test test [inaudible conversations] [cheering] [applause] >> welcome to book culture. if this is your first time, thank you so much for finding us. 20 years ago this was lost to upper west side along with many other bookstores over the years. a year ago we took the plunge and opened a third store. book culture is pleased to host ed boland whose book is "the battle for room 314." [applause] >> join -- we don't charge for the events but we hope you will pick up a copy of the book and we will have ed signing up at the front afterwards. so if you can wait a moment to congratulate him personly. ed boland has dedicated his entire life to non-profit causes predominantly educational institutions. as a fundraiser and communication expert he was an admission officer and lived in china as an asia fellow. and me yong lee writes for many publications and she received a full bright award in korea and was a judge for the national book anard and prev -- previously taught at brigham young. >> of course i killed them. i killed them all. >> the book is going tbe very exciting. it is on the must-read list of 2016. [applause] >> and it is going to be in the new york times so everybody look for it. i will let you take it away. >> all right. thank you so much for coming, everybody. i was at fox and friends last week and let me say you are a sight for sore eyes and much more my crowd. i did the flowers at her wedding on a budget and badly and i want to thank you for still talking to me. a terrible job i did. but she forgave me. you know that famous cable personality robin burn? relax and get comfortable. i will quote julia andrews who said let's start at the beginning. a very good place to start. e we will start with the prologue. chantay warner sat on top of her desk with her back to me. a tight old navvy shirt was exposing her baby blue thong. i leaned over and whispered we had a deal and you are not living up your end of it. she yelled back at me what deal, mister in the kind of teenage voice that adults dread. she was chewing a wad of purple gum with such force and speed she seemed to have a piscine implanted in her jaw. it was ten minutes before it it three o'clock bell and a scorching hot afternoon on the lower east side of manhattan. a single oscillating fan strained to clean the classroom. its white plastic head panned back and forth on the student and 30 other high school freshman and me, their anxious new teacher. our deal was that you would do your work and i won't call you out in public. no more drama, remember? i said in a desperate whisper quoting a mary blige song trying to find sming common as a gay male with a black girl from the bronx. precious little in the way of learning was getting done. the student continued to talk and their chatter getting louder and their geographic work they were supposed to do were left untouched. i shot her a fierce look and she returned it with a light smoil as if she were on a talk show and was giving the host an amusing time. our deal was off and i was angry and resorted to old school yelling. sit in your seat and get back to work now! i punched out the last word in what i thought was a strict teacher voice. on the other side of the room someone hurled a calculator at the blackboard. my head snapped toward the trouble. it wasn't the only problem. a group of boys were shoving each other near a new laptop. two girls swayed in sweet unison and mouthed lyrics while sharing a frobidden ipod. another girl was reading "thug love 2" as if she were on a cruise. i heard her distinct cackle and turned back to her. she was now standing on top of her desk and towering above me like a prowrestler on the ropes about the bounce. she had a currency above her head from a mobile i made over the summer. i started to feel queasy and light-headed. mow, it wasn't supposed to happen like this. sit down immediately or there will be serious consequences i barked. all eyes were darting back and forth between us like spectators at a tennis match. she laughed and then slid her head down the outside of her genes to her upper thigh and formed a cylinder between her thumb and forefinger and shook it. she looked me in the eye and screamed suck my dick, mister. i sat frozen in front of the room and i didn't know a room full of humans were capable of making that much noise. it sounded like a hollywood laugh track times a hundred. the rebel paused and then, oh, no, she didn't. and you can't even control the girls. her bad ass boyfriend looked at her and grinned, proud of the talent he cultivated. i had always admired a filthy mouth and for a minute i thought to a -- touche and then i remembered i wasn't in a bar talking smack with my friends. i was her teacher and she was my student. i searched for a professional response. if i were to go ape shit it would show she got me. nothing came to me. nothing at all. i stood there paralyzed and afraid. by now, hidden inside my dockers. i was so unfamiliar with the feeling of fear that i barely recognized it. in one fell swoop she fingered me as gay and her bitch. it was a great humilation for me. so much for there being the easy ones to control the girls. even how she blocked the scene was strategic. the final touch? she didn't