They are homeless and hungry, brilliant, exhausted, confused, witty, born of broken homes and whole ones, well-fed, silly, wise, and phenomenal. They don't want to be there, but they want to learn. They don't know that they're smart, because they may never have heard it. They have probably been told the exact opposite--that they're slow or stupid, that they are a behavior problem, that they have attitude issues. The potential within them, the light that shines inside of them, is encased in a shell of self-doubt. I don't know how much I helped them learn English objectives this summer, but I am incredibly proud to have helped smash a hole in that shell, and let them shine through. Help them break that hole, and find out how capable they truly are. That is perhaps the best thing I did this summer. It may the best gift you can give them, and I promise you--do that, and they will follow you.
On the last day of Institute, the five week boot camp for Teach For America teachers; after the last student had left Agua Fria, having completed summer school; I sat in a room full of aspiring teachers who were writing reflections on what they had learned from their summer. Our advisors--wonderful veterans who gave us their smarts, their gimmicks, their trust, their faith, and themselves for the summer--had called us BATs. Officially, it stood for Bold Ambitious Teachers; in our weary group, it was Bad-Ass Teachers--a moniker to perk us up when the coffee couldn't do it anymore. Now our students were gone.
Many of us were crying; it was a hell of an emotional day. We'd spent only nineteen days with our kids--oh, and we considered them ours. I know I did, anyway--but we were attached to their achievement, to their well-being. I was lucky, for I had passed my entire class; most of my friends had had to pull aside some of their kids and break the bad news to them, to watch their face fall and the tears begin. One of my students had an IEP, and therefore passed with a 68.9%, but until I found out her fate, I spent days chewing on my nails, watching her average creep towards passing, knowing that even if she came in every mornign to work on her skills and aced the final, she would not make the 70% passing benchmark. The kids who were the "tough ones," or who had been left behind the most, became for many of us those with whom we worked the hardest. One of my friends spent nearly every weeknight tutoring a student, and watching him progress, only to tell him on the last day it had all been for naught. Of course, none of it was for naught--they had learned plenty of things--but on that last day, that is not at all how it seemed.
So after a morning where for many the failures weighed as heavy as our successes, we were sat down to write a reflection on what we'd learned over the summer, as a letter to next year's BATs--some piece of advice that was Corps Member to Corps Member, rather than advisor to lowly corps member. Even without having failed kids, I was still spurting some tears, crier that I am. When they give us time to write and reflect, I plugged in my little ipod shuffle. The first song that came on was "cold cash and colder hearts," by Thrice. I looked around at a room full of brilliant college graduates who had chosen to dedicate their talents to helping people who needed it, even if only for two years before business school; who were embodying the opposite of the song being wailed sarcastically in my head, and my own tears flowed.
The letter I wrote to next summer's BATs is paraphrased above.
When we came to Institute, wwe were excited to help our kids, and after the week of Induction--six days of TFA seminars pounding our mission into our heads--we felt dedicated to the cause. We joked about having drank the Kool-Aid that TFA was dishing out. TFA seemed like a cult dedicated to taking capable, Type A individuals and brainwashing them into achievement gap guerillas. We looked at the products of TFA training and that seemed like the end result of what we were beginning--creepily insistent on fixing education, with packed schedules, caffeinated circulatory systems and unblinking eyes.
After Institute, though, I see it differently. I don't think it's brainwashing, and maybe you disagree. Maybe it's just extraordinarily subtle and effective brainwashing that I didn't notice. I think it's instead a natural reaction to first-hand exposure to the kids we met this summer--kids who were fiendishly intelligent but who had a wicked aversion to authority, or who got bored easily, or just didn't see the point in a class that bored them, or a teacher who didn't seem to care. We walked in clueless about how to teach, and it's not that we know now what we are doing--but having a kid tell you that you're the best teacher he's ever had is a travesty. It feels great...but then you think "FUCK, I've been doing this for three weeks. What motherfucker with three decades' experience wrote you off and made you feel this way?" That shit will light a fire under your ass, if you let it. And that is the Kool-Aid.
TFA doesn't make it. They just bring you to the tap, and hope you pick up the gauntlet. I aim to. I'll see how I do.
*Name changed. Duh.
