By Cheo Tyehimba

Currently, there are an estimated 8,652 Title 1 schools nationwide, according to state reports, that are operating below US Dept. of Education standards and California ranks near the top with the most schools failing to make the grade. A few months ago, I spent several weeks as a substitute teacher for a first-grade class at one such school, Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary, in West Oakland. I've been involved in mentoring and youth programs for a very long time but nothing could have prepared me for my first day in class. Perhaps I've been naïve. Or just removed from the front lines for awhile because the class I inherited at Martin Luther King Elementary really tested me in new and different ways.

Take for example, Kevin, a cute, slightly chubby 6 year-old boy. He nearly broke my heart when, as I knelt beside him holding up two fingers on both hands and asked him to give me the answer he replied: "seven." I looked into Kevin's wide, innocent eyes and helped him figure it out. Later, someone told me Kevin was a "special needs" child. This became apparent after I met his mother, who had all the signs of someone recovering from substance abuse. Soon it became obvious that nearly every child in the class had special needs.

Eight years old and big for her age, Marcia was able to do the work but dominated, teased and constantly hit her classmates. Sabrina, another child who had been held back, came to school every day in clothes that were too tight because hergrandmother couldn't afford new clothes for her. Sabrina was very precocious and acted in ways that suggested she'd been a victim of sexual abuse. However, her "grown-up" posture always ended abruptly when things didn't go her way. She would holler at the top of her voice, fall on the floor, throw a tantrum and suck her thumb.

When the principal introduced me to Akil, a lazy-eyed 6 year-old, I knew I'd been gone too long. I'll never forget him. Every morning, Akil came to school with a dirty face and a runny nose. Everything about him suggested that he had no one at home who loved him, no one who nurtured him. This idea was supported when I was told he was one of six children living at home and that he had simply decided to stop talking. "That's Akil," said the principal. "He doesn't speak. It's not that he's mute or anything. He just stopped speaking. No one has heard him since last year." What really hit me in the gut was that Akil's situation was no big deal to his family. "His mother says he speaks at home and it's not a problem," said the principal. "So we just deal with it as best we can."

Dealing with it meant constantly reprimanding Akil for acting out. He may have stopped talking but his often-violent acts towards other children were his way of screaming for attention, for help. He would spit at other children. He ran around the room, knocked books off the shelf, yanked television cords, wrote on the chalkboard, and threw things at other children and hit them constantly. I knew he was only doing what had been done to him by adults but dealing with him was impossible.

It became so bad that I couldn't stand in front of the class and give a lesson without Akil becoming antagonistic. Talking to him had absolutely no effect. One day, as he and another student began to fight, I had to literally carry him out of the classroom and down the hall to the principal's office, where he would typically sit alone for awhile then be released. And of course, he did all this without uttering so much as one word. During the time I taught the class there was never a counselor available to take Akil out of class and talk to him.

It was absolutely the hardest job I've ever had. After the first week, I was frustrated, tired and nerve-racked. The fact that I'd co-authored a book in 1994 called "The Ghetto Solution," which held as its premise that a people affected by generations of poverty, emotional, and psychological arrest, can only change their lives by changing the way they think, feel and act about themselves, their environment and their circumstances, was now a distant memory.

What happened to my long-honored patience? What happened to what I'd learned about non-violent conflict resolution and mediating through psychological and therapeutic efforts? I left defeated and questioned why I ever thought I could make a difference. At home, I picked up the book and began to reread some passages. It had made an important impact on countless lives and supported a 12-year mentoring program called "Simba." It was all about breaking the cycle, seeing through the "matrix" of how we have all been programmed to see our lives and our circumstances.

The next day I saw and met some of the children's parents. Some of them were obviously in trouble. Drugs, unemployment, poor living conditions and all the usual suspects of what I call an "unnatural life" life hounded them. That's when it all came back to me. I began to see the children for what they were: symptoms. All of the elements of their negative behavior, all of the hitting, the teasing, the profanity, the not speaking, etc. were analogous to a sick person with coughs, sore throats, aches and abscesses. As I began to see each child as a "symptom" of a far greater malady my patience level was restored. So many of our young children are not responsible for the negative behavior they learned from their parents. This was the consistent theme I saw played out in every classroom where I taught.

It wasn't a new revelation but I had been removed, by occupation, from the day-to-day soul-crushing circumstances that many of our children and their parents have to struggle with in their lives. Many parents at MLK were struggling against enormous odds to make something out of their lives, rise above their bleak educational and employment opportunities and put an end to cycles of pain. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary is a typical example of an under-funded, poorly performing school and schools like this are rampant across America, from Oakland to Philadelphia to New York.

BlogON: What can we do to improve the public education system in America? WhatchuTHINK?