OK.
I loved the happy hour scenes. There seems to be this weird pressure on teachers to control their image as the most shiny, gleaming American citizens at all times, and this book had happy hour scenes.
There’s a ton of weird fear. This is the first year where I am Googleable. Luckily they’re seventh graders, so they only image search. We simultaneously hold [teachers] up on a pedestal and demean them in a million ways at the same time. But there’s not the idea that people are normal people, they have lives, they go to happy hour, they go drink. It’s crazy. I’ve been at happy hour where a kid’s parents are around and we’re hiding our beers. But we’re all adults.
You grew up in Milwaukee. How early were you aware of race?
Fourth grade before we moved [to the suburbs], we were talking about Thursday nights. I noticed that the black kids watched Cosby and the white kids watched The Simpsons. The idea that somebody would go home and not watch The Simpsons blew my fourth grade mind. And then I went to Delafield Wisconsin in the fifth grade and kids were like, “Whoa does that mean you’ve met a black person? What were they like?” So it was this dark period of living in an all-white place with all-white people. And then I moved to Minneapolis for college and my college roommates were involved in local hip hop—Stephen Lewis and Alexei Casselle, they’re in Kill the Vultures. They lived across the hall and then we got an apartment on University and 8th. They’re getting me into all of this hip hop. I come home and Aesop Rock is like in our apartment playing DreamCast.
So can you tell me the day you became woke?
It took awhile. They were really patient with me. Stephen, as a white guy who produces hip hop, had thought so hard about what it means to be a white person that produces black art. And me and him would sit and talk for hours and hours and hours, and race was in front of what it meant to be a white person sitting in spaces and recognizing whiteness, way before these conversations were the hip conversations to have. And then when I started teaching, it became real to me on a whole other level, watching kids go through the system and fail.
So you’re teaching in a desegregation school in Crystal—do you see kids who like Trump?
We have a few kids who are pretty vocal who are supportive of Trump. So honestly I’ve kept my eye on that.
Because they’re the minority in your school.
This week we’re reading “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and having conversations about race and Black Lives Matter, and I could see one of the kids turning toward one of the kids who has been pro-Trump and I had to remind the class that we’re having conversations to try to share perspectives, and it’s not about trying to use it as a weapon against someone else. We can talk about from my perspective—“This is how I feel about Trump being President”—that’s OK, but saying, “You think this way for that reason,” we don’t want to go there. Don’t assume what somebody else is doing or why and don’t make them talk if they don’t want to. Because it’s hard to stand in front of class of 25 kids and say, “Okay, you all disagree with me, but let me explain myself…” It doesn’t help anyone to ostracize people who think differently if you can create a safe space to do that.
Don’t kids weaponize safe space rhetoric and then use it as a club against anybody who disagrees with them?
It becomes “I don’t want to hear another perspective.” Uncomfortable is OK, but unsafe is not, right? That’s where you have to figure out the line, especially as a teacher. Because it’s not my job to try to change anybody’s mind. I do try to expose people to lots of different perspectives. I do feel if you have the ability to empathize and humanize people who aren’t like you, no matter where you go in life, that’s going to be powerful. Even if you’re going to use that for business, you’re going more marketable in business because you can empathize with people in a global market. Companies aren’t trying to hire you if you say crazy racist stuff.
Actually that’s pretty hot right now.
Yeah, you’ll just be president.
So you’re dealing with fear and identity issues on the students’ side, but what about the teachers? The Secretary of Education seemed to misunderstand some of the intellectual arguments confronting education during her confirmation hearing.
That was embarrassing.
I’m not an expert on “growth vs. proficiency,” but she had never heard of the argument.
Here’s what I loved about that: it was Senator Franken who asked her that. [Senator Franken] called me at school the day after I won teacher of the year. We talked about growth and proficiency. That’s one of his things. And when I met Senator Franken in D.C., he was on the same thing: growth vs. proficiency. So to have them ask that question of [Betsy] DeVos, to some people it looked like he was trying to nail her on some thing. I think he was trying to get her to talk about proficiency, but I think his shock was very real that she had no idea what that was.
