From the inside out: in his book, a journalist tells what going back to high school taught him about today's educational challenges.

It started when I pissed off then-fleshman English teacher Mice Bennett with a September 1995 column I wrote for The Kansas City Star. That caused me to go back to high school and sit in a student desk to learn what it is like to be a teenager and a teacher today--as if high school weren't bad enough the first time.

The column that offended Bennett was about a suburban, middle-school teacher who said she was getting out of the profession because she couldn't take it anymore. The world she had entered 20 years earlier right out of college--one of chalkboards, erasers and attentive students, backed up by supportive parents and administrators--had radically changed.

By the late 1990s, the students were disruptive, the parents were combative and the administration was unsupportive. The suburban teacher, whom I had written about in 1993 because of her exceptional ability, was exiting the profession to work at a gardening center cultivating plants and flowers instead of young minds. She has also held other jobs but has never returned to teaching full-time.

So I wrote a column for the start of the 1995 school year, saying parents, administrators and others must be more supportive of teachers, or more teachers would leave the profession. That caused Bennett to send me two, long, tearful letters. People who have read them in my book A Teacher's Cry: Expose the Truth About Education Today, have labeled them angry. But I still see only a great sadness in them. As if they were yesterday, I hear Bennett's cries and her pleas for someone to pay attention and work with teachers to truly improve public education. Bennett wrote, "How dare little miss suburban teacher say she can't take it anymore." She doesn't know what taking it is all about. Then Bennett described what she and other urban teachers endure behind locked classroom doors. Students openly curse teachers, have sex during school, wear ankle "bracelets" to class because they're in trouble with the law, and enter class unprepared to learn. I had to see for myself.

A Ringside Seat 

At least once a week during the first semester of 1995, I started attending Bennett's six freshman English classes at Washington High School. I had graduated in 1973 from a public high school in St. Louis, Missouri. Going to Washington High School more than two decades later was vastly different. This time, I was the adult, the observer, the journalist taking notes on everything that went on and writing columns for The Kansas City Star about the everyday goings-on in the school. I found the stories that Bennett had described in her letters, but I also found that public education is like everything else in lift: Most of what happens is good and can be better if given the right encouragement to flower.

The teachers and the students remained distant initially. But the students warmed up before their freshman year was over when they saw me return to class to sit in a student desk beside them week after week, attend their extracurricular activities and visit them at their after-school jobs.

I was with Bennett during the students' freshman year. I called her my Harriet Tubman because she helped to get me seats with the students the following years in sophomore English teacher Beatrice McKindra's classes, Scott Milkowart's American history classes for juniors and Dennis Bobbitt's American government class for seniors. By the students' senior year, all the teachers and administrators at the school embraced me as part of the class. I was even the students' graduation speaker. That was quite an honor.

My self-assigned project resulted in nearly 100 columns that ran in The Kansas City Star on what may have been the newspaper's longest series on education. Many of those columns make up the core of A Teacher's Cry.

Into the Void

Each column examined the skyscraper of public education from the inside out. It was unusual because in journalism, we mostly cover education from the outside looking in, which civically is a disservice to readers. The articles and the book explain that for more than 40 years our schools--particularly in urban areas--have suffered a massive public disinvestment. The losses have been in more than just money, which the schools, teachers and generations of children have had to do without. The greater deficit has been in social capital, with more parents, caring adults, businesses and community members decoupling themselves from active participation in the education of today's students with teachers and administrators.

We're demanding that teachers fill the void. So they function as social workers, police officers, truant officers, surrogate parents, psychologists, social workers and even marriage counselors when parents' disputes make their way into the schools. Because teachers are doing all of that, many, afterward, have no time, energy or interest in teaching. And if that's not bad enough, politicians and others blame teachers for the poor condition of public education.

The No Child Left Behind Act adds to the trauma and the national problem of people and politicians bullying teachers. They are bullied by the testing requirements, bullied if the schools don't meet the standards and bullied by politicians blaming teachers for the failures. At no time in this country's history have teachers been so burdened. They have to contend with the social, economic, behavioral and emotional sicknesses in our community that daily walk into our schools on the soles of expensive sneakers.

A Challenge to Adults

In the columns that ran in The Star and in A Teacher's Cry, I advocated that more adults--not just parents--take seats in classrooms in schools in their communities. By being in the schools, not to interfere or to meddle, more adults would help change the quality of the education students receive. They would become advocates and allies for the teachers, who often feel isolated and alone. In addition, the adults would serve as mentors and role models for the students. Those ties, and the responsibility that accompanies them, continue long after graduation.

I've found that the door connecting young people with caring adults should never close.

I know this from twins Michael and Marcus Harris, who reached out years after graduating from Washington High School to let me know they are continuing to pursue their dream of one day playing professional football.

I have followed Eva Tilford to a master's degree ceremony in 2004 at the University of Kansas-Lawrence's Multicultural Business Scholars Program. She's putting her degree to use in an accounting job with a railroad company. I have carried wisdom about diversity from Courtney Bettis back to Bethany College, which is in a small town in central Kansas, so the faculty and administrators can better treat and understand African American students like her. She is married now to a teacher and is the mother of two children.

During her senior year at Washington High School, Jennifer Rogers broke my heart: After her family home was heavily damaged in a fire, she asked me in class whether there was a God. She answered that question years after graduation at her wedding to which she invited me. It was near Pittsburg State University, where she pursued a degree in social work. On that day, the happiest of her life, she said, "Oh yes, there is a God."

An educator who read A Teacher's Cry said helping young people to make it on their own emotionally and financially is one of the unsung ways in which teachers give to our kids long after the classroom doors close. More adults need to become engaged in the lives of young people. If they did so, they would never fall for the tall tales that politicians tell about what's wrong with public schools, particularly in urban areas. With firsthand knowledge from being advocates and allies for teachers, and mentors modeling achievement for students, these caring adults would help to effectively push for true education reform and real standards for academic achievement. Then they also would be engaged in the process to ensure that the achievement gap--particularly in urban schools--closes and all students achieve. It's about caring for our children, who are of many beautiful colors, and helping to rewrite the future for each. Bennett still teaches but her subject is journalism now. She remains committed to her students and hopes things will improve before she retires.

Lewis W. Diuguid serves on the editorial board of The Kansas City Star and administers its philanthropic efforts in the community.