even know my name. it wasn't worth remembering. just mister would suffice. i should have walked out of the building, hailed a cab and gone to the unemployment office. game over. how had things gotten so bad so quickly? so i want to take you towards the end of the book. this section is about a field trip that was part of our world religion where we went to a mosque, bud ist temple and synagogue all in one day. i was concerned about a student named mickey because he was one of my most disruptive students. we arrived late and rowdy at the temple of emanuel. the tiny temple in new york. at the visitor center i checked in with a security guard who caned his neck over the desk to see where all of the noise was coming from. he rolled his eyes when he saw my crew terrorizing a hot dog vendor outside. a woman who was kissing 80 and 5-2 at most even with the assistance of a smart pair of cork wedges. she looked up through over size phillip johnson glasses and asked me questions as the screaming and profanities were outside. i pulled her out of the sight of my students and said sometimes they get so out of hand but they don't mean half of what they say. there is this one kid mickey -- she hits me with a stare. don't you worry about a thing, my dear. we enter the sanctuary that took up almost an entire city block. most were used to the store front evangelical operations or the juova witness churches. i was so relieved to see mickey sat in a row by himself. with one smooth gesture a wireless head set was pulled down to her head and to had ermouth. janet jackson had nothing on her. that is it sebastian. thank you. the blasting organ went silent. she talked about her faith in history, the temple and by god as she promised they listened to her. i should have been delighted at their behavior but instead i sank into a shame spiral. what does she have that i don't have? are they cutting her slack because she is old? female? short? maternal? here they were listening like they were the temple sisterhood. what gives? question she said finally? my abdomen tightened. how much does it cost you to heat his place every month as one student rubbed his hands. well nobody ever asked me that before and i don't know. she sounded perplexed. it might have seemed like a cheeky question to her but it was logical for a mother who is struggling to pay the rent. how do you change a light bulb here in here? she just chuckled. are you jewish asked warren. what a silly question. of course i am jewish. well that security guard who works back there works here and doesn't look jewish. touche. good point she conceded. why do jews love black and white so much? you mean the cookies? i love them. the jews invented oreo's. the jews make oreo's? nobody they are so rich someone mumbled. my eyes darted back to mickey and i was relieved to see him starring into space. and with a sweep of her hand she alluded to her colorful purple dress with pride. many of our students come from the lower east side and i think they are referring to the hecytic community. oh, them, that is a good question, they like things very old fashion. william who specials in making adults feel uncomfortable took his shot. do you hate all muslims? what? i don't hate anybody. before she could finish she was drowned out by mickey's voice screaming from the last row. i knew this was coming. you dumb bitches don't you listen to anything. the jews are related through brotherhood. it has been that way for a long time that it is mess over there. what is wrong with you? the setting was perfect for an emotional thunderclap. i was speechless. mickey, of all people, had listened to something in class. mickey asleep. mickey with the headphones on. mickey with his head forever out the window how in god's name did that sink in? i was shocked he even knew my name. what the hell else was me managing to learn? maybe they are all getting it. learning on the sly and just faking it to torture me. maybe there was hope after all. as i was leaping from my seat with the hopefully idea about the power of teaching i realized all eyes were on me waiting to weigh into mickey for his profanity. i heard myself giving a reprimand but i was enjoying the afterglow of my victory. as we filled out of the sanctuary and on to the stret, a scene from a streetcar with desire, sometimes there is god so quickly. on the way back to the school from the field trip. maybe it was the warm air or being liberated from the school but romance was in the air. several established couples joined hands as we made our way back to school. singles were flirting up a storm with jokes and frisky horse play. the attention was turned by way. mr. boland, you got a girlfriend? no, i answered for probably the 200th time. i always vowed i would never lie about my sexuality but i had not been asked directly. but stefon jackson broke through and asked me. have you got a boyfriend and without much thought i answered with a simple yes. i realized what i said as it was leaving my mouth. in my fog, i lacked the energy or will to brace myself. i had been shredded. there was little to devour. i looked into the sun and waited for the on slot. i heard whispers and giggles and then have you got a picture? i pulled