Teach For America teacher blogs are on Teach For Us

of fists and fathers.

stickyfingers — Tue, 07 May 2013 05:53:59 +0100

It's an unfortunately familiar scene in my classroom - one of my students raising their hand, fist balled, ready to land a punch in a dispute over a cup of crayons or the last available tricycle. When you're caught in a classroom that bounces back and forth between two distinct languages and it's your first time interacting with 21 other children who are the same age, have the same needs, and want the same toys it can be understandably difficult to remember to 'use your words' each and every time that someone makes you upset. It's part of why this year for me has become so much more about socioemotional development as opposed to rote memorization of letter sounds or numbers; my kids can't be functioning students if they don't have basic impulse control. Kindergarten preparedness has become a lot more about developing each unique person and his or her way of thinking about the world around them than what I initially felt should be a tightly run, smoothly packaged Hooked on Phonics environment. So that being said, when J went to hit a classmate I quickly intervened by placing my hand over his and reaffirming, "We use our hands to help, not hit. Please use your words if there is a problem." Usually that little pause in the process is enough to bring a student back to the classroom and, if nothing else, avoid a confrontation. But in this instance, something in J was relentless. He is my tallest boy and largest student (keeping in mind that everyone is five-years-old or younger) but I wasn't expecting him to push me back and start pounding into the arm, shoulder, and stomach of the girl. She immediately screamed and began to back away, but at this point J had seemingly lost all control and I had lost my collected demeanor. In my head I knew that we were always to frame instructions in a positive way (i.e. "Walk, please!" instead of "Don't run!") because developmentally telling a preschooler not to do something always ends up in them curiously trying to determine why you prohibited it in the first place. But in this instance, I was trying to regain my balance and stave off the barrage of punches J was throwing: "NO! NO! Stop, J, stop please! Stop we can't hit! J, please stop!" I pulled him from the now-wailing classmate and attempted to carry him to the benches on our playground where I always try to talk sense with my kids. They're young, but they can have conversations about basic rights and wrongs of recess behavior. But something was different; he began assailing me, the ground, and screaming "NO!" right back into my face. He was flailing wildly and I was so caught off-guard; I could feel his anger but I also didn't want him to risk hurting himself or another student. I got him to the bench and felt the wave of energy shift. Like a star collapsing on itself, he briefly suspended all retaliation and went limp in my arms. I loosened my grip and waited for him to cool off, expecting the normal plummet in a student's hostile behavior once they've been separated from the situation that was causing the anxiety. But then something burst. He screamed and fell to the ground, trying to scrabble through my legs and back to the playground. It felt like he was attempting to escape but I honestly couldn't figure out from what; part of me felt like he didn't know either. There I was, clearly capable of out-strengthening him, holding onto a pant leg as he desperately attempted to flee. After what couldn't have been more than three seconds, I let go and watched as he tore off, sprinting with no regard for his surroundings until he hid himself next to a small tree planted in a secluded corner of the playground. The entire area is fenced in-I knew he wouldn't be able to leave-but the entire episode felt so spontaneous and powerful, like a lightning bolt, that I couldn't just let him sit behind the tree, hunched over and holding back tears. He eventually removed himself from the area and sidled up to me. He didn't say anything and I was at a loss - until he just wrapped his arms around my leg and pushed his face into my thigh. It was a painful reminder of just how young my students are; how much developing they have left and how much practice they need in explaining what can feel to us like basic thoughts or emotions. But it is also a reminder that despite their youth my kids do feel and there is no amount of culture-building or expectation-holding I can possess that will prevent that. I later found out that J's father had been deported right around the time of this incident. It is the second time in a month-and-a-half that one of my boys has had his dad removed from the country. When I initially sat down to write this post, I had intended on its focus being J's dad and the fact that my Head Start classroom is funded by our government; the same government that put time and effort into deporting the fathers of my students. I am not going to pretend like I'm well-informed or a knowledgeable viewpoint on immigration or current reform efforts occurring. I don't think I could pretend to do enough research before writing this post to make an articulate point on it. All I'm saying is I have two very sad little boys who are both very confused and very upset about the fact that they don't know where their papi went and are not getting answers as to when they will see him again. I'm really putting time and effort into making them feel loved and welcomed in the room and I actually see E, the other boy, making tremendous progress. But I am curious as to what I can and should offer to a student whose life has been so incredibly altered at a time when they are undergoing immense development.

