School, Today

Hello. I have not abandoned you, the benevolent 6 or 7 who have read my ramblings on this blog-with-training-wheels. Well, I haven’t abandoned you any more than I have abandoned my free time, personal space, vegetable-based diet (I can’t seem to find time to cook…), and laundry. Since I last wrote back in September, my work weeks have rarely seen the short side of 65 hours and my land of dreams, what should be a respite from teaching, only bring me back to the classroom with less control, more bizarre circumstances, and even less concrete outcomes. My existence has been filled with math manipulatives, caked with snotty tissues and dried spilled milk, and, indeed, bristling with a lot of love for two-and-a-half dozen people.

The life of a teacher, particularly a novice one swimming a frantic side-stroke in her first year, is brimming with responsibilities that extend beyond the 24-hour structure of time we humans have strapped onto our days. I am accountable to these 29 small people who need to learn about so very many things in their minds, hearts, and bodies. They also need to eat and pee and navigate a world in 2012 that even I can barely grasp.  So, certainly, I can’t exit the room for a second to leave them to their own devices.  Heaven forbid I hydrate and need to use the bathroom more than twice a day. I have never experienced such an all-consuming level of responsibility that brings more daily headaches than rewards, but goodness those few rewards are sweet.  

After all this time, why am I drawn to write today? I am actually quite sick and stayed home; the snot that fills my facial cavities has forced me against my deepest desires and sense of commitment to sit at home in my pajamas. While it feels great to be alone, to be in silence, to be free to pee when I please, of course I find myself on my computer to write guided reading lesson plans, plan future math quizzes, and email my co-teacher to see how the monste…angels are doing in class. But I have paused from the routine to revisit this writing venue because as I blow my nose and lament what may be a sinus infection, I feel a sickness that is neither viral nor bacterial, at least in a physical sense. It is a sickness and, above all, a deep sadness that in the past few days has birthed so many questions.

Less than a week ago, 26 students, really young, small people, and adults were violently murdered in Newtown, CT at Sandy Hook Elementary School. A mere 90 minutes from the elementary school at which I currently work, this event in a beautiful New England town is now another heinous scar on the character of our society.

When I learned of the incident last Friday, December 14, 2012, I had just said ‘Goodbye’ to my own students as their parents took them away for the weekend. I returned to my classroom and sat down to check my email and phone messages, both of which were flooded with questions begging if I was ok. My fellow second grade teachers began to pour into my classroom to ask if I had heard the news. As we watched live news coverage and friends navigated their Smartphones for information, we watched the violent story unravel into a heap of devastating reality. Another boy. Another gun. Another massacre.

Why?

Why?

I can’t suffocate the tears that creep to the surface every time I allow my mind to consider this question. I can’t stifle the anger and sadness and utter confusion. This world of grief and violence feels so foreign to the world and life I am trying to create and yet I am just as much a part of both.  How can this suffering be?

And now this first week of the aftermath, adorned with finger-pointing for the purpose of identifying an explanation, has nearly come to a close. The media has poked at several theories – guns, mental health, violent video games –  to explain why a boy may have committed this act. I do not believe it is one single reason, but rather a “Perfect Storm” of experiences and truths woven into a single time bomb that, once again, seems to threaten that we make real changes now or else.  Each time something this horrendous comes to pass, it is another scar and another reminder that we are not doing enough to support a healthy human experience for all people.  There is a collection of dirty things we must unearth, honestly face, and discard to reveal a better existence and guns, mental health, and violent video games are certainly in the pile.

I am tired of zealots saying guns aren’t the problem.  They are a problem, if not the problem.  We are not living in the 1700s, in defense against loyalists, and so the words of the Constitution and Bill of Rights pertaining to our right to bear arms are no longer relevant to the realities of this society. So, no, it is not only guns, but guns are a problem. I am saying this as an extreme social liberal, but a registered Independent who has several shades of Libertarianism in her political thinking. I support individual liberty, but not at the expense of the safety and liberties of others. Not when it is downright dangerous. Individuals and groups who are so chained to extremist thinking about our right to bear arms must shed their need to associate with an ideology and begin to engage with what is truly happening in our world. If we continue to have abstract discussions about what rights we ought to have, rather than taking action about human rights that are currently being stolen, we are all doomed.

We are similarly doomed if we remain unaccountable towards individuals with mental illness. Our society is fast, cut-throat, and I believe inherently a bit, if not quite, violent.  We convince ourselves we are too busy to slow down and consider others who cannot or do not want to move at the same pace or in the same way as the socially-acceptable majority. I do not know the life experience of the boy who slaughtered all those people, but everything points to his loneliness and potential mental illness. It’s not an excuse but an all-important siren that sounds our inability to allow all people to feel welcome and receive the help and support they need. We are diverse in desires, preferences, skin, eye, and hair color, body shape, and mental capacity.  How can it be that we may produce some of the most complex vaccinations and cures but we cannot provide – and do not promote – mental services for our citizens? How is it that we seem to work harder for big salaries than big hearts, and value fluency in math over fluency in kindness in schools? As a teacher, it pains me to think I am missing something in a student who feels sad or ostracized. I barely have time to ensure each child in my reading group understands our text – how the hell can I adequately check-in with each student to ensure he/she is feeling safe and loved? It is all of our jobs, then, to quite simply – rather, quite complexly – pay attention and be compassionate.  I wonder if this boy would have made different choices if someone in his life had highlighted his capabilities and shown him he deserved to be loved.

Finally, for now, I must mention video games as several news sources have suggested their role in the shooting. I go mad when I consider video games, I really do. My students, particularly males, live for video games. They work hard in school to earn behavior points so they can go home to play their games, which are violent and cruel and bloody and vapid of anything healthy for a growing human being. I am quickly nauseated by the thought of our Christmas economy being powered by these electronic boxes that give you points when you shoot other people. My personal bias: burn them all, and maybe replace a few with games that educate. If not, spend some of that Tech Valley money and brains on creating character education programming to at least neutralize the games’ nefarious effect on us all.

I am not writing about this to claim a conclusion or another level of understanding. I still cannot comprehend how or why a person could do this to other living beings, particularly in an elementary school that is filled with innocence and the anticipation of many years of life to come.  I also do not believe that knowledge about the above factors can explain the occurrence or even fully prevent future instances from happening.  I do, however, feel firmly that our thinking must change, as must the way in which we interact with our neighbors and our world. I have always been called an idealist, but I no longer believe this hope is ideal; for us to survive, literally to survive, we must change and this hope must become a reality.  I want a world where people love themselves and can translate that self-respect into compassion for others…  Ha! As I type, I am chuckling at my hopes in the face of the truths we face in this present moment.  It is difficult not to be cynical, but I still have hope. It’s in the face of my students when they get excited about math, or psyched about Christmas break, or fart on the carpet. It’s my dog and my boyfriend and my housemates and my family. It’s my mom’s hospice patients who are navigating their last breaths and the grandmother who contacted me to say she is studying psychology at a community college so she can better understand her granddaughter’s ADHD. It’s you and me doing our best even when things seem grim. I am heartbroken for this tragedy, yet another, but I am still hopeful.  What other option is there?

