BY RONJAY BEASLEY, TAJAE SMITH, AND THE YOUTH OF MADISON PARK HIGH SCHOOL

Following student-led protests outside Madison Park High School at the start of fall semester, the press paid notable attention to the disorganized state of Boston’s public vocational institute. Though not sufficiently critical of school administrators who failed to hire enough teachers at the beginning of this year, outlets from the Boston Globe to broadcast news programs dutifully covered those who were impacted, from teenagers to teachers. At the same time, there seemed an inappropriate lack of input from actual young people. That considered, and working under the assumption that troubles did not end at Madison Park when the TV cameras left, DigBoston partnered with two students, connected through a mutual acquaintance, to illustrate the real story. The following narrative is an abridged oral history of the first semester of 2014, compiled and edited from our interviews with them and theirs with more than a dozen peers—mostly sophomores and juniors, both male and female—who were willing to share their experiences …

I’m going to be real with you. The couple few weeks when we first started school, they didn’t have schedules. They had all summer for us to get ready, and then we come here, and they have nothing. There were no classes to go to …

A few weeks later, our schedules weren’t even put together right. I didn’t even know what to do with myself. We had a protest about it, and that was pretty successful, but after that they were refusing to give some of us schedules, even after other kids had theirs. It was like day one all over again—stuck in Cardinal Hall all day without anything to do …

It pissed everybody off. People are thinking, “Why are you doing this to us if you want the best for this school?” They didn’t really care about us. They just figured out who was getting paid, and who was going to have a spot here …

We wandered all over the building. With the schedules they gave to people from the news, they just wanted us to shut up about protesting. We were just making a big deal out of it, and they just wanted to give us something so we would stay calm …

At Madison, the trades are just a front. The teachers are more than that—they teach you to survive, like if you’re not going to go out there and be able to go to college. They teach you how to get up, get out there, get a job, and not focus on other stuff—not just jump into the gangs because that’s the easy thing to do …

 
The trades take away things like Spanish class and other things most of us just don’t want to do—classes we would just skip anyway. This way we can have a vocation, and at least there’s a chance we’ll learn about something we want to do …

A lot of the vocational teachers are great but all these teachers we knew for years—now they’re just gone. It wasn’t the vocational teachers who left—it was the academic teachers. I guess they can’t replace the vocational teachers so easy …

The first day, I went in a class they told me to go to, and the substitute didn’t know what she was doing. We have teachers at the school who aren’t even educated to teach us the actual curriculum. It was a bunch of bullcrap what they gave us—they threw us under the table while they tried to figure out what teachers they could put in the school …

The teachers were fun. Now I’m being taught by people who usually teach college but they’re here now to teach us, and a lot of them are afraid of the students. Some students are known for yelling at teachers, and when you watch some of the teachers who have been here, they don’t back down. These new teachers though, they will back down fast, and that’s not good …

Sometimes it feels like we’re being cheated out of our education. Like everything that we’re supposed to do—what we wanted to do … I don’t even know … it’s just sad that the school hasn’t even been committed to the students and done what they’re supposed to do …

The rumor is that the school’s getting shut down in three years, but the junior and senior class doesn’t talk a lot about that, because we don’t think it’s going to affect us … I have a lot of friends at other schools, but the only time we really talk about school is when something serious happens, like a fight …

I think things are starting to get a little better. First semester was slow because we got a late start and teachers were trying to catch up because we missed so much … After the protests and losing the last headmaster, that was all the energy some people had … All three of my years, the principal left or was made to leave for some reason, so I’m just waiting for that …

It’s not really a big deal now. We adapt to survive. We take it like it is, and say, “That’s school. That’s what school is like.” I guess some people would transfer if they had to, but like we said, you adapt, and you survive.

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