By the end of my second teaching year, I’d gone from being the biggest boob on campus to one most popular with students and peers. I found my rapid rise in status enjoyable, but illusory as far as being a skilled teacher went, and I was absolutely clueless about this, and many other things as well. Much of my popularity stemmed from my use of a token economy.
Great teacher or not, one of the biggest relationship changes brought about by my first classroom success was with supervisors. After my first principal retired, Assistant Principal Danny Smith became principal and asked me if I’d be interested in developing a token program for school-wide application. Flattered and excited, I went to work almost immediately.
The product of my efforts became know as the Privilege Card System. I directed it until I left Grand Caillou at the end of my sixth year. The program not only continued for many years afterwards, but also spread to other district schools, how many I don’t remember. It also catapulted me to stardom in the district for a number of reasons, some actually good and others purely political, the latter I didn’t perceive until I was in a room full of what I once called “capitalistic pigs” who assembled in Baton Rouge to honor me with a testimonial dinner and award for my token program. On my way home from the award ceremony, I nearly threw the plaque out of my car window because I felt so bad about it upon realizing the underlying motivation of many who saluted me. I also saw my first formal school board commendation in a very different light. This takes some explaining, so let’s go there next.
I designed the system to accomplish a number of different goals. One was to eliminate as much as possible both corporal punishment and punitive writing assignments. Secondly, I wanted to motivate and encourage behavior that would lead to academic success in the near future and instill lasting habits nearly all agree lead to later success in life. We often call this process “socialization” and public schools exist to a large degree to teach what society believes to be good for the person and country. Lastly, I did want to teach an American reality, and that’s the rich get a far better deal in life than the poor, and consequently it’s a good idea to work hard to be able to enjoy many rewards at the top of the heap. My core lesson: the harder you work and the better you treat others around you, the richer you’ll get and the better life becomes.
Of course, much of this system on the surface is precisely what capitalists preach to the masses, but there’s a huge flaw in this logic and deep unfairness, and that’s capitalism greatly favors and rewards the more intelligent over the lesser abled. While we parrot “all are created equal” this just isn’t true. In America, if you’re born with an 80 IQ you are almost destined to a meager existence, no matter how hard you work and how noble of a life you lead, unless you have other gifts in areas like sports or entertainment. I found then, and still find now, much of our economic system contrary to Christ teaching, “Do unto the least of you as you would do unto me.”
In my program design, native ability did not limit anyone. Effort and conscientious behavior paid off equally for everyone. For example, we paid mostly for what teachers call “time on task” and this truly did equalize the system for nearly all participants. In other words, I paid for the effort, not the product. When I conducted workshops with teachers on program application, I stressed equalizing for different abilities and nearly all understood what we were doing and employed the program rewards fairly and ethically with their own students. One reason I know this worked fairly for all is that our special education students were just as successful in reaching the top of our system as were regular and advanced students.
My motivation between year two and three was vastly different. In the beginning of my teaching life, I just wanted to survive. By nature, when facing a flight or fight situation, I generally choose the latter and there have been plenty of times when this was definitely a mistake if not plain stupid. With teaching though, it wasn’t, so instead of running from a tough teaching environment as many do, I focused on gaining at least moderate cooperation from my students.
Entering my third year, I’d grown to a point where my primary consideration was finding better ways to help a lot of kids who desperately needed it. I was shocked by what I saw every day and thought the best way out of poverty involved education. I also now recognized a huge number of my pupils were not convinced “book learning” had much value, a common problem for many from impoverished backgrounds where a formal education is an unknown value. This problem was greatly aggravated in Grand Caillou by an ability to make a living in the seafood industry without even being able to read or write. But even at best, commercial fishing is a precarious situation without any guarantees. I was deeply concerned about kids not having the barest of necessities, much less things I grew up expecting without effort.
“If only they’d learn to budget,” my first principal explained after he “loaned” a kid $20 he knew was a gift. “Feast of famine” fits here perfectly.
When conditions were right for plentiful catches, money poured into Grand Caillou and times were good. When the seafood harvest was poor, and this was quite often, many families descended into poverty and became unable to pay the utility bill. The new big screen TV and air conditioner went quiet and often sold for pennies on the dollar to buy groceries. The new car or truck bought on time payments was soon repossessed and life became a struggle just to survive.