Back to School for All

At 7:00 a.m. on Tuesday, August 21st, the first of over 400 K-4 students entered our school building in the North End of Hartford, Connecticut. Somehow, time since then has carefully scattered into history with such speed I can hardly recall what has happened in the 21 days that have brought us close to a New England fall, and brought me closer than I could have ever imagined with nearly 6 handfuls of children. With the cooler temperatures and low humidity ushering in these early September weeks, it seems as if even the atmospheric deities have been notified of the inescapable truth: school has begun.

It has been exactly 3 weeks since this inundation of children and I mostly feel exhausted, excited, motivated, and regularly shocked that it has indeed only been 3 weeks, rather than 3 years, of teaching my 29 children. How in the sweet heavens did I arrive here? To where did this wild summer, filled with changes so rapid that a moment’s pause to contemplate felt as luscious as does the newly cool and humid-free mornings ushered in by mid-September, fly away? Stopping now to look back and reflect on my summer filled with training and teaching, my mind begs: “What have I learned? What have I helped others accomplish?! What have I accomplished as a budding educator?”  In perfectly anachronic order, beginning with what is most recent, I have spent three weeks teaching 7 year-olds how to walk from their desks to the carpet and how to add two or three addends to make ten, our number-of-the-week, four weeks in training for Achievement First, five weeks in Teach for America Institute, one week in TFA Induction, three weeks prepping for TFA, and four weeks getting certified in TESOL in Costa Rica. That’s 21 weeks. (I am the Math Lead in my classroom, after all.) I’ve received an international teaching certificate, taught students that ranged in age from 10 through 55, traveled by plane, train, car, and boat (hmm, kayak…) and, above all, spent countless (countless) hours writing lesson plans, role playing, massaging stress knots out of my neck, thanking the stars and galaxies for the opportunities I have had, and actually teaching in classrooms.

Now, nearly a full five months later (though my Costa Rica experience wasn’t tied into TFA per the organization, I consider all of the above integral in my own journey of becoming a teacher), what do I have to show for this? What do I have to give? I am, admittedly, exhausted. (Have I mentioned this?) I more often than not wrestle with what has become an elusive full-night’s sleep due to writhing thoughts about potentially unfinished tasks, forgotten worksheets, and simply whether or not I will be any good for my students. (Several educators have hinted it is for this reason that NyQuil and other friendlier version of Ambien, if not Ambien itself, quickly becomes a teacher’s amigo mejor. Dios mio.) Though I am finally getting accustomed to the 5:30 a.m. wake-up, I still worry how I will achieve something that even resembles a healthy work-life balance, which is a significant goal of mine for the rest of my years as a working and living human being. (Mourning what has become a common 12 or 13 hour work day in a windowless classroom, I recognize getting out of work for that 6:30 yoga class is a phantom of a dream until at least Christmas of this year. I have decided to view this as a mechanism for saving money…)

So, yes: I am tired, inundated with new information, nervous nervous nervous, excited excited excited, and so ready (is there an alternative?) every morning to see how well I can stay afloat with 29 children, all presenting unique challenges, quirks, and beautiful moments, sitting in front of me.  As I sit (flop) here in my bed, waiting for tomorrow to come, concerned I won’t quite grab enough zzz’s this evening, I think it fitting to truly reflect on my own learning as I delve more and more deeply into facilitating that of my ‘scholars,’ as we call them at Achievement First. What have I learned from my training and experiences? Ultimately, I believe I will be a better teacher if I acknowledge myself as a student of life, just like my students are learners in my classroom and of their own lives. So, what have I learned? Many, many things, much of which I hope to share with my students, albeit in far more child-friendly language than it is currently transcribed in my racing mind.

Above all, I have been humbled by my own journey into this profession. Speaking to my mother, who knows me oh-so-well, she lovingly asked me if I was kicking myself for not following through with studying teaching in college as I had once planned. Indeed, I really had always wanted to be a teacher. I only applied to colleges that offered 5-year B.A./M.A.T. degrees or teaching certificates. I was an education major my first semester of school. Yet, for sundry reasons, I chose to delve into liberal arts and leave my ed degree behind.  I have certainly felt moments of regret gazing towards the past at this and other choices.  As I get older, I seek more and more to simplify my life and look back on these past few years – changing majors in school multiple times, living in different places, switching jobs, seriously considering the Peace Corps, and all the personal growth and challenges that came with these things – as a dance with the complex. Sometimes my head spins when I think about all of my time spent thinking and vacillating and I worry I lost precious time doing so. If I was always to become a teacher, why did I not just walk the straight and sturdy line towards it? In my most poignant moments of regret – when I am head-to-toe tired and wish I weren’t a novice teacher anymore – I remind myself exactly what I want to teach my kids: learning is not linear. True learning, filled with exploration, questions, step-backs, side-steps, challenges, and successes, is a spiral. My school in Costa Rica was (is) called “Centro Espiral,” or Spiral Center, and the values at that wonderful place were truly in line with my belief that we do not learn in perfect conditions, with perfect plans. That’s not to say hopes and dreams are futile and are not worth planning for, but it is to emphasize that all we can do is our best with what we have. Our every moment informs our next. My moments have led me here, on a cool September night, the eve before what will mark a full three weeks as my first year teaching 2nd grade. For whatever brought me here, and for whatever I have brought with me, I feel grateful.

First, Achievement

I am relieved to proclaim I have been home in Hartford, CT for exactly two weeks now. While the pace of my life via intensive professional development has stayed constant (i.e. wicked intense) really since the beginning of June, being at home has brought enormous comfort, alongside mental and emotional peace. Though I have yet to fully unpack from Institute, I have created a little desk/work nook that is now filled with lesson planning binders, stickers, children’s literature, and teacher books that address everything from on-the-ground best practices (“Teach Like a Champion” by Doug Lemov) to more ‘meta’ topics that look at how we as a society create and utilize education (“Teaching Critical Thinking” by bell hooks).  Aiming to be in bed by 10 pm, I have been able to read these and other similar books before dozing off to sleep (passing out) around 11 at night.

This post will be short ‘n sweet with the purpose of introduing my current place of employment. I am currently a 2nd grade teacher at Achievement First Hartford Elementary Academy. Achievement First (AF) is a network of 22 public charter schools in 4 cities (New Haven, Bridgeport, and Hartford, CT, and Brooklyn, NY). Propelled by the recognizition that there was (is) a signifiant achievement gap between urban students and their suburban peers, founders in New Haven wanted to counter the mentality that ‘demographics are destiny’ and address education as the key factor in reversing poverty. They begain with the flagship Amistad Academy in New Haven, which has in the past decade seen state-wide testing scores that beam not only in the city, but in the state of Connecticut overall. To directly quote the mission: “We believe that all children, regardless of race or economic status, can succeed if they have access to a great education. Achievement First schools provide all of our students with the academic and character skills they need to graduate from top colleges, to succeed in a competitive world and to serve as the next generation of leaders in our communities” (
http://www.achievementfirst.org/our-approach/achievement-gap-and-mission/
).

