It’s 2:10 p.m. and the high school release bell just sounded. I arrived at school this morning at 6, but I won’t leave until 5. My students’ futures are at stake and are worthy of a few extra hours of my time.
I am a 22-year-old high school math teacher at a Title 1 school. Less than five years ago, I was a student at Sandy Creek High School in Fayette County. It was then my passion for equal educational opportunities began.
As a senior at Georgia Tech, I applied for and won a position with Teach for America, a program in which less than 10 percent of the applicants are accepted. To top off my joy, I was thrilled to learn that I would be teaching high school math in Atlanta.
I attended what TFA euphemistically calls “summer institute,” but it is more like boot camp. I taught eighth-grade math to middle school students who failed the CRCT. After teaching these classes, I attended intensive training workshops on topics that ranged from high-rigor lesson planning to classroom management. I learned about the levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, Lee Canter’s behavioral management cycle, special education practices and differentiation based on student needs — many of the same topics discussed by my friends who studied education in college.
On that first day of school in August, I entered my classroom knowing that every child has potential, and it was my mission — and as a teacher, my responsibility — to ensure they would receive the education necessary to unleash it.
During my first semester I built strong relationships with my students, some of whom had never passed a math class in high school without taking it multiple times, or were soon to be the first high school graduate in their family. I teach students who walk to school when they miss the bus, who live in two-bedroom apartments with 10 people, who hated math for most of their lives and never believed they could “dominate” (as we say in my classroom) every math problem they encounter — if they only believed in their potential and trusted that every problem has a solution.
I’m reminded daily that poverty, broken homes and working parents are added hurdles that they and I, as their teacher, must overcome. From this I’ve learned that success in the classroom is as much the teacher’s responsibility as it is the student’s.
And so I was puzzled to read in the AJC that the Cobb superintendent “averted a fight over Teach for America, withdrawing, at least for now, his proposal to hire 50 teachers from the program.” Superintendent Michael Hinojosa wanted to hire TFA teachers to help close a gap in achievement at schools in south Cobb, where test scores have consistently lagged the district average. Unfortunately, teachers and some board members were critical of the proposal, saying it undermined staff morale. How, I wondered, would hiring Teach for America teachers undermine morale?
I teach at a school in which veteran teachers fully embrace my optimistic and exuberant personality, and consistently assist me in becoming a better teacher. Few know that I am not a “traditional teacher.” I passed the math Georgia Assessments for the Certification of Educators in the 98th percentile. I immediately enrolled in an alternative certification program in which I will earn my renewable teaching certification by the end of this year. I attend almost every available staff development workshop because I want to do everything possible to ensure that my 180 students are receiving a rigorous math curriculum delivered with engaging and real-life applications.
Why won’t Cobb hire me or my TFA peers? What is more important when it comes to hiring educators: a teaching degree or an individual who believes that the achievement gap must be closed and is willing to do anything necessary to make that a reality?
To those opposing teachers in Cobb, I would like to share with you an excerpt from a thank-you note I received from one of my students: “Thanks for always being here for me when I need help, encouraging me to set and reach goals, for all the nice and kind things you have done to help me accomplish things at school. I had never made above a C in math before now. You motivate me to want to achieve my goals so I can be someone in life.”
“So I can be someone in life.” Should not the Cobb teachers have the same attitude — for the students? For high morale?
Emily J. Desprez is a Teach for America teacher in metro Atlanta.
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