Don’t Be Batman

My favorite superhero is a failure.

Ever since I was a kid my favorite superhero has been Batman: I liked that he had a dark side, a violent past, and that he was just a normal man with extraordinary capabilities. But, most of all I was drawn to his willingness to give back through kicking faceless henchmens’ asses—a rare form of public service.

Currently, I’m reading Frank Miller’s “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.” It’s a grim Batman graphic novel in which Batman is in his early 60s and starts the comic not having put on the suit for quite some time. Gotham city starts falling deeper and deeper into disarray without the fabled Batman to save them. Many in the city believe he’s just a myth while others debate if he’s a criminal or hero. Spoiler alert: Batman puts the suit back on, but in my opinion that’s Batman’s entire problem and more importantly the primary reason why Gotham always seems to be a shithole.

As I was reading this Batman comic and thinking about the inevitable failure of my hero to ever truly bring about change in Gotham I thought about my job in urban education. I AM BATMAN! No, no just kidding—but, I haven’t been far from thinking that thought. Let me explain…

What we see in urban education, especially in the charter movement, is younger educators who come in with a blinding fire and fury, but then they quickly burn out and leave the work or the school. They are Batmen:  they come in to urban schools with the conviction that they are capable of making a life-altering change in the lives of their students in a very short period of time. Like Bruce Wayne, many of these educators come from more privilege than their students (I fall into this category). Often, either consciously or not, these young educators believe their relative privilege is enough to “save” the communities they work in. Just like Batman believes he can use his unrivaled opportunities and talents to “save” all of Gotham.

This mindset can be destructive. When you engage with those you work with through the lens of giver and receiver you’re blinded to the inherent capabilities of those you think you are helping. Thus, you are unable to form true, meaningful relationships which are essential to the success of our work. This mindset often perpetuates the social, racial, economic, and class based historical injustices that created a gap in privilege in the first place.

Educators who are Batmen have this belief system cultivated by others—many times, people who are recruiting our Batmen for their teaching position. The cultivators of the Batman belief system are the Commissioner Gordon’s of the world. Just as Commissioner Gordon pulls on Bruce Wayne’s heartstrings by putting the bat signal up in the sky, so too do the cultivators of the Batman belief system in education. They do this by nudging young educators into this savior mindset. Instead of putting a bat signal in the air they use the blight of the students in urban schools as poverty posters to invest educators in working in these areas. The combination of influencers telling our Batmen that they can save their students through hard work and the belief by most of these educators that they have these capabilities leads to our Batman belief system.

The problem is that Batmen don’t survive in urban schools. A tough pill to swallow is that you aren’t going to change the world in a lesson, week, or school year, and if you come in with the mindset that you can, then you will surely take off the Bat-suit and return to Wayne Manor defeated. Having a Batman mindset will put walls between you, your students, and their families.

Additionally, you will constantly feel inadequate. When you are told you can make transformational change in a short period of time and then you see that you aren’t you are bound to feel like a failure. This feeling of not being enough for your students will erode at you and eventually become a cyclical pain where you blame yourself, your students, or the community for the reality not meeting the expectations.

What we need are not Batmen but Harvey Dents. In perhaps the most enlightening moment of any Batman franchise is in the movie, “The Dark Knight Rises.” In this movie Batman is ready to hang up his cape because there’s a man who can enact more widespread change, Harvey Dent. Harvey Dent is less sexy and flashy than Batman; he isn’t running up and throwing bat shaped daggers at his political opponents. But, Batman in the movie realizes that’s just what Gotham needs—someone trying to enact long-term systemic change over time. Now, the Harvey Dent analogy isn’t perfect—he does become Two-Face and tries to destroy all of Gotham (not what I’m recommending), but his potential as an agent of change before this transformation holds true in this analogy.

In urban education what creates lasting change is a lasting commitment. The best educators I’ve seen in urban schools have been those who make the difficult, right decision day after day. Often, this decision is not miraculous and it certainly won’t get you on TV (or make you the star of a comic book series). These decisions are small and tedious. It’s the decision to ask a student “What’s wrong?” when they act up instead of telling them “You’re wrong.” It’s staying after school late to tutor a student on that one algebra problem that they can’t seem to grasp. It’s having all your students leave the classroom, line up, and enter again when they come in rowdy. It’s a pat on the back and warm smile when you notice a student is having a bad day. None of these acts will create change immediately, but over time they add up, and when you have a community of educators in a school acting similarly it can cultivate and empower students whose light was always there but just needed illumination.

Every Batman comic and movie starts the same: Gotham is back in turmoil and Batman needs to save them. But, as a scholar of this comic book centerpiece I’ve learned that Gotham’s problem is Batman. When others have less that doesn’t mean they are less. A rose seed without water doesn’t extinguish its potential to be a rose…it just needs a fair shot at exposing its beauty. Bruce Wayne would have been wise to dispense his talents and opportunities through cultivating the seeds that lay dormant in Gotham. When Batman thinks that he is the answer to all the city’s problems Gotham ends up worse off than it started, and Batman is in the same predicament he perpetually finds himself in: should I stop being Batman?

I’m not above viewing myself as a Batman; I’ve certainly done it before especially when I was a younger educator. In Batman comics his dark side is composed of the trauma of watching his parents die and the taming of his feelings of vengeance he’s constantly fighting against. But, I think in many contexts Batman’s dark side is his ego. I find this is often true of myself as well. I know that if I want to constantly grow as an educator I have to put my ego aside and clear the road for more wise decisions. Ego makes the world about you, but when you’re in education, and moving through life generally, you need to constantly consider how your decisions impact others and what the implications of that impact are.

When working in an impoverished community you need to question your motives. We don’t need any more Batmen coming in, burning themselves out, and providing themselves as the answer. We need more Harvey Dents who want to come in to help cultivate the power and beauty that is already in our students. This will take consistency, patience, and time. It takes a series of decisions that no one will write home about. But, in the end it will be worth it.

Don’t be Batman, we all know how Gotham turned out.