A few things that distinguish AF from other schools is its emphasis on character as well as academic education and that it defines success for their scholars as full graduation from college. Though the network is still quite young, it has seen phenomenal results. In math, reading, and writing, AF ‘scholars’ (students) perform nearly as well or at level with the average CT student, in comparison to Bridgeport, Hartford, and New Haven students who score well below the state average (
http://www.achievementfirst.org/results/in-connecticut/
). Surely, AF alone cannot and will not reverse the achievement gap in state or country, but these results do prove that with focus and intention, demographics need not determine destiny. I look forward to learning more throughout my time at AF and to continue to watch these results in the years to come.

On an organizational level, AF has very young leaders who believe strongly in the mission and are intent upon creating a warm and welcoming school culture. At least on paper (I have yet to begin the school year) and on the walls (posters galore), Achievement First lives and breaths it’s core values (No Excuses, People Matter Mightily, Excellence is a Habit, Sweat the Small Stuff, First Things First, Team & Family, Whatever it Takes, Everything with Integrity, and Many Minds, One Mission) and works relentlessly to instill REACH (Respect, Enthusiasm, Achievement, Citizenship, Hard Work) values through a system of positive reinforcement and motivation. After two weeks of Hartford-specific PD (professional development), I am ready to enter the school year in 6 business days not only with a brain and several binders filled with academic and behavioral plans (again, AF provides a plethora of resources, for which I as a new teacher am incredibly grateful), but also with the assurance that I am part of a team of educators who are aiming to make an impact on students with our consistency, hard work, and joy. I do have faith in this – I also believe I need to buy-in now if I hope to have any success – and with a critical and open-minded ‘eye’ look forward to seeing how our commitment to community and ‘many minds, one mission’ actually unfolds when hundreds of small peanuts (children) begin guided reading, math meeting, and needing bathroom breaks at various, unfortunately-timed moments.

Though I have worked with youth for many years, it has always done so on a level where I monitored whether or not they completed their service-learning requirement, came to their after-school program, or did their extension homework. I rarely gave grades and was nary required to dole out consequences or create an effective culture that kept small people in their seats for an entire day. Beginning August 21st, I will be responsible for 8 hours of their daily learning. Think about that: elementary school teachers teach children how to learn and think, read and write, do math and focus their motor skills. The weight of this task can feel utterly overwhelming and, indeed, I often find myself anxiously awaiting the start of the school year. I now aim to focus my nervous energy, most of which stems from recognizing the potential impact of my every move in the lives of 29 students, on planning some lessons, setting up my classroom, deep breathing, and writing blog posts… As I have said before, I recognize the importance of teachers in the lives of young people and feel both lucky and urgent as I work to grow into one that is effective and, hopefully, inspirational. Further, I feel particularly supported as a new staff member at Achievement First and can forsee a lot of learning as I enter my first year of teaching.

One more thing: When I share my professional position with others… well, actually, when I tell people I work at a charter school, most do not willingly share their perspective on ‘charters’ in general. However, when I bring up charter schools without revealing my affiliation, most people who are up-to-date on even the most surface-level ed reform issues will ask if I think charters only make it more difficult for real change to permeate the public school system. Certainly, as AF has shown, charter schools can raise scores and achievement, but is this really addresing THE achievement gap? Perhaps, but I do not believe one school system (AF) can define one type of school (charters). In other words, it is unproductive to induce from the success of AF, or the lack of success of a particular district school, that one type of educational structure (public, district, charter, private) is ‘right’ or ‘best’ in its approach to closing the achievement gap.  Charter schools, most of which are privately run and publically funded (and it is important to note that not all charters are governed in parallel manners), often do have more resources and, as such, can provide more materials to students and teachers, both concrete (desks, computers) and abstract (training, support, coaching). There are many cases too where charter schools are not churning out impressive results. We therefore ought not generalize that charters schools, merely by way of being a charter model, are capable of consistently excellent academic results or are responsible for the furter denigration of district schools. I can only really speak to my present reality and say that my experience with charters has been excellent mainly because these schools have been very intentional in terms of management and culture, which I believe has allowed for a growth of resources. Having more human and economic capital has inspired more energy and more growth for students, teachers, and the school.

For the sake of time, I will not get further into the grit of examining charters v. district schools in this post (that debate will come soon, I promise) but will end by saying that AF is a blind lottery system. So, while it does require parents to check a box at the beginning of the school year to enter their child into the lottery, that is all the ‘application’ to AF entails. Over 75% of students qualify for free or reduced lunches and over 98% are Black or Latino, stats that are nearly identical to those representing district schools in the Hartford Public School system. AF Hartford Elementary Academy serves Hartford elementary school students and has thus far shown that these students are just as capable as any other Connecticut 7 year-old, regardless of the neighborhood in which they were raised or attended school. Here in Hartford, this model seems to be working, but this is only based on what I have read and have been told. I look forward to re-examining and possibly readjusting my opinion of the school on both a micro- and macro- level once I began teaching the students, interacting with their families, and settling into this new role and community.

TFA Institute Madness

Though historically my track record of keeping timely and consistent posts has been poor, mostly due to the desire to be anywhere but at my computer during my free time, the lapse of over three weeks between this and my last post is hardly a result or symptom of the above. Rather, I have been sucked into the cyclone that is Teach for America’s summer Institute. I’ve wanted to write – oh how I’ve wanted to have free time to write! – but have found myself working straight through morning, day, and night.

I have spent the past month in Queens, NY at St. John’s University and as of 25 minutes ago landed at my new home: a Holiday Inn Express in Brooklyn. What does this mean? Beyond the fact that I have traded in my plastic single bed and a campus filled with over-achieving, albeit passionate, to-be-teachers and a recent infestation of bed bugs for what appears to be bug-free and super soft bedding I have, more professionally speaking,  ended TFA Institute. I am now transitioning into training for Achievement First, the charter school for which I will be working for at least two years. More on Achievement First (AF) to come. For now, here is a brief summary of what has happened to me and through me these past four weeks.

Overall, after having approximately 48 hours to digest my completion of Institute, I feel quite satisfied with the experience. Yes, it kicked my behind and yes I slept 10 hours for the past two days and still need about a week of that to come remotely close to catching up on zzs. Yet, the lost sleep meant more hours lesson planning and honing my behavior management skills. It meant identifying CFUs (checks for understanding) that were more thorough than “Right?” and actually spending time creating visuals where my handwriting – in both design and size – could be read and understood. I learned so much about teaching, particularly the reality that learning how to teach can really only happen in a classroom, when all those eyes are on you and you had better know how to lead them to comprehension, and that I have so far to go before becoming a good teacher. Good comes before great, and way before excellent. The thought is exhausting but also, somehow, in the bows of my madness, it is extraordinarily motivating.