Attached

goldsteinog — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 21:56:35 +0100

Where have I been? Nowhere new. I have so many mini stories, heartbreaking stories, funny stories about the things kids say and the way they think and I honestly wish I had been keeping up with this blog so I could share them with all of you, instead of just my parents..though sometimes I'm pretty sure it's just my parents reading this. The kids are good, most of the time. And not in a behavior sense, but more in a social-emotional way. I've stopped thinking of kids as bad and good. All of my kids are good, sometimes they make poor decisions (the same way a drunk person might, because children are really just small drunk people), but they aren't bad kids. I can't say that the good morning hugs are getting old, because every single morning I've come in to school, there has been someone who wants to hug me. My dog doesn't even love me that much. Despite the love and the funny stories, I've been a wreck of a person recently. My administration and I are once again not functioning at a cooperative level and it's causing me a lot of anxiety and stress. We're back to that "don't talk to her unless she does something wrong, and then criticize her to hell and back" phase. LOVE IT. So I have a student with an IEP, he's autistic, and when he first showed up in my class I was dumbfounded. What do I do with him? How do I teach him? He couldn't write, he couldn't form words, just babble, he had no social skills, he was so far behind all my other kids and I had no training in special ed, not to mention working specifically with kids with autism. I was clueless. After I started realizing he was probably more scared of me than I was of him, I started realizing that this kid was actually way more advanced than all my other students. He knew all his letters, his numbers, he could sound and spell out words, he could read. Ok, so how do I teach him? I reached out to TFA, Easter Seals, Head Start, my supervisor, my university mentor, my professors...No one really had a lot to say. I was amazed that this kid had an IEP but wasn't receiving services of any kind and it didn't really seem to matter that no one was being trained on how to differentiate lessons to meet his needs. If no one else was going to do it, it was going to be me. This wasn't his first year in a Head Start classroom and they clearly hadn't addressed his needs the previous year, so I didn't see it happening this year. I know I'm definitely not the most effective teacher for his needs but I'm all he had. I researched autism, and I talked to a paraprofessional and I relearned a lot of sign language and I did everything with this kid. I figured out what he liked (letters and numbers), what he didn't (broccoli and green beans), and what motivated him (hugs) and that's basically what my curriculum has been based on all year. Now he's verbal, he knows all his letters and numbers in ASL, he can write letters and numbers and words (though I'm unsure if they hold meaning to him) and he's my baby. I don't mean that in a demeaning way. He's in no way infantile, or dependent on me, but by God does that kid love me, and the feeling is super mutual. I love all my kids, and I hug them all, and play with them all, and pick them up, and carry them around and tickle them. But for whatever reason, maybe it's the autism, or his family dynamic, or whatever, this kid has become particularly attached to me. Like, has started crying when I leave for the day, for 30 minutes-1 hour, attached. My supervisor has had enough of this attachment. She made it clear that I need to stop whatever I'm doing that makes him so attached to me because "we can't have him crying when you leave, he doesn't even do that for his mom". BAM. Just like that. Break it off. They finally had someone come in and evaluate the inclusion services being offered to him in the classroom. Let me reiterate that he is receiving no services. So how surprised were these people to come into my classroom and find out I'm "doing nothing" for him? And how surprised was I to find out that, despite all the efforts I'd been making since the beginning of the year, this was still my fault? And on top of that, someone questioned my ability to control my class. WHAT. WHAT. WHAT ARE YOU DOING? GET OUT OF MY CLASS, GET AWAY FROM MY STUDENTS, STOP EVALUATING ME AND DONT GIVE ME ONE MORE PIECE OF PAPER TO FILL OUT. I QUIT. But I didn't quit, because they're my kids, and they need me and I need them. And so I went into that meeting and finally stopped letting people trample me. I'm under no illusion that my students are quiet, obedient, angels but when you come into my classroom and have me bending over backwards to find you paperwork that the administrative assistant could have done, that means I'm not teaching. If I'm not teaching, then my kids are off schedule and acting up. They're 4 year olds this is not rocket science. So keep me out of your red tape and let my kids be. Someone in the meeting asked me why I didn't just tell Head Start "No, I can't fetch paperwork right now because my students are more important". Is that a trick question? With gritted teeth I replied, " I didn't think I needed to tell people whose job it is to advocate for underprivileged kids, that my students were more important than their precious paperwork". Everyone in that room outranked me, I didn't feel like I was really in a position to say no. I sat there for a few minutes, fuming, staring at all these people that were supposed to be doing so much good for my kids and their families and I've never been so disappointed. Maybe it's not my kids who are too attached, maybe it's me. But is that the worst thing?

