Another Kind of “Training School” by Lisa Silverman

Another Kind of "Training School"

    I am a (white) feminist and anti-racist who lives in Penn Hills, a suburban community outside of Pittsburgh that is 37% Black, and I work in the neighboring Woodland Hills School District serving predominantly Black students. The vitality of my classroom depends on many things, but one essential tenet is including Black literary voices in my classroom. That’s why contemporary works like Camille Acker’s short story collection Training School for Negro Girls are so important: for Black students, they give children agency and a positive view of their culture in the curriculum; for white teachers and other students, the stories give us a window to see worlds we may not know otherwise. Presumably, all of us “achieve full participation in society” by exploring such rich texts in the classroom.

I suggested Acker’s book to the WPCTE during a book club Zoom for This Book Is Anti-Racist. After unpacking the concept of systemic racism in that book, it naturally follows that educators interrogate their role(s) in perpetuating these systems and acknowledge their responsibility to disrupt anti-Black racism in their classrooms. Fortunately, the PA Core Standards for ELA require that we introduce students to a variety of literary perspectives in the classroom, and short stories like Acker’s can aid us in exploring the Black experience.

Last month, Ms. Acker graciously met with a small group of WPCTE members via Zoom and discussed her short stories, her creative process, Washington D.C., and Black womanhood. Acker also read “Everything She Wants” from her book--a bittersweet story about a young girl’s experience with her mother’s mental illness. Her stories often meet at the intersection of race, class, and gender, and all these layers and nuance make them interesting and provocative tales. 

At the beginning of last school year, my seniors read “Who We Are.”  In the story, a group of young girls rebels against school and society by cutting class and intimidating everyone who unluckily crosses paths with them. Although the girls seem “wild” (the story climaxes with the teens intimidating an old woman on the Metro), there is agency in their insubordination. My students resoundingly described them as “bad,” but they also recognized their need for power in a world where it is rarely afforded them. 

During our Zoom with her, Acker described to us a time when she, too, was the “bad” girl at school, cutting classes and exploring the world on her own terms. Many personal experiences have influenced her work, but at the heart of all of these stories is a great empathy for her characters and a disdain for class elitism. She brings dignity to characters who are typically marginalized by the hegemony, like TSA agent Bess in her story “All the Things You’ll Never Do.” Acker drew her inspiration for the character in an airport. She was struck by the fact that so many of these TSA agents, who are underpaid and yet charged with the great responsibility of keeping everyone safe, have often never flown on planes themselves. 

Acker’s characters are all so complex that they will naturally elicit ambivalence from readers. One such story is “Final Draft of College Essay,” which I used as one of three model texts for teaching students how to write the college application essay. Acker admitted that protagonist Kara N. Tompkins would likely not get into college with her essay, and I admitted that I used it as a model for what not to do in the students’ essays!  In my class, we deconstructed what the protagonist did wrong in her essay but also what Acker did right with characterization.  Students had strong responses to Kara. Some loved her vulnerable interiority and sympathized with her struggle to navigate through high school, others reviled Kara for her social ineptitude and inability to maintain her focus in the essay, and some were somewhere in between. Whatever the students’ response, it was a good exercise in text dependent analysis for students to defend their disparate views of the protagonist.

One cannot underestimate the importance of teachers reading and using a book like Camille Acker’s Training School in the classroom, particularly in an age of social justice and Black Lives Matter.  While I have subscribed to a paradigm of culturally relevant pedagogy my entire 27-year career, I know that many others are new to this work.  An astounding 94% of public school teachers in Pennsylvania are white.  The racial segregation in Allegheny County is also so rigid and prevalent that in many ways, western Pennsylvanians of any race are not likely to experience any other cultures except their own.  As a result, teachers and students in predominantly white districts and communities may seldom interact  with Black people or culture--and never in sustained and nuanced ways. Thus, Acker’s book is arguably a “training school” for teachers—whether they teach in racially diverse schools or not—to experience the Black community vicariously through a Black lens. It is also an invaluable tool to expose all students to authentic, multi-faceted Black characters. 

Currently, Acker is working on another book of short stories and a novel, but for creative reasons, she would not divulge the content with us. We are grateful for her visit and anticipate more fresh perspectives in her writing, and of course, more opportunities to grow as teachers and learners.

Lisa Silverman is English department chair at Woodland Hills High School and currently teaches Creative Writing I & II, English 12 Honors, and AP Literature & Composition. She also facilitates an anti-racism club for students 9-12 and is a steadfast supporter of equity in public schools. She can be reached at silvli@whsd.net.