By Ed Oliver 

Andre John, the selfless youth worker who was honored last year as a hero by the Boston Celtics and who received glowing write-ups from the Boston Globe and Massachusetts News, says he sees serious problems in the schools he visits.

"Teachers are afraid of kids in school now, even the middle school," says John to Massachusetts News.

He is able to observe conditions inside Dorchester and Roxbury schools on his daily rounds as a youth mentor, and what he sees disturbs him.

He describes daily occurrences such as: kids wandering the halls, fire alarms that are routinely pulled, kids fighting or even being pistol-whipped right in front of the office, kids leaving the school and coming back at will, thievery taking place. "I think the security guards are praying that some of the kids leave school," he added.

"I walk by a classroom to visit the kids I work with and it’s shocking," he says. "There is a group of about five guys sitting in the back of the room having their own little conversation while the teacher is talking. The teacher doesn’t stop or dare say something. He just keeps going with the lesson.

"When I was in these same schools about twenty years ago, teachers came in early and stayed later. Kids could get the extra help that they need. That doesn’t happen much anymore. Teachers are afraid of kids because the kids are bigger. They’re afraid of what they might do. Kids who are on probation after being locked up in DYS get thrown back into regular school, and they know they can disrupt classes all they want," he says.

Separate the Troublemakers

He advocates removing the problem students from the general school population and also keeping the boys and girls who have problems separated from one another. He estimates it is 10% of the students who disrupt it for everybody else. "It only takes one kid to pull a fire alarm and disrupt the whole school," he says. "They just don’t care. They have no conscience. They don’t think of anyone else."

John runs the after-school program at the Ella J. Baker House in Dorchester. A powerfully built man, he commands respect from the kids he works with and has been recognized for his caring commitment to them beyond the call of duty. He says that girls now are also a problem behaviorally. 

He says some kids he sees are illiterate but receive "social promotion" so teachers do not have to deal with them anymore. He does not blame the teachers who, he says, are willing to teach, but they need our support in dealing with the current situation . "What can the teachers do? They say, ‘Do I keep this kid back? Then I have to deal with him again next year and can’t teach everybody else.’"

John said the school is limited as far as the discipline they can mete out. He says they eventually kick out the incorrigible ones after compiling a long record on them. He thinks some schools are going to be in trouble when the MCAS requirements kick-in for graduation. "Some schools aren’t ready for it. Again, you can’t blame the teachers. My big thing is we have to support them now." 

How can we support them? "By segregating the bad apples, which would allow the teachers to teach and the other students to learn again." As far as the bad apples, John says he has worked with enough of them to understand that a lot of them respond to someone being on them 24 hours a day.

"We kicked the idea around, we would be willing to take them if we had the funding and the space," he said about the Baker House. "Until that happens, the kids who are on the fence will follow the bad kids in school thinking they can get away with it." 

John says in the late seventies and early eighties when he attended the same schools, teachers still knew the parents and the students. He says now they don’t know the parents or even all of the students in their class out of fear or because the student comes and goes. He remembers more respect for the teacher back then also. What has changed? "Attitudes," he answered, "and fear."

"It used to be an embarrassment when you went to court, now it’s a playground," he continued. The kids say about court, "I get to hang out all day. I don’t have to go to school. I see all my friends, I’m pretty cool, pretty tough because I’m in court. I can’t wait to tell everybody in school tomorrow that I was in court and didn’t get locked up. I’m a pretty bad man."

"Some of the kids you can’t get through to. They really have to see that it’s not cool, that there are consequences," he said.