More bright points (after a pretty crummy week)

tarheelintulsa — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:56:58 +0100

It's amazing how a few (or, let's be honest, a LOT) of frustrating times can completely blot over the high points of a week. In an attempt to wipe off the grime from the last part of 3rd quarter: -Possibly the best teaching adventure ever happened yesterday. I remembered at the last minute, while eating lunch with my 'lunch club' of kids that had behaved super well all week, that the nurse's birthday was over Spring Break. I had forgotten to buy a card, and this was my last chance to do anything. I proposed a secret plan to my 5-kid-strong lunch club group: We were going to run to the snack machine, buy the nurse a candy bar and secretly leave it on her desk. We had already watched her leave her office to go the bathroom, so we knew we didn't have much time at all. Within 2 segundos, we were literally sneakily sprinting down the hallway to my classroom to grab some quarters, working together to push the right letter-number combo to buy a Twix bar (¡¡E-siete!! ¡¡E-siete!!), running back to the classroom to get a post-it to tag it is as from our class, and then excitedly peering around the corner of her office door to check if she was still there. Luckily, she was still in the bathroom, so we put it down on her desk and tried to look calm and collected as we passed her in the hallway en route to the cafeteria. In reality, we were all giggling up a storm, but somehow the nurse didn't seem to realize it had anything to do with her. I think the nurse really appreciated that we remembered her, and it was a great lesson in how fun it can be to do things for others. Plus, we got to run in the school hallway. -- A good moment from parent conferences happened when one parent told me a funny story about an impromptu math lesson at home. My student was counting out her cereal at the table and bragging about how she had counted to 47 or something. Her mom--being the awesome mom she is--told her to make groups of 10 (in Spanish, "grupos de diez). The student rolled her eyes, saying, "MOM - groups of 10 are called DECENAS. Don't you know that?!" The mom was really impressed that her daughter knew the technical vocabulary for place value. :D -- The same student, after listening to one of her classmates sing a rendition of 'Jingle Bells' with a lot of 'booty butt's and 'poop' in the lyrics, dramatically announced that she is 'bored with stupid boys.' (In her exact words, "Me aburro de los chicos tontos.") Honey, just you wait.

Some bright points

tarheelintulsa — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 02:45:51 +0100

One of the best decisions I've made recently is to record myself reading a lot of the little easy readers for our listening center. After listening to the libritos so many times, the kids are way more apt to pick them up and start reading them by themselves.... and more apt to pick up other books like them and attempt reading those, too. Very cool. I also had a freaking mind-blowing moment yesterday explaining borrowing in subtraction only with manipulatives. "We need to take away 6 ones, but there are only 5... how can we take away another one?!?!?!??!?! ahhhh!! MATH"

Manning Up

stickyfingers — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 06:29:27 +0100

