Diane Williams is drilling her developmental English class on basic methods for winning an argument: Give a factual reason, refer to an authority, cite a specific example, predict the positive consequences of your argument or the negative consequences of the opposition. The walls at DeVry Institute of Technology are thin; when she pauses to allow students time for written exercises the room fills with the steady beat of chalk pounding on the blackboard in an adjacent classroom and then a gravelly, instructive voice asking which is warmer, 20 degrees Fahrenheit or Celsius.
She doesn’t verbalize any of this. She collects yesterday’s homework, assigns tomorrow’s, reminds students to prepare for the quiz on Tuesday, hangs around after class to answer questions.
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“Yes,” she later reflects, ensconced in a conference room. “I try for a sense of unity and bonding. I want students to connect with each other. But I’m much more subdued in the classroom than I used to be,” she adds, explaining that she is still in recovery from her last job, teaching at a west-side adult learning center. There she made the mistake of assuming the students were on her side. She didn’t address the opposition.
“I took their hostility personally,” she says. “Those [on the faculty] who cared the most were hurt the most.”
Growing up, she had to deal with gangs and make choices, and again she credits her grandmother for helping her make the right ones. “It was not as though I liked going to school,” she says. “But I liked reading and writing. I always got an A or B in any subject that involved reading.”
“I prefer inner-city teaching,” she says. “I grew up on the west side and I know the value of an education. Some people have all the advantages. I want to show inner-city students that when they get advantages they need to make use of them.”
Unlike her protagonist, Williams still lives with her family in a west-side neighborhood so dangerous, she likes to joke, that friends refuse to stop their cars when they give her a ride home. “They just sloooooow down and throw me out and the drug dealers walk on top of me while I’m lying on the pavement.”