For those of you who are interested in a typical TFAers day, well, I can’t give that to you. All CMs (Corps Members) live and survive very differently at Institute. Whereas I aimed for bed before midnight by cutting back on yoga and jogging in the afternoon and avoiding double-digit cups of caffeine each day, many people hooked up a coffee IV-drip and stayed up until 2 a.m. writing and editing lessons, organizing, materials, and prepping for a 5 a.m. rise-and-shine. Interestingly, there were even some crazies (sorry, that’s a judgement) who regularly went our to party, though I just learned of this and am skeptical, albeit impressed.

What I can give you is a brief overview of my own day-to-day existence breathing and eating and sweating TFA. I will leave out the related dreams about classroom management and key points because they drove me mad and I hope to spare all of you. True to my lesson planning organization strategies, the terms below are listed in bold and questions will be held for the end of the lecture… I mean blog.

I woke up every day at 5:00. (Sometimes I snoozed until 5:35 but those were the days that I sauntered to the bus only to hear my peers slow-clapping for me to wake the &#%* up, toss that uncapped coffee cup to the side and run to my seat for the love of God!) After checking TFAnet, where our leaders out in the cyber-world post updates, I put business-casual clothing on my tired body and washed my face. Lanyard against my chest and massive materials- and lessons-filled backpack on my back, I walked to the cafeteria around 6, during which time I ate breakfast and packed lunch in a (heinous) reusable lunchbag. The lunches were a bit carby so I took to wrapping hardboiled eggs in napkins and toting them with me. This didn’t irritate as many people as I had anticipated it would, though the eggs surely smelled and my students made fun of me for it for about two weeks. Perhaps this was a reflection of our growing relationship? … After four years of not drinking coffee (this includes my senior year of college, during which time I wrote two independent research projects), I willingly became addicted and looked forward to my morning (2) cup(s), even though it was regularly 100% humidity on our 45 minute yellow school bus ride. I did spill on myself at least thrice daily.

I and about 45 other CMs arrived at South Bronx Classical Charter School (SBCCS) at around 6:55 a.m. We taught everything in K-5 and were each placed in a classroom with 4 other CMs, with whom we collaborated on our lessons. My collab group (collaboration group) and I set up our 4th/5th grade classroom and ran execution clinics (practicing our lessons) until 8 a.m., at which time we moved to our CS (curriculum specialist) room for a school meeting and daily motivation. After greeting our scholars (students) at breakfast in the cafe, we lined them up in perfect hall (hands by your side, all eyes forward, legs walking carefully, lips closed) as we walked up to the 4th floor. Class began promptly at 8:45 once all scholars are sitting in scholar (hands folded on desks, feet flat on the floor, eyes ‘tracking’ the teacher/speaker) with an introduction related to our core values (perseverance and confidence). We taught word study (affixes, phonics, etc. depending on skill level, which we tested at the beginning of the summer via a Quantitative Spelling Inventory) and guided reading (I taught the book “Nory Ryan’s Song”), followed by an hour of reading, an house of writing, and an hour of math.

I taught 4th grade math, reading, and writing for the past three weeks. I most enjoyed reading as
a) I love children’s books
b) I love analyzing literature
c) My students seem to really understand the material, so we are having some deep conversations. Ya!

Small group guided reading is, as one could guess, much more conducive to thorough discussion, but even when I taught the large group there have only been 14 little nuggets (ahem, students), so I had the opportunity to dig in to some meta questions with them. Awesome. Math was also fun. It is simple(-ish) to write a lesson plan for math as there is truly one ‘correct’ answer and, well, I really do like elementary math. It was a useful exercise to break down the material in student-friendly terms while being guided by an equation that is already so structured. Then, there was writing. Though I dreamed of being a writer – as well as a teacher and a paleontologist and a bread baker – for most of my elementary career, I found teaching writing to be extraordinarily difficult. I am told there are methods to simplify, but my first attempts at teaching a few handfuls of 4th graders how to find words to describe supporting details for their chapter topics proved embarrassingly inadequate. Writing has become so, well, rote for me, a liberal-arts graduate with a penchant for journaling (and now blogging). I urge you adults out there to really think: how would you explain the thought process required of writing an expository or creative essay? It’s tough – certainly an area of growth for me.

After scholars learned all their writing, reading, and math for the day around 12:30 p.m., CMs dropped the kiddos off to eat lunch and get picked up by their parents/grandparents/guardians/etc. Meeting the families was amazing and certainly pushed me to examine my own biases about the populations with whom I am working. I have days worth of things to say about this and other related topics, and I will write about it in more depth soon, but for now I want to focus on the details of a TFA day. That said, TFA has done a pretty solid job emphasizing the importance of owning our biases and assumptions in order to get some real work done via deep understanding and intentional commitment to inclusion and unwavering expectations. Teaching is far more than transferring information from one person to the next; it is deeply embedded in the community in which the teaching takes place. Awareness and openness is, therefore, central to creating an excellent educational environment. Like I said, (much) more on this in future posts…

From 1 p.m. until 4 p.m. we had training of various shapes and sizes. We learned about phonics instruction, math meeting, behavioral management, and had approximately 8,000 (if I can recall correctly…) lesson planning clinics. Our CS and CMAs (corps member advisors) introduced us to many topics related to teaching, schools, and the educational landscape as a whole. We entered into and emerged from these sessions quite tired, and often wanting to have free time to work on our lesson plans from the next day, but I know I am not alone in saying that these trainings both informed and inspired us.

At 4:15 p.m. we boarded the yellow school bus and prepared for an hour-long ride back home. It was very hot and I, along with most others, fell asleep immediately. This beautiful nap was my only break for the day as I would return to campus and by 5:30 was perfecting my lesson plans for the next day, while simultaneously writing rough drafts for future LPs. At the beginning of Institute, I took time to go for a jog but by the last two weeks, I used my approximately 35 extra minutes between the bus home and bedtime to eat dinner, talk to my boyfriend on the phone, and maybe chat with someone on the green on my way to the copy room. Oh yes, the copy room is important: it was set up in the basement of one of the dorms and attracted CMs like moths to light all throughout the night. We walked in with loads of paper and a plan to make 15 collated copies of this, 30 double-sided copies of that. Luckily, they had chocolate for us to munch as we waited for a machine to become available. I always tried to get there before 9 p.m., which was when the real late-night madness began.

On the whole, I did my best to flop into bed by 11 or 12 and for the most part was able to get between 5 and 6 hours of sleep a night. Surely not ideal, but certainly not killer. I am tired but do not feel completely drained of life-force, as some said I would feel at the end of Institute. I learned a lot about teaching and have completed my summer training feeling a bit more confident in my abilities, and a whole lot more confident in knowing that I have so much work to do to grow as an educator. Teaching is truly the most difficult thing I have ever done. No joke. To be an excellent teacher – to put time and love and energy and materials into your work, 100% of the time for 100% of your students – is draining, among many other beautiful and challenging things. I look forward to learning more about this profession/life-style and am so so excited to dive in to my new phase of training with Achievement First. Here is to my own learning to help other learn.