There is something inherently emasculating about revealing oneself as a preschool teacher in conversation with strangers. It's always an interesting social experiment, however, and I usually take one of three routes: simply state that I teach pre-K, go vague and say that I work with younger elementary students, or drop the TFA bomb and let that run its course instead. ("Oh, I know someone doing that!" "Oh my gosh that's awesome, I could never do that!" "I bet your kids are so cute!") Regardless of my choice, the subsequent dialogue follows a similar arc in which I reveal humorous classroom hijinks, show off how much glue is stuck to my fingers, and make an offhand comment about really, truly loving it. And I always hate that last part, because I never understand why I feel this urge to defend the fact that while I wasn't initially interested in teaching Early Childhood Education, I can honestly say I'm glad I'm here. And that's not to say there aren't pitfalls, moments of downright confusion, or mornings where I have to drag myself into the room for yet another round of "The Bubblegum Song." But, as February begins and I settle into the familiar routine, small flickers of pure joy push me to continue growing if not for the sake of myself, for my students. __________________________________________ "Mr. Nick, do you have a grandpa?" A relatively familiar question from a preschool student; their four-year-old minds are beginning to understand that their perspective of the world does not always match up with those of the individuals around them. I have had, on more than one occasion, confused stares and blank faces when students discover that I live with neither my mommy nor my daddy and, in fact, drive my own car. "I do. He lives far away. I have to take a plane to see him," I respond, excited at this chance to scaffold a conversation and see what family member vocabulary my precocious and eldest boy remembers. "I have a grandpa. And an abuelita. And a brother and my mommy," he chatters, quickly spurting off a list of relatives. Before I can ask follow-up questions, he looks at me and says, "But I don't have no daddy." I hang in limbo. While I have a general understanding of my students' home lives, many have a carousel of adults picking them up from school each day and an eagerness to go home with a favorite aunt or relished neighbor that has never revealed an awareness of any differences between their own potentially myriad caregiver(s) and a peer's. "But I have Mr. Nick. And when I grow up, I'm going to be Mr. Omar!" he runs quickly to the bathroom door and holds it open, pretending to supervise the students washing their hands inside for breakfast. "Don't forget soap!" he happily chirps to them, then stands with his back pressed against the door and extends himself as high as possible, willing himself to grow the extra inches that might relay his new position. I can't even attempt to hide the broad smile on my face. "So you're going to be a teacher?" I ask. "I'm Mr. Omar," he repeats again. "Like you!" While I won't attempt to take credit for the fact that Omar is already one of my most consistently ecstatic students, I do feel a sense of pride in knowing that some small part of him believes that with enough vegetables at lunch, he can grow into someone like me. And while we're talking about the high school class of 2026 here, and plenty can change, it is encouraging to know that my classroom has the type of atmosphere where students regard what I'm doing as something that merits duplication. However, I also acknowledge the fact that to a young boy supported by a single mother in a school where I am the only male teacher, I may be one of his few consistent glimpses of what it means to be an adult male. And it's a responsibility I refuse to take lightly. So I think I'm done "admitting" to being a preschool teacher. From here on out, I will unabashedly own the fact that I work with 22 amazing students tirelessly each day in the hopes of preparing them for the rest of their lives. I tie their shoes, I remind them to blow their noses, and I also see limitless potential in each and every one of them. Sure, I'm not exactly certain if anyone is reading this -- but if you're me, one year ago, and you're trying to figure out what button you accidentally clicked that put you in preschool... don't worry. You have an incredibly pivotal position that entails working with students (and their families) in their first encounter ever with education (which is an entirely other experience worth posting about.) And if you're a guy considering applying and you haven't made up your mind about what you want to teach? Take a moment, consider the options, and if you dare... man up.

Well, look at me!

tarheelintulsa — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 21:13:36 +0100