So what are you and your colleagues expecting from this administration?
I think this is where I’m trying to break out of my bubble. It’s all doom and gloom. We’ve been hearing that public schools are going to get torn apart for the last 15 years. Somebody is going to come though and destroy the whole thing. But that’s the people who are really involved—probably 10 percent of all teachers. Ninety percent of the teachers are just worried about what they’re teaching tomorrow. They couldn’t tell you who the last Secretary of Education was, couldn’t tell you who the next one is going to be, and they’re going to teach their kids. And states do a lot more with education than the federal government does. Minnesota is a pretty progressive place, and I’m less worried that we’re going to screw up. It was worse for us when we had Tim Pawlenty as governor. That was a rough time. And Governor Dayton has done a really good job supporting schools and getting the money back where it should be, and honoring the work that goes on there. You can feel it day-to-day who our governor is. I’m not sure we’re going to feel it day to day who our Secretary of Education is.
There’s a chapter on white guy shit: seeing yourself as part of this group that you’re embarrassed to be a part of. To always carry the stereotypes of any group, aren’t you negating the individual? James Baldwin said, “The first thing white people have to do is stop thinking of themselves as white.”
I do understand that point. But I do think when, as white people, we push too quickly past that, and we’re like, “It’s not about race,” then we start to ignore the reality of what that means. As teachers you want to step in and be like, “Look, I’m a cool guy, we’re good here!” and then not recognize that the kid in front of you had a white guy teacher the year before and the white guy teacher the year before that.
That was sad to read about the black kid who felt he could only really talk to the substitute teacher.
I have to recognize the fact that as another white male now standing in front of them, they’re not going to see me as a completely blank slate. I have to recognize that their experiences with white males in positions of authority might not be all positive. And so if I come at them—and I do, because I mess up—but if I come at them really harshly about some little thing, they might be like, “Here we go again. He’s going to totally get on my case about not having a pencil, just like the one dude did.” Like I would think everybody would say we want to live in a world where we don’t do the labels, and I think we can get there, but I think we have to work through it rather than avoid it.
Minnesota is one of the most highly segregated school environments and it’s gotten a lot worse in the last 20 years. But should desegregating schools in Minneapolis be a priority?
Growing up as a teacher in a desegregation district the obvious answer is yeah. But one of the people that I respect a lot in Minneapolis education is Chris Stewart. He was on the Minneapolis school board for a long time, and now he’s a writer and activist about education. And he’s a black male who’s like, “Why do we need white people to educate our black kids?” It hasn’t worked so far. We should be able to have an all-black school that’s successful.
In Minneapolis we need to fix how we fund schools. Right now we’re going to fund them all equally. Every school gets the same amount of money depending on the kids that they have. But then at a school that’s rich and white, the PTO is putting in a ton more money, and they don’t have the needs in their students that other schools might have, so they end up being far, far wealthier. Plus, those schools are just easier to teach in—they don’t have behavior issues, they’re well funded. Those schools are going to attract the more experienced quality teachers, and the district pays the same for those teachers. They pay the average teacher salary. So you might have a teacher that’s making $85,000 a year, and as a school you’re paying whatever it is, $52,000. And then a school in north Minneapolis might have a first-year teacher making $30,000 and the school is paying $52,000.
So the system is fixed for the people in richer neighborhoods.
I mean, when you want to push the conversation, and you’re like, “We need to figure out a way to get more funding to our poor schools, they need more money.” Then the answer is, “Well, great, but everyone should get more money right? It would be great if everybody is fully funded.” So they push for the all, because everybody is cool with the conversation that we need to put more money in our schools with our poor schools and our schools with struggling kids. Everybody is cool with that conversation up until the point where you say, “Great, we have to take some of that money away from the rich schools.” Then it’s like, “Wait, wait, wait…nope.” More money is not showing up. We’re not willing to risk the impact on a white student’s school day. When I worked at Anishinabe—it was a great school—a lot of the staff is fantastic, but those kids had deep needs that we did not have the ability to fill. There was just too much going on and we needed more people to handle it.
