美国国家公共电台 NPR 'My Kids Are In Survival Mode': A Chat With 2019's Teacher Of The Year（在线收听）

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Rodney Robinson teaches at the Virgie Binford Education Center, though yesterday he was at the White House accepting the National Teacher of the Year award. Robinson is not your typical teacher because he doesn't teach at your typical school.

RODNEY ROBINSON: Well, I work in the juvenile jail. And my students range in age from 12 to 19, from on average sixth grade up to 12th grade. And they are on varying levels, and it's my job to fit the needs of each and every student, no matter what they bring to the table, and make them feel loved and appreciated and inspire them to do whatever they want to be.

GREENE: Robinson's classroom is inside the Richmond Juvenile Detention Center in Virginia, where kids do have all different skill levels and all different challenges.

ROBINSON: It's a very transient population. You know, when we get in the morning, you know, I might have left on Monday, and we had 40 kids. I might come back on Tuesday, we could have up to 50 kids. And so you just have to be very, very flexible. And that's why I often tell them, hey, this is a moment to reset, no matter how long you're with us, and re-examine your life and the decisions you're making.

GREENE: And I understand that you have a project that is really focused on helping all of your students navigate the criminal justice system. Can you explain what that looked like and why you think it's important?

ROBINSON: Oh, yes. It was as part of the Yale teachers' initiative last summer. I had the opportunity to go and take a seminar called Race, Class and Punishment with James Forman Jr. Of course, he just won the Pulitzer for "Locking Up Our Own." But he taught a class. And the point was for you to take the information that was in the class and create a 10,000-word curriculum unit that was specific to your kids and what they needed to learn.

And my unit was based on the history of prison and specifically the Virginia juvenile justice system because my kids are in survival mode 24/7. And so a lot of times, when they come in to the detention center, they're struggling to understand it all. And I hope that my unit about the history of prisons, the history of juvenile detention in Virginia and how to best advocate for yourself will help them make better decisions.

GREENE: It's like using their circumstances as a way to study history, as a way to study the law. Like, it's coursework in itself looking at the - their - at the situation they're in and learning from it.

ROBINSON: Yeah, definitely. That's the point. I always say, culturally relevant teaching, you have to use what your kids know and what your kids experience to create a positive learning environment and a positive learning experience for them.

GREENE: I want to ask you one thing that you brought up, the reality that 2 percent of public school teachers right now are black males.

ROBINSON: Yes.

GREENE: What strikes you about that, and why do you think something needs to be done to change it?

ROBINSON: I always say it's important that students have teachers and people who look like them, who think like them, who can understand their experiences in life and guide them to what they need to be. And right now, we don't have that in America. Our public school children are 50 percent people of color, but our teachers are 80 percent white. And so with that comes just a lot of misunderstandings.

And quite often, that leads to students being unfairly punished and sent to the juvenile justice system at a alarming rate because black and brown students and students with disabilities are being pushed out. And I think that a lot of that has to do with not having teachers who are culturally competent in front of them and teachers that pretty much look like them and understand their experiences.

GREENE: Now, as Rodney Robinson and I finished our conversation, he told me teaching in a juvenile justice system, for all its challenges, has a lot of rewards.

ROBINSON: I think the best moment we had was we had a student, whenever she had a problem in education with trying to get her credits and graduate, she would violate curfew to come in for one day so that she could talk to us and get everything in order that she needed to graduate. And so that, to me - I mean, I didn't want her violating curfew, but just the fact that she wanted to come back to see us because she knew we had her back academically and we could get her issues resolved.

GREENE: That must be a nice feeling.

ROBINSON: Yeah.

GREENE: Rodney Robinson is the 2019 National Teacher of the Year. Congratulations, and thanks so much.

ROBINSON: All right. Thank you.