If you are like I was during the spring of my senior year, you dread this question. I felt like I was supposed to have an intelligent, well thought-out plan that included law school, medical school or a job on Wall Street. While each was an excellent opportunity for post-graduation work, they just weren’t the right fit for me.
Instead, I wanted to dedicate my time to some form of community service. I considered the Peace Corps and a host of other nonprofits. Yet I just couldn’t ignore the flyers I saw scattered across campus that articulated an immense injustice in our own society:
“Nine-year-olds growing up in low-income communities are already three grade levels behind their peers in high-income communities.”
As I stared at the statistic, I wondered how one of wealthiest and most industrialized nations in the world could foster such devastating disparities in opportunity. I questioned how the achievement gap would affect our nation’s future in the global workforce. If millions of our students are already several grade levels behind, how could we expect them to successfully compete with students from China, India or the European Union? I perceived the achievement gap as a threat to not only social justice but also the economic and national security of this country.
In 2005, I decided to take action and joined Teach For America, moving to Phoenix with 85 other recent college graduates from around the country. What transpired over the next two years were some of the most rewarding, challenging, frustrating and inspirational experiences I have ever had.
When I arrived I learned that I would be teaching special education for 14 elementary students with severe cognitive disabilities — a challenge I had not anticipated but still welcomed. My students were on average four years behind in reading and three years behind in math and lacked the self-confidence to believe in their own potential.
But that was not going to stand in our way of success. I worked with each student to set individual goals and we tracked their progress through “reading rockets” that hung in our room. As they met their goals, they moved their rockets up the wall closer to their personal star, which represented their big goals. Not only were the students excited and motivated to reach their academic destinations, but they were excited to see each other’s progress. I still remember the day that one student stood up and chanted another’s name as the second student moved his rocket up the wall. Their peers quickly joined in, and from that moment on it was a tradition for us to celebrate each other’s progress in the most fanatical ways possible.
At the end of my time in the classroom, each of my students knew all 26 letters and their corresponding sounds. Ten students were reading in the school-wide reading program and sometimes out-performing their typical peers. They learned sign language and were able to greet classroom guests in nine different languages because of our “around the world” social studies curriculum. They could name all nine planets and were the first class to tell me that “Pluto isn’t really a planet, Miss K.” The “superstars” of Room 146 surpassed their goals and even changed others’ expectations along the way.
I will graduate from Harvard University’s Graduate School for Education this June with a Master’s degree in education. Having taught in a low-income community, I was better prepared to engage in dialogues with colleagues and think about the complex issues within education. I was also able to understand first hand how national reform policies interact with day-to-day life in schools — something that has allowed me to develop my own ideas about creating effective education reform. Following graduation, I plan to enter into the world of public policy, where my experience in the classroom will be an invaluable resource to draw from as I continue to impact education reform.
Our nation desperately needs dedicated, smart and motivated teachers who will prepare our students and provide them with the opportunities they deserve. Be a part of the solution to help change those daunting statistics. I encourage everyone to consider Teach For America. There is no better way to spend the next two years.