So more social workers?
At Anishinabe almost 100 percent of the kids were below the poverty line—so free and reduced lunch—and 45 percent of them were homeless or highly mobile. So you had kids coming into the building every day with a profound amount of trauma. And the urban native community is not a community that is being well taken care of. We needed more social workers and more training and more room for the teachers and better facilities. And we needed some of those teachers who are successful teachers who are doing a great job. We have to start thinking, as teachers, “Maybe I should go to a school that’s harder to teach in.” There aren’t easy teaching jobs. If I would’ve stayed at Patrick Henry out of my student teaching, I’m not sure I would’ve made it. It’s a great school, but it’s a tough school, and as a first-year teacher I’m not sure I would’ve had the tools to do it.
I had great teachers, exceptional teachers, but I also had assholes like Mr. Prokop who hadn’t changed his physics tests for 10 years, even though we were all cheating off tests from a decade ago. I remember he said, “You’re never going to amount to nothing.” So what can we do to develop more exceptional teachers?
What kills me is that we have a ton of people who are ready to move in. I think Minnesota is 96 percent white teachers. And then we know that Minnesota also has one of the highest racial achievement gaps in the country. So if you think about it, one of the things we want to do to help that achievement gap is to get more teachers of color. But [teachers of color] need to get through the school system and then get through college and then get through all the testing in order to get their license to be able to teach. So if you look at urban schools, essentially what you have is all white people leading the classroom and all people of color being EAs and support staff. So that sets up a really messed up narrative of white people holding the power and the knowledge, and support staff and people of color are there to handle behavior. A good many of those support staff would love to be teaching, but the schooling to get your license is insane. Alexei is actually a really great example. He got a community expert license to come teach at FAIR downtown, where he taught spoken word for three years—one of the best classes in the building. He’s a phenomenal teacher, but that license expires every year, and you have to re-up it, and you’re only allowed to teach very specifically in the realm that you’re considered a community expert in. So he taught for three years, was amazing, grew this whole program that he designed by himself, and realized, “If I’m ever going to teach full-time and not be constantly worried about being fired, I have to go get my license. Now in order to get my license, I have to go back to school.” I think when he started, he was maybe three or four years away from teaching, so he’s in college, he’s getting his degree, he’s getting his license, he’s working it, though all the while he has a daughter and he has a music career and he has all this stuff going on. He’s taking steps that are easier to take in your early 20s, all to do a job that he’s done for three years successfully. And there’s no system to say, “Actually, this guy has already been teaching and he’s really successful and we would love to have him keep teaching,” or, “Black males make up .02 percent of our teachers and we would love to have him teaching.” There’s nothing there for that. I’m not saying let’s accept worse people or lower the standards, but a lot of the standards right now are just hoops to jump through. We need to identify what’s difficult and what’s important—and get rid of the difficult.
There’s a part in the book that’s going to mess with people. You tell young teachers that there are regulations that you shouldn’t pay attention to. Sometimes you have to take a stand. Sometimes you have to break the rules.
If you’re willing to put the needs of your kids ahead of your own job, then you should. And if you’re not willing to put the needs of your kids in front of your job, then I don’t really think you should teach. But if we’re complaining that we’re made to teach to the test, we’re being made to do this and it’s not good for the kids. There are a lot of teachers who are straight up rule followers. These are people who loved school and that’s why they went into teaching, and I adore very many of them, but there’s a point where you can be like, no, the right thing for me to do right now is to take care of the kids in this way, to give them this piece of knowledge that I know that they will need, or to spend time on something that’s more important than what the district is telling me I have to spend time on. It doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences to that, but otherwise what? You’re just saying your mortgage is more important than those 30 kids getting what they need from you? I don’t want you comfortable with that decision. Get a job somewhere else.