out my phone that had a tiny sticker of sam on the back. smaller than a postage stamp. they gathered around the phone and inspected the image with care and intensity as if they had uncovered a rare coin. mr. boland's boyfriend is black! no, actually, he is not. mr. boyfriend is -- no, he is actually jewish. oooh mr. boland's boyfriend is rich. and i said no, he doesn't make very much money. jewish, i heard when you cannot tell what they is, they jewish. then seth asked in the same tone does he have a big dick? i tried to act indigant. that is really inappropriate. what are you thinking even asking about that? teacher? they chanted in unison. the chinese mothers and many from the neighborhood gave us disapproving looks. the chorus grau grew louder. but it wasn't hate full. it was jolly, cheerful, and human. they seemed happy for me. where was all of the hate? why had i not just done this from the start? i blushed. i was standing on east broadway surrounded by a group of thuggy teenagers who were chanting about my boyfriend's junk. who had i become? victory! >> i know ed from -- he was one of our first board members for the eastern american writers workshop which recently celebrated its 25th birthday. a bunch of us were in our 20s that formed this great organization and ed came to donate time as a board member because he was a professional and executive. i have known ed as the one non-asian person and non-writer of the eastern writers workshop. she is still not asian. so, i was so thrilled when i got my advanced copy of this. i also, i guess, you can see, too, like you i was laughing and crying through the whole thing. i kept -- my husband stole it before me and where was like this is so great. i want to try to bring us back to -- i think this book is going to be, kind of, inflammitory but it is really the dispatch that writing has made so immediate from this kind of hell hole where people who want to help children are just up against it. you know, before i came, i thought let me just randomly take a sentence and this is the one i picked. given the two students criminal record, i was afraid to have them in my class. i think the first question i want to ask you is about failure. being a writing is all about failure but failure is not something you want to hear about from our teachers >> no humans like failure but i think americans really hate failure. i don't love it. but i will tell you my urgent need to tell this story and process this experience was so great that it overcame my shame of failure so that tells you a lot. i mean i have never written a word until i wrote this book and that tells you just how urgently i needed to process this and i was willing to put failure on the line because the greater message is we need to pay attention to the problem and if i look like a terrible teacher so be it. but people need to know what life is like for kids in struggling school. >> it is not stand and deliver. >> or freedom riders or dangerous minds. >> yeah. and so what like about -- when you are writing it it, you a white guy and your students are all students of color, like tell us more about what was that like facing the challenge writing this? >> the biggest challenge i had in writing this book is i promised if i was going to do it , i was going to go against the hero-type teacher. we are drawn by that. the turn the classroom around in 90 minutes superhero. it makes for great hollywood tv and crappy educational policy. so with every day, i was at odds with my own performance and hopefully expectations of what i hope to do. that tension was there every day. >> plus you just got out of the big career change and graduate school. >> on paper, i was a star and a much sought-after teacher. but in reality i wasn't an effe effective teacher. going back to the point here i was and couldn't be different in background i honestly believe at heart anybody can learn from anybody. 70 year old nuns in robes and i didn't know they were people even under the scarves i learned them from. kids respond to rolemodels and whose live circumstances were similar to their own. i wish that -- i wish our teachers more closely reflected the students they are teaching. contradictory thoughts. on the one hand anyone can learn from anyone but we need role models and people the kids can relate to. it was a barrier. >> so this is causing hope and despair. you lasted a year. and gave it your all. what are you going to do when somebody says i totally want to be a teacher? >> someone said that to me recently. they said aren't you just afraid you will scare every one away that wants to be a teacher and i really hope not. part of me wishes i read this book before i thought. i would be the sadder but wiser girl but i would have been better prepared and more realistic in number one what i can accomplish, i would have been tougher and ignored half of what i heard in graduate school like just create fascinating lesson plans that kids respond to. my kids don't respond to sarcasm or anger just your professionalism. and you should really assign best intentions to everything students do. you may see students doing x but think what is the best intention you can find in their action. as i was watching someone