The following is an excerpt from the recently published “Disciples of White Jesus.” In its description, Publisher’s Weekly says, “A shifting American culture is pushing white Christian boys toward radicalization, isolation, and violence, according to this persuasive treatise.” Consider buying the book at an independent Minnesota bookstore.
We cannot understand the problems of radicalization among young, white Christian boys in America, nor fully grapple with the challenges and troubles facing these boys, without understanding what’s happening in American schools. And without consulting that most underpaid and too-often scapegoated American professional, the public school teacher.
A teacher I’ll call Joe, 59, is just the kind of teacher that hard-core advocates of traditional masculinity might dream up as their ideal educator for young, white Christian boys and men — at least at first blush. Joe, who has been teaching for 36 years in total, and 33 years in the Minneapolis Public Schools, stands 6 foot, 5 inches tall. When it comes to physical education instruction, which he has led for 23 years at his current school building, Joe is no-nonsense and almost stern, cutting a strong, athletic and disciplined figure, a product of his Marine veteran father, who worked for decades in underground pipelines after leaving the military.
Joe spends his winter days at an upper elementary school in a relatively affluent neighborhood of Minneapolis, with a student body that’s more than 85% white; only to drive across the Mississippi River after school to St. Paul’s Central High School, where he works as an assistant basketball coach at a school that is 59% POC students, including 29% Black students, in a neighborhood where 18% of residents live in poverty.
It’s a fitting dual existence for Joe, who describes his childhood as a life in two worlds. His dad was a member of the Red Cliff Native American tribe, and the family lived together on the reservation near Bayfield, Wisconsin, even though Joe’s mother was white. He recalls that sometimes he was bullied on both ends, about his Indigenous ancestry by the white kids, and from the Native kids, called an “apple,” suggesting that while he was “red” on the outside, he was really “white” on the inside. Joe thought maybe that was because his teacher mom encouraged her four boys to do well in school, something that wasn’t always popular on the reservation, for myriad reasons.
Teaching PE and coaching basketball enable Joe to use parts of his skill set and personality that some advocates of gender absolutism might consider contradictory. He retains much of the “tough-love,” “old-school” military mentality that his dad instilled in him. And at the same time, Joe also saw the ways in which that hard-core masculine identity led his dad to a life of physical pain and even premature death. Joe saw the strengths and limitations of a masculinity that’s only rooted in hardness and discipline. So he brings a bit of his mom’s more nurturing side to his role as an educator and coach as well. After all, Joe says the best parts of his day are often the hours he spends in physical education with a smaller group of students with disabilities and cognitive delays. These students, who are often withdrawn or quiet or uncooperative in public settings, seem to innately trust Joe, something I saw firsthand when I served as a substitute teacher in his classroom. They know the rhythms and routines of the gymnasium; it was a place they clearly felt accepted, loved, and known — something achieved by an educator rooted in discipline and athleticism but also in emotional connection, patience, and kindness.
Given his popularity among many of his students and student athletes, and his continued commitment to athleticism even into his 59th year, you might think that Joe is supremely confident and undeterred in any school setting. But he knows that washboard abs or biceps would be no match for an AR-15 in a potential school shooting situation.
“That scares me more than anything as a teacher,” Joe told me, when we discussed the potential of a school shooter coming to our shared neighborhood. “Even who I am, there is very little I can do to stop that situation. The best thing we can do is just barricade ourselves.”
Joe says he thinks about it often, imagining himself in the shoes of fellow teachers and educators who have faced active shooters in their buildings.
“They probably thought the same things I do,” he said. “Your senses are so heightened as a teacher. You’re making sure all your doors are shut. You’re following the proper procedures for code red. What do you do? What do I do? What if I’m at prep? What if it’s happening in another area of the building? Of all the things, that’s the one that scares me the most.”
I’m struck at this moment by the seriousness and vulnerability and sadness that has come over Joe’s face. This is a man who deeply loves being a teacher. By the nature of his work with disabled students — among whom boys are overrepresented — and his role as a boys’ basketball coach, Joe does tend to spend a bit more time with boys as an educator and coach, though his office is also filled with cards from former students, divided equally between boys and girls. He’s also the father of a 20-something son, whom he watched attend school in the same district where he teaches. He says the two of them will talk about those boys who seem to fall through the cracks, the ones for whom traditionally male-dominated outlets like sports or mathematics don’t seem to fit, but who also don’t find their place in outlets like music or drama. He and his son recently together discussed the fact that two of his classmates — despite their relatively privileged backgrounds — had recently died of drug overdoses. Joe talked also of watching the boys who used to run with joy and abandon around his gym classes, pelting each other with balls, turn into sullen, withdrawn, and angry teenagers. Sometimes seeing them makes him feel sad and powerless.
“When you, as a teacher, can pinpoint those students out, you try and let them figure out a way for themselves, and also serve as advocate for them and help them find a way,” Joe says. “Sometimes they just need an ear to bend. Sometimes parents will ask me about younger kids and help them find a group, or a place to fit in.”
I realize, in talking with Joe, that it’s not his height or his athleticism or his perceived traditional masculinity that makes Joe a favorite among his students, or that has enabled him to have such longevity as a PE teacher in a challenging time for public school teachers, especially in inner-city, urban school districts. For Joe, for his students: the key is trust and relationship. He has been able to carve out a unique sense of both in his role as teacher and coach in Minneapolis. But it doesn’t escape me that even in this ideal school, Joe still faces the fear and anxiety of the violence of the wider world, the ominous threat of a school shooting.
Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: [email protected].