Now, Teaching for America

It has been over a month since I returned from Costa Rica and I have spent every moment of that time anxiously prepping for Induction and Institute with Teach for America, which I began nearly two weeks ago in Queens, New York.

In an ideal world, I would have had several weeks to wax and wane poetically in written reflection (and concrete organization – I really ought to save those materials!) of my ESOL lesson plans, teaching best-practices, approaches to feedback, methods for avoiding poisonous snakes, and how to stay calm and cool, often literally, in the face of both fluctuating dew point and class composition (skill, age, personality, etc.).

However, I jumped right into completing my pre-Institute coursework, packing my bags, and loosing sleep over anxiously awaiting what I had been told repeatedly would be teacher bootcamp. And, indeed, after finishing the week-long Induction and now being a week through Institute, I can say that the rumors are true: Teach for America has unwaveringly high expectations of corps members and their future students. We have been waking up at 5 a.m. and are well aware that this time will be reduced somewhere closer to 4 a.m. once we begin teaching in our respective boroughs in the weeks that come.

The first week, which officially ended 1.5 hours ago and yes I am in my bed preparing to nap before dinner, has been a blur. We CMs (corps members) have daily gone from session to training to session about everything from vision-writing, behavior management, and lesson planning, to family engagement and the reality faced by the communities in which we will teach.

That reality is what educators – not just TFA, though these folks love to talk about it – know well as the achievement gap. The achievement gap is more than just a buzz word; it is the gap in test scores, college attendance, graduation rate, and other markers of academic achievement that exist between racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups across this country. It is why white people outnumber black and latinos in post-secondary education and the ‘professional’ world. It is why people of certain backgrounds go to certain schools and cannot escape the restriction that districting has put on our ability to choose our future, so much inspired by our education. The achievement gap points to both in-school and community factors as central to the disparity between low-income minority students and their white, middle-class peers, making it an issue that is multi-faceted and thus incredibly difficult to address and, certainly, to solve.  Connecticut has the largest achievement gap in the country, which hits home because I grew up in a CT suburb, where I received an excellent public education, and I am about to teach in Hartford, the second poorest city in the country after Brownsville, TX, in a school geographically minutes from my high school but a socioeconomic universe apart. How can this happen? To understand the ‘why’ and ‘how’ and ‘who,’ we must dig into history (though we mustn’t excavate too deeply) to see how so much of this is rooted in our racist past.

For those of you who are interested in learning more about inequities in education and the reasons behind it, I highly recommend reading “The Children of Room E4.” Yes, it is Hartford-focused, which I love, but the patterns and issues explained in this account will certainly illuminate some of the general causes and effects of racism and classism in our U.S. cities. As this book, and many others, reveal so eloquently, inequities in education (and food access and health care and home ownership and… and…) are inextricably linked to a long and twisted history of injustice, often motivated by race. The achievement gap shows, via the lens of education, that we exist in a society built by the relationship between oppressors and the oppressed. Even if we cannot see or touch the negative ramifications of this, we must remember that unless we are intentional and active in reversing the effects of this oppression, we are still contributing to it. I am presently trying to do this as a teacher and life-long learner, though I certainly am not willing to say I have (or am anywhere near finding) ‘the answer,’ should one exist, on how to truly fight efficiently and effectively these issues in our society…

While this is quite the heavy topic, I am excited and grateful to be engaged in fighting injustice as an educator. I very much look forward to this new professional chapter in my life and, provided I am in bed by 10:30 and continue to teach well my fourth and fifth graders this summer (i.e. do not need to stay up to 3 a.m. editing my lesson plans), there will be several more posts to come regarding my time teaching in South Bronx. For now, I will end on a final thought:

Much of the criticism I have heard about TFA is focused on the fact that the organization throws inexperienced teachers into classrooms that need the most skilled educators at the helm. While I do not disagree with this thought, I also do not think TFA falls entirely short of putting excellent teachers into high-need classrooms.  Indeed, I have faced some rumblings in my values-based belly that makes me question if TFA was truly the right route on which to begin my journey as an educator based on this criticism, so I am examining it carefully.  On a quantitative level, TFA members have 6 weeks of training, 4 of which are spent teaching each day. Total, that is 30 days of individual, group, and field- work, with at least 10 hours daily devoted to learning, teaching, and planning. That’s 300 hours. I am not certain how many hours most M.Ed or M.A.T. programs require, but I cannot believe it is far from that which we endure here at Institute. To emphasize that I have not drowned myself in the TFA juice (I truly have not…yet…), I will proclaim (quietly) that I do not believe TFA’s Institute can or ought to replace a graduate program. It does not. I repeat: it does not. We are about to teach on Monday and let me tell you I am not ready to give a Diagnostic Reading Assessment accurately to a handful of fourth graders who are in summer school because they are not at grade-level for reading. (I cringe at this statement, but I must speak my truth lest I be a hypocrite.) These young people need the absolute best and, let’s be real, my experience (or lack there-of) does not kick me up to the category of ‘best.’ We have had so much information tossed in our faces, downloaded and uploaded onto our computers, and three-hole-punched into our binders that we have barely had a moment to reflect on where we need more help or how we can grow as future educators. I want to be excellent for all of my students but doubt that will come magically over this upcoming weekend…

And yet, I ultimately do believe TFA offers an opportunity for smart and dedicated (for the most part) people to become teachers. From my experience in non-profits, youth development, and in schools, I really do believe that good teaching comes from practice, not theory. So while we may not be marching into these steamy (South Bronx in summer; need I say more?) classrooms with an additional diploma in our hands (though many of us will receive our masters and all will receive certification), I do believe our passion for social justice and/or our love for young people and/or simply our desire to get our asses kicked is motivating the over 700 CMs who are training in NYC this summer to be hard-working teachers.  We can only hope that we will infuse a classroom or two with enough energy that our students will become more invested in their own learning and will feel empowered to determine their own successes and failures, rather than let history do it for them.

SIT TESOL Costa Rica: Learning from Our Contexts

On our last Saturday of the course, I, Claudia (Colombia), Sophia (Colombia), Sebastian (Argentina), Carmela (Dominican Republic), and Gustavo (Honduras) sweated together in our small ‘Meditation Room’ to take part in a discussion with Jorge (Mexico). For an hour, Jorge led us in a conversation about our thoughts on education, learning, problems, realities, solutions, and more regarding our contextualized experience as teachers (or, in my case, to-be teachers). I felt so blessed to be sitting there with these experienced, thoughtful educators who felt so passionately about the work they are doing.

