Social Studies, High School

Abstract

I began teaching at McClymonds High School in Oakland, California, in 1968. McClymonds is the only regular high school in west Oakland, historically one of the poorest areas in all of Oakland. Immigrants from eastern and southern Europe and China lived in the area before blacks moved in during World War II. During my fifteen years there I’ve taught about ten whites, ten Asians, and ten Latinos. The rest have all been blacks, and I’m white. We’ve never had any racial disturbances at Mack. Even during the worst days of the late sixties and early seventies, the students were peaceful. The school’s ethnic homogeneity and relative small size, 750 to 1,000 students, have kept things relatively placid. According to district records, about 70 percent of the students’ families are on some sort of welfare. In 1979 one of the English teachers at McClymonds came back in the fall with high praise for the Bay Area Writing Project. She never described what went on, but would always coo and say that BAWP was “marvelous.” That year I attended a workshop conducted by Mary K. Healy, one of the associate directors of BAWP for the California Council for the Social Studies. Her presentation was indeed marvelous, and I signed up for the BAWP summer session at Berkeley that year. I’ve been a BAWPer ever since. Later the entire social science department at Mack participated. I regard this as a sign of the department’s recognition of the need to teach more writing. Our school administration vigorously supports our efforts to introduce more writing into our courses. When I began teaching at Mack I had high hopes that all my students would become scholars entering four-year institutions so that they could become leaders in the struggle for black liberation. Then I found that some of my students didn't know where the Pacific Ocean was in relation to Oakland. One boy in a college prep class in U.S. history answered a question on the causes of the Civil War by writing, “Slavery it bad. I don't like it. It cause the war.” This was his answer on an hour-long test.