look ahead
Four months into Teach For America, I know that this is not what I want to do for the rest of my life.
And I've got over one and a half years to go on my two-year commitment.
This isn't to say that TFA isn't a great organization. They are. By a competitive selection process that is growing in applicants exponentially, they hook in a lot of people who would not teach otherwise. Unequal quality of education is one of the biggest problems in America today; education in general is always a hot topic with politicians. Simply put, the quality of education in certain areas is better than others. The inner city of Baltimore falls in the latter category. That's why I'm here: TFA sends its corps members on 2-year assignments to make an impact in the areas that need help most. This is not complaining, but a daily reality.
I teach in a "classroom" in a hallway. The only thing that distinguishes the shape of my classroom is a set of about 7 dividers, most bent and crooked (one fell over twice today). Without a door or walls, my classroom is constantly open to distractions - students or staff walking by or into my class, things being thrown over the dividers (yet another trash can was thrown and hit one of my more well-behaved students in the back of the head today) and students yelling things into my class or my class yelling back. Half the lights don't work, but sometimes it feels like that doesn't even matter - the main hallway light switches are right by the 6th grade wing door, which means that any student can turn them off. My lights are turned out no less than 10 times a class period. Several styrofoam-ish ceiling tiles are missing; one gaping hole leaks water when it rains. This is the environment I "teach" in.
At the beginning of the year, I had 44 kids in one of my classes. I'm content now with no more than 32 students per class, but class size is one of the biggest factors in learning, without a doubt. Individual attention is harder to give, but we still try. The state of Maryland tells us what stories we have to read and what we have to teach with them. Then "the state" becomes personified when older men in suits start flooding the building with clipboards. The state comes into your classroom and makes sure you have a learning objective written on your board in the correct "know-do" format, or maybe critique your teaching style. When I gave the students newspapers to read once they had finished their work one day, a wandering state member told me I should have taught "newspaper etiquette" to the students, showing such life-saving techniques as how to fold a paper properly and what a "gutter" is. When I saw one of these state members drive away in his red Corvette while an older teacher at our school walked to her Volvo, I sort of lost interest in what the state had to tell me.
The kids I thought were "bad" in high school have nothing on these kids. The amount of swearing, fighting, disrespect, vandalism and general insanity that I see in any given day is sometimes overwhelming. And the talking. The talking. The talking. Apparently it's okay to yell across the classroom to say something about someone's dead mother while I'm talking in the front of the class. Teaching, for me, is 75% discipline. That number is getting slightly better with time, but as a first-year teacher thrown into this world, I'm still learning. Detention, zero grades, suspensions, phone calls home to parents - you would think that these methods would work. You would think that. I've made 30 parent phone calls in one night before and felt like nothing happened differently the next day. When I've got a misbehaving student, I have a pretty good idea of what the parent (usually not a plural) is going to be like. Again, I'm learning and I've seen some incredibly well-managed classrooms (even from younger teachers), but it's something I focus on every day.
Teaching is hard; there's no other way around it. You teach and come home to grade papers and plan for the next day...the work rarely stops. We've already had about ten people quit TFA Baltimore and maybe 5-7 "regular" teachers quit at my school alone (sometimes even the substitutes quit!). And that's the main reason that I feel compelled to stay around: I don't want to give up on these kids. Yes, it's a hard job. Yes, it's stressful. Yes, it's underpaid. But someone has to be in these classrooms. I'm trying. I'm nowhere as good as I could be, still young and naive and not ready for the real world where things do tend to get more difficult. I'm trying.
The main reason I revamped this website was in looking ahead towards the future. I want to attend a creative arts graduate school in 2004; in particular, Portfolio Center in Atlanta (hence the "portfolio" section on this site). But since I currently don't have the money to attend, I'm trying to save up as much as I can during these two years. In the meantime, I hope I make a small difference in a few lives. Right now, I find comfort in my peanut butter and jelly sandwich at lunch, my friends and family, and the hope of a better tomorrow. That's pretty much it.
(I'll probably be "blogging" a little less often now, but this will still serve as my out-of-school creative outlet with music and illustration.)
Tuesday, December 17 at 8:19 PM
Okay Samurai Multimedia is Dave Werner's personal site. I'm currently working at Minor Studios in San Francisco. Thanks for visiting! (more...)
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