really pommel another student i thought what are the best intentions of this situation? >> people have amnesia that they were once that age. >> exactly. >> i am going to ask you a question and memory question. your book is getting a lot of press. everyone is seeing it. i am curious about what kind of response you are getting from people in the book or random -- >> the response that shocked me the most has been several of my former students have written to me to apologize. >> awe. >> that is not what i was looking for. i refused to accept their apology and one kid said something that just stuck with me. he said i was just a kid. i said i was sorry. these kids were described in the worst terms. someone described these kids as animals. i thought how dare you judge those kids. you don't even know the half of it. i don't know the half of it but you really don't know the half of it. so that was very telling when the kids apologized to me when they had no business doing that. >> wow. so i am going to ask you two more questions and you have such a huge audience so people will want to do questions. your subtitle is "my year of hope and despair" as i was laughing and crying and reading this i would love to hear about the stories of hope. >> the school i taught was a school for international stud ae studies. they tried to teach cricket instead of basketball in gym and we taught chinese instead of french. there was one student who was not profiled in the book and i wish i knew him better because i would have profiled him and guess what? he embraced the study of chinese. he worked very hard and he wasn't the very top kid but a top kid and went on to college. i think he was only one of 3-90 kids who graduated from college but graduated with a degree in business and is living in china working a leather exporting company and sent me a picture of him and his girlfriend. i am so thrilled. that is like it worked for this kid. my second story is that there was a coworker of mine, a fellow student teacher, who we were in the graduate program together and we went to the same place for student teaching. he is actually here tonight. and i have to tell you that he became a master teacher. he has excellence results on the regency exams. he loves teaching. he is a great teacher. he was a better history student than i was. he was a better teacher than i was. there are people that can do what i cannot do. they are super human but hats off to them. those are my two success stories. [applause] >> my last question for you is over the last 25 years, you guys are the writers, and you have been hiding this under a bushel because you were like i wrote this book and i am like ed, you are such a writer. i want to hear what you are working on next. >> a little unformed but i grew up in rodchester, new york and it has been noted a smug town for a long time. it goes back to the 1920's. so i think tales from smug town is the next project and it going to be about a coming of age memoir. i think. >> we have some questions. >> i thought your book was terrific because you didn't -- i'm sorry. i thought your book was terrific because you were truthful and told with the best of your ability what you observed. you don't see that in many books written by teachers. i had two points to make about what you said before. very often, we hold teachers to a standard like a high measure and if you don't measure up you a failure. it is like if we held every physician up to albert shitzer. it is so unfair how teachers get characterized by that. and shitzer almost died because of what he was doing anyway. but i do have one disagreement with you. >> sure. >> and my disagreement is i don't think it is true that a teacher has to reflect the ethnicity of the student he or she is teaching. i really don't believe that. because if we did we would start hiring teachers on the bases of their ethnicity. i think there is a lot more room for teachers to succeed teaching anybody. i will disagree. >> i wouldn't say it is a requirement but it is more helpful and like i said anybody can learn from anybody. but at the same time when you look at it the proportions are out of whack. so if we could get closer representation i think that would be better. i agree. i don't think we should create ridged systems for that. but just that we need more role models. >> i can understand having worked for myself in a good number of years, i can understand why you would want to leave it. but i have to say the kind of repore you did establish -- rapport you did establish shows you a good teacher. and that is great. >> i appreciate that more than you know. but i hate to be so contrarian but a teachers first job is to infiltra knowledge. i think the kids knew i cared about them. a kid pulled me aside and said you know what you need to try. y i didn't teach them history, though. and that was my first job. i think i was a good role model but i didn't teach them history. >> i am a retired new york city public school teacher. i found the reaction of the audience incredibly painful. >> the audience tonight? >> yeah. yeah. because you know having been through -- that is all i have to say. i real that you want them to read in a humorous manner. >> sure. >> but it