After thinking that I might not post again this semester, here I am writing just a few days later. I've been thinking a lot lately about what I have learned from the TFA experience. It's a question that is going to come up in job/school interviews and casual conversations for the next several years, I imagine. I know what I don't want my answer to be: 1) Teaching is HARD. (duh? or, even if that's not obvious to everyone, I'd hate to think that I never learned anything past what was evident on the first day of school.) 2) Teaching is HARD, but if you just let the kids inspire you, you will become a superstar teacher that single-handedly makes a difference in the achievement gap. (First of all, this sounds like every other TFA person ever - see "the TFA essay" referenced at http://edushyster.com/?p=1418. Also, I don't feel like a superstar, so this storyline doesn't seem authentic to me. Lastly, though I still believe in the importance of putting strong teachers in classrooms, I'm now more convinced that it takes a lot more than that to make headway in the effort to improve our nation's schools. I'm not so cynical that I don't think it's a problem worth trying to fix, but I think we have to be extremely strategic about how we promote progress in schools. Let's not leave out any necessary ingredients and expect the cake to turn out all right.) 3) Teaching is HARD, and I wish I had just lived in Spain after college. (No...though I might say this some days, I don't think this is true. I also just don't believe in having huge regrets. Besides that, I love Tulsa and I've gotten to know a lot of seriously great people (ages 4 and up). That bears repeating: seriously great, unforgettable little people and big people.) --- So what is my answer? I think a big part of it has to do with setting reasonable limits for yourself. You have to know when you're being lazy and need to push yourself (and accept constructive criticism). At the same time, you also need to find your upper limit--the maximum you can realistically expect from yourself that particular day, given your particular circumstances-- and then defend it. Who else will? I remember something said in a sermon I heard last semester along the lines of, 'treat yourself with the grace, kindness, and forgiveness of a grandmother towards her grandchild.' I've also learned some nitty gritty stuff about bilingual schools, which I wholeheartedly believe in as part of our fight for social mobility through education and great educational opportunities for disadvantaged students, as well as our fight against xenophobia in this country. Empower kids with language and expand their social comfort zones, and there's no stopping them. I'm sure other things will come to mind as the semester goes on, but that's what I have so far.

No promises

tarheelintulsa — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 13:13:48 +0100

I'm a bit embarrassed that my last post was after the first week of school in August. At the same time, here I am after the first week of school in January, and I could stop after this and feel content with the symmetry. That's not the plan, but it's an option. To sum up last semester: the first quarter was the most difficult I've experienced, period. Here it is January, and even the school nurse just shakes her head at the thought of my class from August to October. The second quarter was spent recovering... recovering tranquility in the class, recovering lost instructional time, etc. I spent my Christmas break recovering physically, after getting pretty sick there at the end. And here I am in January.

Recommendations and Surveys

Mr. Milwaukee — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 17:40:22 +0100

At the beginning, middle, and end of each year, Teach For America sends a survey to its corps members and asks us to rate a number of areas with regard to our performance as teachers and the staff's performance as guides to our professional development. While some of the questions change from survey to survey, a handful remain the same. One that stands out in my mind is how likely I would recommend TFA to a prospective candidate. I always save my survey responses, and, in this case, I have noticed that my response to this question has steadily declined over the past year and a half. It's ironic, too, because this past week a friend's daughter, a very intelligent young woman at one of our nation's top universities, asked me about the program and if it might be right for her. Last year, regardless of how she felt about education, I would have said "Look into it! It might be a fit for you!" Over the summer, I probably would have said "If you're interested in teaching, this is a great way to get your certification." But, this past week, my gut told me not to subject another human to the TFA sales pitch. Instead, I asked her about her interests and what she wants to do with her life. She sounded very passionate about education, so, since she is a math scholar, I referred her to several programs and highlighted the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship. As I think about this devolution of my opinion of TFA, I realize that it has little to do with the core of the program. I think TFA is a decent program. It connects the dots for prospective teachers by finding them a job and enrolling them at a university to ensure they are eventually certified for the job. That's amazing. Also, considering the fact that it gets drawn into political crosshairs every day, I think the organization does an outstanding job staying non-partisan. Even when it comes to pro- and anti-union rhetoric TFA largely stays away from the political arena. What irks me about the program is the idea that it is a movement. On every survey I am asked if I feel part of a movement. So I feel the need to say that I have studied movements, I have been part of a movement, and from my perspective Teach For America does not look or feel like a movement. Movements have leaders who reach out and care for those within the movement. Throughout the entirety of my placement in TFA, I have felt like I have had to be the one to reach out and say that I wanted to be part of the corps experience. I have had to be the one to make the connection. Yet, there are people hired to run this "movement" and who should be connecting with corps members individually on a weekly basis if this is to be a true statement. Look at any community organizer and look at what they do. Whether they organize church groups or student groups, labor unions or block clubs, community organizers go out and connect with the people of their movement one-on-one and ask "How are you doing?" and "What can we do together to make things better?" Community organizers don't simply send a blast email. Community organizers don't simply come into a room and observe. They roll up their sleeves and they get to work alongside the people they aim to aid. If TFA is to make any corps member like me feel more personally connected in the future, then staff--in particular MTLDs (aka our mentor teachers)--must roll up their sleeves. Maybe I am getting this wrong. Maybe the movement is supposed to be this corps of teachers creating communities within their schools. If that's the case, then yes I organize events at my school and yes I connect weekly with my students' parents, but I was busy getting my bearings in year one--learning about my school, university, families, new city, and teaching in general. Now, as I approach this period when I can organize my school community, I am practically out the door and I can tell you that there are plenty of other second-year corps members right there with me. I am proud to be a teacher and I know that regardless of what I do next year I will be working to make this world a better place, but part of me feels like a victim of fraud. I did not expect my work in Milwaukee to be easy and I did not expect anyone to be sympathetic. I did, however, expect to be part of something bigger, and all I have seen is a skeleton that connects several working parts. Teach For America is good for putting great people in great places, but I have yet to see great things from the organization itself.