Saving for emergencies and budgeting frequently didn’t happen, and It became obvious to anyone with a middleclass background that a lot needed to be learned about managing well in our economic system. I’d also observed and been told that manmade destruction of habitat further imperiled natural resources essential to fish, shrimp and other wildlife. I thought a lot about what would happen if the seafood industry was no longer a viable resource. What were these people going to do then?
I also faced other cultural challenges that to this day keep me searching for answers where there may be none and also pondering my own ethics. It’s not that I ever did anything deliberately to cause harm, but questions still swirl about today just how much we as a society should attempt to direct any individual’s choices and lifestyles.
The Houmas culture was one I’d never contacted previously and since moving away have yet to see in duplication in the same way, although there are a lot of common points often listed under titles like “culture of poverty,” but poverty was only one part of a very complex picture. Centuries of tradition were in play as well.
Eventually, I grew to at least partially understand and greatly appreciate Native American culture as reflected by my students and their parents who were also my close neighbors. I saw much I found admirable. For one of many positive traits, I’ve never known a group of people who were so free of prejudice about almost everything, from race to gender identity. These just were not issues in this community. I also knew early that some Houmas cultural traits just didn’t work well in modern Anglo society, but also saw much in modern society that wasn’t ideal either and just wrong.
For another positive culture example, I watched Houmas kids fishing under conditions that were close to a sure catch each time a hook or net hit the water. When it’s good, Louisiana fishing is absolutely amazing. People down here don’t respond as my Yankee friends do to questions about fishing success by saying how many fish were caught. Instead I often heard success measured in Louisiana by ice chests full of fish, such as “We caught a chest and a half.” There were just too many fish to count individually, a bounty I repeatedly experienced myself when catching speckled trout two at a time on a double hooked rig.
What I found most surprising, once the Houmas kids caught what they wanted and/or could give to others, I observed multiple times they stopped fishing and went on to other activities. By contrast, American history is full of examples where white people take as much as they can get as quickly as possible and often waste such abundance while mired in greed. Greed was a problem I rarely encountered in Grand Caillou and sharing almost always expected and widely practiced.
Now some might think walking away from a free and commercially valuable commodity like good fish demonstrates a lack of ambition and entrepreneurship, but I viewed taking only all you needed as being a good steward of God’s bounty. This good stewardship was not universally applied, however, and must add the Houmas kids I frequently had in close association as a teacher and coach were litterbugs of the highest order. Their quick and callous garbage disposal methods did much to damage the environment, and the Grand Caillou and Dulac communities were full of rubbish of all sorts, from broken TVs to junk cars.
In deep thought about my new community and the proliferation of trash, it occurred to me that much could be the product of a culture that survived for centuries in an environment where everything was biodegradable or already part of nature. Plastics and metal didn’t exist. If you didn’t want something, you just pitched it and the trash soon went back to nature. Many of my kids thought throwing something away indiscriminately wasn’t bad or wrong, and I can cite an excellent example of the cultural difference.
After an athletic practice in Houma, I transported a group of my kids back to Dulac. After hard workouts, I often treated the kids to at least a bag of chips and a soda, certainly not health food but greatly appreciated.
When I pulled up in front of the Dulac Community Center with my young athletes, I heard one say, “Hey, don’t leave your trash in Mr. Brown’s car.” Acting on what they thought was their best polite behavior, the kids carefully collected the empty cans and bags, and promptly threw it all in the ditch in front of the community center.
Finally, so far as Card System goals went, I was not yet 30 and still very much an idealist. I thought I could correct or at least greatly alleviate all the wrongs and support the right if I just tried hard enough and thought creatively. I didn’t even know the word “hubris” but was deeply infected. Eventually, I found, like any halfway intelligent person, it is indeed possible to put every ounce of talent and effort into correcting a given situation and not make the slightest change, something I finally learned after years of working in an urban alternative high school. In the beginnings of my social swamp crusades though, I saw myself as fighting the good fight, and didn’t know when Don Quixote just charged another windmill.