is not humorous. >> no. >> i taught a first grade class where i had two kids who had been raped. one boy and one girl. and ps134. i don't know where you were. >> lower east side. >> junior high school? >> that is the worst -- what part of it? >> i want to protect the identity of my students. >> let me say this. when i first showed the writing to many people in my writers group, people didn't want to finish it because it was so grim. people fotold me if you want people to read this book you have find a way to level it. if there is one thing i know about teachers, you develop humor. it is one of the best coping mechanisms you can have and believe me when you read the whole book you will see there is plenty of very dark and sad stories that i think will inspire people. but i wanted to make it readable because one of my readers said put a post-it in the middle of the note and she said i don't want to read this anymore. the reaction i have gotten so far is i think they have felt that way. also today they were excellent at seeing the humor in everything -- we are -- >> i found myself laughing during the book but obviously this is dead serious. i did not get the impression you in anyway made light of the situation you were in. i think my nature you were observed the whole situation. the whole fact that the situation of these kids and poverty. at the end of the book you wrapped it up by saying this is a challenge for us to fix the circumstances that allow children to come to school -- you said something in the book i find it amazing they show up at all. >> thank you. i just wanted to say as a person when worked in the public school system in new york city. i echo the sentiments. i think the way you wrote and style will hopefully make more people read it. it one of the richest cities in the world we live in a true tragedy and children are subjected to what you experienced. >> i can walk away after a year. they don't have that option. >> i want to ask the question you mentioned about the teacher preparation in particular about the graduate school program you atte attended. i was wondering if you can talk about the support or lack there of you received at your school and specifically curious if you have opinions on the contacts that the teachers' union and the principle unions have with the school and if you felt that kept people from holding you back. >> first about the teacher preparation. it can be so much better and it has to be so much better. to see, i think, i imagine recently in all of my graduate school program, i think all told there was one hour devoted to classroom management and that is the one skill everybody needs the most. i was learning educational thing that -- and teachers were all in the same boat saying this is not what we need. in terms of the mentoring they tried to do first-year teaching management and each with different philosophy. >> did you have a principal who came in and observed? >> i had lots of people coming in to observe. vice principal, experts, and ultimately no one was that helpful. last thing i will say about the contract is i enjoyeded the -- enjoyed the protection of the union and teachers need good uni unions to protect themselves. hats off to teachers because we ask the impossible of them. there were times when i felt the contract was absurd and broken into 30 second increments about how long you would teach or the fact we tried to do innovation in the school to teach longer hours and smaller classes and that was stifled. that was painful and unnecessary. >> pardon my voice. were there other moments -- were there any moments like the one you described were they were shouting and you were having a good time and scaring the locals where, however painful it might have been, that you thought to yourself this is worth it? >> yeah, there was one day. you get 180 days to teach. and i write in the chapter my day with little kids. there was one day i created a lesson which didn't seem different than the lessons i was trying to write. and this was receiving justice under the law. she was arrested for her shootout and got justice. i tried to write a lot of cool lesson plans like that but for some reason on that day the stars aligned and the kids walked in and they read this long article and they did the worksheet and actively debated it and were saying things like self-incrimination and trial by jury and jury of your peers. i thought this is the first day the chancellor walked in here he would not have me arrested. and so, yeah, there were other highlights. that was one great day. >> moments like that keep us teaching. graduate school, theory into the practice, i always heard that. when i went into the classroom i was like theory into the practice? they are not listening. the bigger picture is it starts from the home. the students are coming in with problems that stem from the home and that creates a bigger conversation with what is happening in the home and income and everything coming into play. so that is my comment. i haven't read the book but i am looking forward to it. that is all i wanted to say. >> yeah, and every time i had a media opportunity what i am trying to hammer home is yes we can and we must do everything within the four