Yes

aea107 — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 22:28:38 +0100

I don't update this blog often. A recent post on here questioning the relative silence of the 2012 corps and suggesting perhaps there is a rather insidious explanation (such as widespread mental breakdown) for this silence inspired me to write on here. I may be a 2011, not a 2012, but for posterity's sake, I felt I should post because I am NOT having a mental breakdown. If someone would have told me this time last year that I would be planning to stay in the teaching profession for longer than my commitment to TFA, I would have been quite certain that they were horribly mistaken. Though I came into TFA open to the idea of continuing to teach after the 2 years, I quickly decided that this was not going to be a viable path for me. I found teaching to be unpleasant and, quite frankly, depressing. Not even the act of teaching, per se, but navigating a hostile work environment and constantly telling small people what they should be doing, I just, I don't know, didn't like it very much. From August through March of last year, virtually every day was very, very, stiflingly DARK. In March of last year, some (though not all) of the cloud lifted as things began to fit together more easily. Every day was no longer a struggle. I had some entire weeks that by without any problems at all. My students EXCELLED. Things felt, if not good, at least sustainable. Again, if someone had told me at the beginning of last year that my students would do as well as they did at the end of the year, I don't think I would have believed it. Fast forward to now. I'm filling out job applications for kindergarten positions in different cities. I am pretty sure I am going to be teaching next year (and pretty sure I am going to relocate, at least to a different school, if not a different city). Quite frankly, I enjoy the community I work in, many of my coworkers, and the families and students who come through my class. Leaving my students from this year and last year will be very sad for me. But I need to be in an environment that cares more about early childhood and doesn't (literally) store trash in my classroom (a very blatant, very real metaphor for the level of importance my current administration places on early childhood). No, no. No more of that for me. It's going to be early learning centers from now on (fingers crossed). I've come to an impasse, though, in that I find myself half filling out applications for the burgeoning charter movement I've professed in the past to be decidedly opposed to. This is a level of hypocrisy that is so rotten to me that I haven't actually finished an application. I am not against these schools as individual entities (provided that they are actually successful schools, for children), but I am against the impact schools like these have on schools like the one I currently work at. I am also against a widespread movement to privatize a public service. It is difficult to frame the charter movement, to me, in a way other than this. As I tell my students when they tap me repeatedly, "I don't like that." What's a girl to do? I know I want to stay teaching in the inner city (if not Baltimore, then New York, or perhaps Philadelphia). I also want to work at a school that is not inadvertently (or even intentionally) disadvantaging the students who don't attend it, i.e. destroying inner city communities. I mean, I'm not saying that all charter schools are doing this. I quite liked the charter school I did my institute teaching at in West Philly. I guess I just know what it's like to be one of those CMs (or not) who teach at general enrollment public schools in cities enamored (and perhaps blinded) by the charter movement. It feels pretty bad, by the way. Anyway, just to weigh in on the question of why more new CMs don't post on here (if anyone is still reading my rambles!), I can say that I honestly don't post on here because I believe TFA keeps tabs on its members in a slightly creepy way and I am quite certain that people in our respective TFA offices read our blogs. Not that I have a problem with this exactly, but, I mean, we all know that TFA is not overwhelmingly receptive to, uh, dissent, either inside or outside of its movement. I voiced a lot of my complete and utter disappointment (and disgust) at how little support I received from TFA holistically last year and I guess I just don't care as much anymore because I never once obtained an adequate explanation (or apology?) for that. I know a lot of people seem to experience guilt and shame from the TFA staff they deal with (like people who choose to quit or who don't have sufficient/good data, etc). I didn't have this experience. Instead, I experienced being basically ignored by TFA from start to present. I don't even fill out those little surveys they give us anymore. Any support or help I received last year surely did not come from TFA, and I don't expect that to change much. My "need" for TFA has severely diminished. I am excited to finish my commitment and teach without any obligations to TFA anymore. I don't even harbor bitterness towards TFA for this. I don't know what else to say about it.

