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August 17, 2006
Ric Klass has had many careers'astronautical engineer, investment banker, professor and movie director, to name just a few'but the focus of his new book, 'Man Overboard,' is his time as an inner-city mathematics teacher.
In 2003, when he was 57, Klass left his job as an investment banker in Greenwich, Connecticut, to begin teaching disadvantaged youths in the Bronx. He would remain there for two years, teaching first at a public high school and later at a Gates Foundation-sponsored school specifically for underachievers''a trailer park in south Bronx,' Klass called it.
He will discuss the book that came out of that experience next Thursday evening, August 24, at Village Books on Swarthmore.
During a telephone interview, Klass described how he first became interested in teaching inner-city teenagers.
'About 15 years ago, I'd tutored a disadvantaged Hispanic boy who woke up in his junior year and decided he wanted to go to college,' Klass said. 'But he hadn't been doing well; he was actually a special-education student.
'He was sort of like a Rip Van Winkle,' he added.
'And so for the next two years I tutored him, and he ended up getting a math scholarship to the State University of New York.'
This success would later inspire Klass to drop his career as an investment banker and take up teaching full-time. But he was unprepared for what he found.
'I set out not to produce a book about the Bronx, but really to write about how someone would come to have so many careers,' Klass said. 'But the longer I was there, the more it became less about me and more about [the kids].
'I ended up feeling very strongly about the conditions and lives and educations of these kids.
'In many ways, I think my book will not be considered politically correct,' Klass predicted. 'The focus of the media is on the physical facilities of the schools, the teachers and the administrators. But at the end of the day it isn't the teachers or the administrators or how nice the school is'it doesn't matter if there is carpeting or not'these kids really are suffering from a terrible disadvantage in their home life.'
The home life of most of the children he taught, Klass said, was deeply disturbed. At parent-teacher day, only 25 percent of his students were represented, and a large percentage of those were older siblings.
'One 16-year-old kid I had was supporting his family; he was very talented, but very angry, and I can't blame him,' Klass said.
'We got to be very friendly'I convinced him on a one-on-one basis out of class that I was there to help'and at one point he said, 'Mr. Klass, you don't know what life is like for a nigger like me.'
'He was a smart kid, but he couldn't even begin to focus on school.'
Klass was also critical of many existing grants and programs, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which primarily creates new, smaller schools. Instead, he said that the answer lies in smaller class sizes and a greater teacher-to-student ratio.
'You have the educational theorists saying these things about smaller schools, but the teachers are talking about smaller classes,' he said. 'I'm not sure that Mr. Gates has ever asked teachers what they think.'
Klass freely admits that, 'right now,' the results from these smaller schools look good. But the reason for this, he says, is less reassuring.
'To get into these schools, the kids needed to apply with their parents,' Klass explained. 'These are the kids who want to learn. All that [these schools] have really done is siphoned off the more interested and motivated kids and parents.'
Emphasizing the efficacy of smaller classes, Klass spoke about his experience teaching a small group of special-education students during his second semester in the Bronx.
'I was scared to death,' he said. 'I had no training, and I didn't know what to expect. But they were possibly the best students I've had since becoming a teacher.
'It was a small class'six kids'and they sat down and did great and as a result, four of them ended up getting sprung out of special education. They were smart kids, and I imagine they had just gotten overlooked.'
In 2005, finishing his book, Klass took a job teaching affluent teenagers at a preparatory school in Manhattan. Some of his most striking commentary came from this time.
'What was fascinating wasn't the differences between these kids and the kids in the Bronx, but the similarities,' he said. 'The kids were identical; their language was different. There weren't as many four-letter words, but the attitude was the same. The difference was that [the affluent kids] were afraid of their parents. They know they're going to college; it's a non-issue for them, and they're right. They're on a sailboat to some measure of personal success.'
While Klass plans to continue teaching math in Manhattan this upcoming year, he says he would not consider returning to the Bronx.
'At the end of the day, it wasn't teaching math'it was social work,' Klass said.
'When you're working with young people, there's always an element of that. I don't mind if it's 20-percent social work and 80-percent teaching, but in the inner cities, it's the opposite.
'The most frustrating part is the kids who really had talent, but who didn't do well. You really want to cry. At my private school, they would have been honor students.'
Klass will sign copies of his book and speak about his experiences at 7:30 p.m. next Thursday. Village Books is located at 1049 Swarthmore Ave.
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