What struck me most was the similarities in our experiences. Though continents apart, we all had many a congruent story to share about strikes, inequality and injustice, parental involvement, and more. Here are some of the topics we discussed:

1) The ‘System.’ We all agreed that the systems that run education in fact run our lives. We are indoctrinated to be complaisant in the system by the system via our public education. School is no longer about learning or growing as a student or, dare I say, person; rather, school is about churning out additional cogs that will lubricate and facilitate the forward movement of our norms. In all of our educational contexts, students learn to get a job, and anything beyond that is considered superfluous. As in the United States, there is no studying for the sake of learning – for the sake of growing thoughtful, critically thinking human beings.

2) Parents and communities are crucial to this equation. As I said, all 7 of us agreed that the system is useless and decisions are made by those in power not to further the abilities of eduction but to grow their own influence and political prowess. Thus, we cannot look to the government – the oligarchs of the system, in many ways – to make change. It has to start at home. Curriculum and teachers ought to be stellar in all cases, but there are great teachers and horrendous teachers in all types of schools all over the world. Those students that tend to learn are those that are reared in a context where education – real learning – is emphasized. These are the young people who see their parents push education and who do their homework, or at least explore learning in the ways that best suit them as learners. This is fostered. Students who know the value of learning will pursue it as they grow, but a 10 year old cannot be held accountable for recognizing this value. It truly must be the responsibility of parents and communities to take charge of educating the next generation.

3) Passion. All of these amazing people sitting around that little table in our humid, lilac-colored Meditation Room felt so passionately about their work. In all of our contexts, teachers are underpaid and under-resepected for the amount of love and energy and time they pour into their work, shaping and socializing and helping young people learn. This passion is truly inspirational in an educational climate that seems deadly to idealism.

A brief post and a brief experience, but I truly feel reinvigorated to do whatever I can to be an excellent teacher.

SIT TESOL in Costa Rica : Compassionate Communication

Our program director, Mary Scholl, gave as a wonderful lesson a few days ago on what she calls Compassionate Communication, an offspring of the copyrighted “Non-Violent Communication” by Michael Rosenberg. (Non-Violent Communication, or NVM, is his own title and he asks people not to use it unless they are fully certified, which she is working on. For now, she uses the nomenclature Compassionate Communication.) When we talk about communication here, we talk about communication that is far more than speaking. It embodies listening, body language, verbal language, eye-contact, context, pronunciation, rhythm, emphasis, intention, and probably more. Specifically highlighting the words we exchange, this theory (method of being, really) suggests that we are powerful conveyers and sponges of meaning.

Compassionate Communication is a brilliant way to (re-)examine how we as humans communicate with others and with ourselves. In our lesson, we discussed how word meaning rests just as much within us as it does in the dictionary and how being aware of the power, hidden or observable, of our words is crucial to to being non-violent in how we communicate with others. Above all, Compassionate Communication suggests that we must be intentional and empathic when we communicate. As Plato said, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”  That goes for you and me and everyone we meet. What I found most helpful during this lesson was the concept that we often react to feelings that arise from a situation when we ought to take a step back and consider: why am I feeling this way? What needs are not being met, here? Indeed, the emphasis is on changing how we engage in communication by being in touch with our needs and recognizing what we require to be healthy and happy as individuals. Once we can acknowledge and own these things, we are better equipped not to violently react to someone’s comment or action. We are, hopefully, more likely to be intentional about finding another way to get our needs met, rather than immediately seeking to express our onslaught of emotions.

Though often leave these workshops thinking these magical, ‘feely’ approaches are too fruity to actually work in the real world, I am starting to believe that it is very possible provided we take the first step as an individual to commit to these values, and then to act on them. A few more thoughts on that:
1) What is the real world? What is real about it – as in, why is there one worldview that dominates what we consider as ‘realistic?’ Must the real world consist of self-loathing, disappointment, frustration, and the inability to communicate? Why isn’t the real world one that is centered around empathy?  I believe everything is interconnected and that there are not multiple worlds based on different values. We can infuse as much touch-feely-ness into our lives without making it any less real. Perhaps it is our own fear that keeps us from actually doing so and using “that isn’t the real world” as an excuse…
2) Somewhat in the same vain, can this happen on a large scale? It is difficult enough to act compassionately as an individual who is aware of these things. I always try to reassess my responses and I choose to take responsibility for my actions, and yet I struggle to communicate compassionately at all times. Perhaps the very first step to this whole theory is to commit to being compassionate myself, and hope as many people around me chose to do the same.
3) My classmates suggested women ‘are’ more compassionate than men. I believe our society fosters this trait to be performed in the female gender role, but beyond that I do not think emotions are inherent. I would like to see what is currently deemed as ‘feminine’ traits – such as being kind, gentle, thoughtful, compassionate, nurturing – in our mainstream power structure. What would happen if women ruled the world? I would really like to find out…
4) How could “Compassionate Communication” be packaged for people who immediately shy away from anything that contains the words, well, ‘compassionate’ or ‘communication?’ That is to say, how can this approach be accessible to all people, not just those who are spending a month in rural Costa Rica learning how to be a more student-centered and holistic teacher?

Ultimately, I think communicating compassionately is a beautiful manera de vivir and offers guidance in how to be empowered by our words.

Costa Rrrrica

As of 4 p.m. this past Sunday, Costa Rica is my new home and will be for the next month. I am studying to become certified in TESOL through the amazing School for International Training, with whom I studied abroad while in college. SIT’s approach to holistic and diverse forms of learning impressed me from day one while abroad and I am so excited to have the opportunity to study with them again.

I am in a group of 12 students and am the only gringa, or American. (I am told ‘gringo’ is a latinization of the expression ‘green, go!’ This is rooted in the U.S. government intervening – or, invading, imperializing, instigating, etc. – in Central and South American countries. Military men wore green and the general desire among locals was for those greens to go, porfa. Wow.) After getting the usual “do you play basketball?” and “do people in your country hate Spanish speakers?” and “if you are not latina, why do you have curly hair?,” I and the other participants began to actually get to know each other through learning ice-breakers and language activities. We passed around a stuffed blue seal and picked up “talking sticks” to describe our interests, life goals, and why we wanted to learn how to teach English.  We have thus far learned about ECRIF, a teaching framework that looks for learners to encounter, clarify, remember/internalize, and use fluently the information shared in a classroom, gained insight on the importance of learner-centered education, reviewed morphology and phonemic awareness, and compared notes (my peers more than I) on the varieties of Spanish accents from different part of the world. Today, we are discussing compassionate communication and will teach our first class to local “ticos” (Costa Ricans) who live in our town of El Invu de Penas Blancas, which houses a whopping 500 people and many tropical trees, wild animals, 100% humidity, 5-minutes monsoons, active volcanoes, poisonous snakes, butterfly forests, and mango trees. I am also learning how to balance a laptop on my lap while sitting in a half-broken hammock. It is well worth the struggle.