Thank you

goldsteinog — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 04:26:50 +0100

I'm from a small county in Virginia and that's where I went for the holidays this year. Despite it's size, it's one of the wealthiest counties for it's size in the nation and the public schools are amazing. I think I've mentioned before how lucky I am to have lived where I lived, and attended school there. I'm privileged, I'm white, and I probably can't relate to my students........or that was how TFA made it sound when I showed up for institute. I was going to have to put in double the work to relate to my students' families and understand the culture they come from. For the most part that's true. I have kids who don't have stable home lives, family dynamics I never had, and when the option is to talk to another teacher who can relate, or talk to, white, upper-middle class, me...take a guess as to who parents will reach out to. I had something to prove. This is something I've been struggling with for the first 4 months of school. It's hard to feel at home in a place that's so different from home. So when my holiday break began I rushed to my apartment to get packed and get on a plane home that night. As the plane touched down on December 21st at 10:30pm ET, I sat in the middle seat of my row, sicker than I'd been all school year, and I cried. I don't really know why I was crying. I guess I was just relieved, so relieved to be back with my family, back somewhere familiar, back home. Of course, being home meant all I did was talk about being in Chicago. I'd talk about my students, show pictures of my students, tell stories about my students, and I started to realize that maybe Chicago was more my home, and these kids (and their families) were more my family than I had originally thought and they still needed help, and I still had something to prove. So, I put a note out on the listservs for my neighborhood and some nearby ones as well, asking if anyone had anything appropriate for preschoolers that they might be willing to part with so I could use it in my classroom. When I put the note out I was hoping for books, my school is really lacking books and they're the most expensive things to buy. I got 16 responses in less than 24 hours, on Christmas Eve. It was amazing how many people reached out asking what they could do, what was appropriate to donate, and when they could come by to drop off stuff. I picked up box after box of toys, books, games and art supplies from people over my break and every time I said thank you and expressed how amazed I was by everyone's generosity. My parents have continued to pick up donations to ship to me since I've returned to Chicago and my mom keeps sending me updates about all the things they've received as donations. When she called me earlier, I was in the Target (I should move in to the Target) grocery shopping. She said she had been at a neighbor's house picking up donations put together by the 8 year old boy in the family. When my mom walked in, she said he was waiting for her to walk her through all the stuff he'd picked out to donate. After she had loaded things into the car he came up to her and gave her a $20 bill folded really small. He'd gotten some money for Christmas and said he wanted "to make a cash donation" to my kids. As I sit here, typing this, I'm crying, so you can't imagine what a wreck I was in the Target, 3 hours ago when my mom originally called and told me. I'm white, and I'm upper-middle class, and I had an excellent education and at some point I began to think of myself as being less qualified for my job because of those things. Like I didn't belong because I couldn't relate. I love my kids, and I love their families. I know that I didn't grow up in their neighborhoods, or attending their schools, I'll probably never face some of the challenges that they'll face living in Chicago. But I love my kids, and I love their families, and that's all I have to prove. I've never been so proud of where I'm from as I was today in the cereal aisle at Target. My parents support me, my friends support me, the community I grew up in supports me and with all that support I receive, I pass it on to my students. Because they might not be upper-middle class and they might not attend amazing schools, but I'll be damned if they don't grow up feeling supported by as many people in their lives as possible. So to everyone who donated and supported my classroom, myself, and ultimately, my kids, thank you. Thank you so much.