walls of classroom to teach effective teaching for struggling kids but the real root of educational failure at the end of the day is poverty. we can put the best people in the world, the shiniest laptops, newest schools, we can do all of that but -- and we are seeing progress. there is progress being made in this area. but we will hit a wall until we address the underlying factors of poverty -- [applause] >> and let's face it, the reason my finland has a 4% poverty rate versus 22% for us. the richest country in the world has a 22% children poverty rate. let's be like finland. >> actually that was sort of what i was going to be asking about. there are so many root causes of the failure. i was intrigued about the three kids that went on to graduate from college and the kid who went to china. you said you didn't know him well but were there things you could see that were factors in the kids? we think about grit or is it random? >> he had a father who just pushed him and pushed him. he had intrensic pride and was smart and curious but he had a father who is pushing him. she is here tonight, the student when i am in most awe is a young woman who was in foster care and kids in foster care get a degree at a rate of 2%. she persisted and has a degree from a four-year college. that is extraordinary. >> my name is mary and i worked with ed for that one year. i want to say i read things in the post and people giving him abuse he was one of the hardest work teachers i ever met. his len lessons were amazing. it was just a really difficult school. i think if he would have stuck with it or been in a different environment he would have been one of the best teachers. you can say what you want about his book but he cares and she showed he care every day up until the end. a lot of kids responded maybe not to him but they told me and they would tell me things about mr. boland. i think he thinks he was a failure but i don't think he was a failure. [applause] >> thank you. i was in the public school system for the whole 30 years teaching history. >> wow. >> assistant principal and now i am the dean of the teacher institution and now i went back to work. i agree with a lot of things you say. in fact, i have a similar experience when i first started. junior high school, seventh grade. i had a little old lady next to me in another room. there is bedlem all over the place and she walks into the room and you hear the pin drop. i wanted to quit after the first year because i said what does she have that i don't have? but i stuck with it. and i agree if you would have stuck with it i am sure you would have been very effective. but my point is having been on the inside now in terms of your experiences with not only the school system but the teacher training that you got if you had the power -- because i have not seen many changes since i started but going on the treadmill and going around the achievement gap and all of that. it is great for the poverty rates to go down is a long term proposition. having been on the inside, if you had to make changes in the teacher training or school system, what would you do? >> within teacher training i wish i spent almost all of my hours directly observing or watching on videos master teachers. we had chalk and textbook like you do in regular school. there were no living breathing examples. they would say you need to spend 150 hours observing teachers. many would say go find them. well, you know, i went out there and found some really good, medium and terrible teachers. why isn't anyone showing me a master teacher? why isn't anyone role playing what happens when the student climbs on the desk? instead of giving me the theory of development. i do think that training should be more experential and viewing best practices. i do have to say that i think many of the charter schools are embracing practices that are you know, the longer school day, the longer school year, and supplement activities like saturday schools. i think they are wonderful laboratories where we can test some of these innovations. >> thank everybody for coming. one last question. >> do you think it would be helpful if there was more emphasis on discipline. i taught for 19 years for the board of education. i started in 1991 and left in 2012. the time i was there, what i saw was when i started there was more emphasis on classroom discipline and as the years evolved i found there was less emphasis. that is when i think things went to hell. i remember doing a contract for my class and the assistant principal said you can not do this anymore and i said why not and because it said if students were evicted twice they would be kicked out of the class. those techniques were working: eventually i was told you cannot do this anymore and a year later the kids were saying you cannot do that. i think we should go back to the old n days and forget the kids have issues and problems. and now talking about the number of black and hispanic males that are suspended from school and their rates have the match the rates of white students is crazy. we need to forget the non-sense and go back to the discipline of the old days. >> thank you, everybody. i think

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