Though I have been studying here for less than 70 hours, I already feel that I have learned so much from my trainers, my peers, my environment, and myself. It is such a gift to be in an environment that emphasizes the importance of compassion in conversation and the exclusive power of a learner in learning. We are not here to learn how to make people speak or understand English, or to force our views on our students. This course is affording the 12 of us, ranging in age from 24 (yo) to 45 from all over the world, the rare opportunity to reflect on our experience as learners and teachers in order to grow as empathic and effective educators.

I will certainly be back with more information, and hopefully pictures if I can figure out how to work my camera, in the near future. For now, it is time for class after a breakfast of rice and beans and papaya. Yum.

To learn more about this course, and I highly recommend you do if you are a teacher, a learner, a traveler, or anyone who works with people from different backgrounds, (or anyone, really) check out: http://www.sit.edu/graduate/6882.htm. It is a bit pricy but compared to the equivalent number of graduate credits (5-6) in the States, it is a good deal. Plus, you are learning how to learn and teach some of the most humble and kind people in the word while in the rainforest in Costa Rica, so there’s that.

Bemoan the Loan: HR 4170 is not a disease

Upon skimming the interweb this past chilly April 25th morning, I quickly learned it was “1-T Day (http://1tday.org/), and that HR 4170 is not as deadly as H1N1, at least not yet. It would appear our student loan debt in this country has reached a whopping $1,000,000,000,000. Holy sh*t. What shall we do? There is an OccupyStudentDebt response (http://occupystudentdebt.com/) and others like it that ask for our help, that of the ’99%,’ to sign a petition in favor of HR 4170, whose name is a bit misleading as it would not in fact eliminate loans (check-out the summary: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr4170), though it would adjust required payments on a “case-by-case basis.”  The masses can also get involved by writing letters to government reps, raising awareness in schools and communities, and just making noise, whether outside in front of a LOB or in a corner of a Starbucks next to 75 other unemployed students working on their MacBooks.

It would be great if we could easily just erase the debt, but our economy, like all systems, isn’t cleanly partitioned off into thematic arenas that can be isolated from each other. Nor does the economy exist separately from other parts of our lives. Everything is intertwined and as such every cause does have an effect. We cannot just press ‘delete’ and erase loans without drastically changing the lives and investment losses, gains, and patterns of college grads, aspiring students, banks, investment strategists, and so many others. There are many elements to this policy change. In addition to the complications that would arise systemically, personal interests are also threatened by this potential change in policy. There are banks making money off our loans and their interest, which is set to double July 1 if Congress doesn’t make a move. There are also students who paid off their debt and are pissed that everyone else doesn’t do the same. There are, too, students who can’t pursue their skills or their dreams because they can barely put food on the table as is and have to work whatever job is available.  This issue involves rich and poor and students and non-students and Wall Street and the government and protesters.  $1 trillion is too much of anything, particularly debt, particularly for young people who are expected to know what they want to do with their lives at the age of 17. (I am sorry, but this cultural norm is absurd.) Yet, can we reasonably hope to erase the debt, or even dramatically adjust it?

As is often the case, I am mixed about the proposition. Importantly, I do not know all the facts. Not even close. But I am a student, with loans, who reads the news and has been paying attention to this issue. I also believe media twists all stories, (yes, I used all and made a generalization), thus rendering a citizen challenged to find truth out there. I believe the state of student loans will prohibit our society and economy from developing to our full potential given the current available supply of cash capital, but I am not sure complete forgiveness is the answer. So, I certainly have some opinions.

I am disappointed that I and my co-humans cannot grow our minds and abilities through schooling without having to sacrifice a functioning organ. As I think ahead to graduate school – and yes I hope to get another degree because the job market is completely unforgiving as is and I want to stay competitive – I think first: “how will I pay?” I am thousands of dollars in debt now from my bachelor’s and am steadily paying that off, so it is scary to consider adding more to that number in an economic climate where there are no professional guarantees. We live in a society where education comes at a hefty price and requires, for some, decades of financial sacrifice that today doesn’t necessarily result in economic gain.  When I was in elementary school, I clearly remember that all my 20-something cousins and uncles went to college, which did not cost $50,000/yr, majored in English or political science and then left for Manhattan or Boston or DC, where they found a job that paid well. It is no longer possible to do this, so much so that my peers today who are graduating from 3 grueling years in law school are too often jobless upon taking the bar. I was a straight-A student in college, Phi Beta Kappa, super involved, etc. etc. and was rejected from many jobs that once upon a time were truly entry-level. When I began my two years in an AmeriCorps program, which was life-changing but paid very little, I immediately found a food service job to make extra cash for loans and savings. So, yes, I think the cost of college is exorbitant and exclusionary and puts people in a horrendous situation where they must choose a loan-strapped life if they want an education.  It would be wonderful if we could clear our debt, and even wiser if we would lower the cost of college to prevent the debt from occurring again.

So, here is my first problem with erasing the debt, or lowering it, or changing interest rates: it does not get at the real problem, which is the price tag on a college degree. If we only look to save students drowning in debt, then as per usual we are only concerned with short-term solutions to long-term problems. Ultimately, we need to change what we charge for an educated society.

Further, this issue is applicable to most students and for folks from all backgrounds, including the luckiest of us socio-economically speaking. In this way, I am one of the luckiest. I come from an middle-/upper middle-class background. I was raised by two educated Caucasian parents. (Being their biological daughter, I too am Caucasian…) They helped me pay for school and have helped me in small but never-the-less very important ways since graduation. Again, my privilege prevails and helps me even in a difficult situation. This is not the case for most people in our country. As PhD student Pamela Brown states on a segment of Democracy Now!, students of color are more likely to have debt, and more of it (http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/25/1_t_day_as_us_student). It is inevitable that students who are first-generation college-goers, or come from a background of poverty, or simply are not White, face different challenges that permeate more deeply into their struggle to become college students. The prospect of debt is one more obstacle that may convince these folks, those that our country should want to see truly have equal access – which requires elimination of obstacles – to higher education, to forgo university. This will only deepen inequality.

Point 3: our absurdly high debt amidst a high unemployment rate emphasizes that the payoff to school is low and limited to a point where to-be students need to question the ultimate value of higher education. That we must do so is a mark on our society. Obama and other governmental leaders consistently refer to the US as ‘behind’ other OECD countries in math and science; however, I am far less concerned with this and far more worried by the prospect that education is no longer a value of our society for anything other than economic gain. I would like my plumber to be as educated as my professor, my doctor as wise as my babysitter. I want learning to be a supported and important endeavor for a healthy and insightful populace.  By no means am I suggesting that school is ‘right’ for everyone or that it ought to be mandatory. I do, however, feel with solid clarity that if an American wants to go to school – wants to learn and grow their skills through books and hands-on experience or a classroom experience – he or she or ze should be able to do so without signing away their life to debt.

One more thing, regarding the grassroots approach:On the issue of ‘Occupy Student Debt,’ well, I truly believe substantial change is requisite in the name of humanity. I believe our system is twisted and our values misguided in the best case scenario. But I am still a bit irked to read this from the 1tday website:

On April 25th the total amount of student loan debt in the U.S. is due to top 1 trillion dollars. This marks a momentous victory for Wall Street—much to the despair of student loan debtors across the country. On this date, the profiteers on Wall Street will be popping champagne bottles, eating caviar, and sneering at the debt-burdened students and graduates who lug around this 1 trillion dollar ball and chain.

Does it mark a momentous victory? Will the profiteers be eating caviar at 12:01 a.m. to celebrate our losses? Is it certain no one on Wall Street carries with them student debt? Ok. Yes, I despise many of the values of Wall Street and I think pushing around money for your own gain is a nefarious way to live a life on this planet. And, yes, I do think there are some truly grimy dudes, grinning as they profiteer off the lowly masses. Banks have created the ‘money’ for student loans out of thin air, essentially, and need to pay it back through high interest rates. The privatization of loans means loss of access and binds the people who most need these loans in the first place into a deeper cycle of dependency. So, yes, I cannot emphasize enough how unnecessarily unjust I believe some of the current loan structures to be.  That said, I see the above quoted statement as symbolic of a major flaw in this and other grassroots movements today in their approach to change. When we pin ‘us’ against ‘them,’ we are fighting, not problem solving. As I mentioned before, small battles get at short-term change, which can seem to benefit us momentarily, but in the long-run only perpetuate dependency on the structures that got us in to whatever mess we find ourselves.

While I am happy for the movements that are fighting the government and private business to release their grip on student loans, I think the approach needs to focus on conversation and long-term foresight rather than immediate relief.  I don’t want the negativity – I find it a waste of breath and words – and instead I want thought and action. Because I cannot back this up with my blueprint for change, I will say in conclusion that I think student debt is a massive burden to out society, both ideologically and economically speaking.  I think Congress must keep down the interest rates come July 1 and I think colleges and universities need to lower their price tag. I think we need to more jobs in the States to provide our people with options and hope. I would like to see education as a tool for empowering a more self-sufficient and sane society, rather than burdened one grasping for options that do not seem to exist.

¿No puedo entender?

I’ve been basing my posts on articles or organizations related to education, but right now I wish to stray. Or innovate. At the very least, I will elaborate:

As I have mentioned before, I currently work at a public high school in Hartford, Connecticut. My professional title is simply “Tutor” and my functional position is just as vague as the two syllables alone suggest… Fortuitous have I been to engage in such an open-ended job because I am able to stick my curious hands into many pots.

A few months ago, I began working with a group of students on their senior project. It is a video documentary related to immigrant veterans and their rights and experiences working for a new government that may or may not treat them fairly.  Importantly, my students are English Language Learners (ELLs). Their linguistic status means that they have at least one barrier – language – to learning while living in an English-dominant society. As they do not speak the language of instruction with fluency, every corner is a bit more sharp, every step a bit more trying, on the already difficult journey through institutionalized learning.  In many cases, these students’ potential ability to understand concepts or prove their critical thinking skills are muted by communication challenges.

I ate dinner with my wonderful 82 year old grandfather the other day and shared some of my stories about school, including my work with these students. G-pa is one of the kindest, smartest, experienced people I have ever known. He is a U.S. citizen that was raised by Italian immigrants in central Connecticut. Based on numerous factors, not least of which were dominant cultural and economic pressures to become ‘Americanized’ and work towards that white picket fence, he and his family and the thousands and thousands of other immigrants who came to mainland U.S.A. in the early 20th century learned English. Period. There were no other options if you wanted to survive. So, based on his experience, my grandpa doesn’t quite understand why these students ‘don’t just learn English.’ On a pragmatic level, yes, we must rise to our challenges if we want to succeed.  Yet, considering how rapidly our society has changed and how much more diverse we have become, the realities and ideals of the 1910s are no longer applicable on a contextual or empathic level. Economic success (and survival) now have different entry points and require different skills. Access to resources and a solid education is more unequal than ever. Discrimination is still rampant. Pockets of cultural communities exist with such strong networks of support that many people continue to speak their native language and exist in a similar manner as they did when they were ‘home.’

When it comes down to it, for these and other reasons I cannot even begin to identify, immigrants today are not learning English as rapidly or consistently, and I just do not think it is fair to compare their experience to that of our families who came to the States a century ago.  Often times the factors prompting people to immigrate to the U.S. make the challenges presented by a language barrier unimportant to the point of seeming obsolete. Por ejemplo: if you are seeking asylum for your safety and that of your family, or searching for better opportunities to put food on your table, language learning will just have to come; it is not a priority in a situation where basic human needs are not being met. I have many students who were refugees in their last country of residence, where they barely had water and shelter…

Surely, I cannot presume to understand the multifarious influences that prompt a person/persons to pick up and create an entirely different life in another, very foreign country. And, of course, I will not suggest that all immigrants are running from nefarious on-goings of a country and are here working hard. (I won’t say that about anyone, American citizen or not, because generalizations are dangerous to understanding.) I can and will say that I work with students who are here and had little choice in the matter. What strikes me most is that they had limited, if any, agency in choosing their geographical location and yet are daily penalized for their inability to speak English.

This topic, like most others in education, is multi-faceted to an extent that is almost maddening when considering actions steps to work with language learners in navigating their lives in school and in their communities.  Indeed, talking about society’s expectations of the linguistic abilities of the newest citizens (or to-be citizens, or non-citizens… let’s just save this topic for another day…) can be puzzled on a very metaphysical level. But from this platform it lingers removed from the actual people who are straight up dealing with what it means to not speak English in America.

It is complex to consider the potentially negative political and economic ramifications rendered by an inundation of non-English speakers on our traditionally (circa seventeenth century..) English-speaking society when I am faced with two Nepali students who want to become doctors, but say they can’t because they already know the world thinks they are stupid.  ”But, Miss, how do I go to school to be doctor when my English does not sounds smart enough?”

Well, I don’t know.

I do know that the kids who are brought to this country are too often thrown into a reality where they poke at the dreams of success with the short straw of the lot. While I know that their lives in America can be far safer and filled with more opportunities and freedom, many did not wish to journey here and many do not feel at home, even after years of residency. The cultural and linguistic norms with which these young people once aligned their existences have become porous, flimsy, and ultimately made intangible by the demands of the United States.  Regardless of your values or beliefs, I dare you to claim going to a new place without friends or the verbal/oral/aural/cultural means to build a large circle of friends or a holistic understanding of norms and expectations is an easily manageable endeavor for a young teenager.  Or anyone.  It is challenge enough to deal with acne and hormones and school as a regular white American, and I do not mean that lightly. Maturing is a frighteningly difficult process in general, but particularly in a society that less and less emphasizes the importance of growing character, values, respect, and self-love.

Ultimately, after all that rambling, I came here today to say that my heart is huge and often weighty for my students and for the many other young people like them who are struggling to find their voice.