Finally, Teaching For America

So, I know this has been a long time coming, and for that I apologize for anyone that has had the audacity to continually check this unupdated blog of mine.  Well I want everyone to know that updates will come weekly, and when August approaches will start coming daily!

So what have I been up to?  Well, let’s go back a few weeks ago.  I had just landed in Texas and was getting ready to make my boarding flight to head into Jackson, Mississippi.  I grab my bags, excited to head to the capital of my new state only to find that my plane is really no more than a 20 person bus jet.  You’d think that the capital city of a state would get a little bit more respect than that, but alas I was wrong.  I shared my plane flight and unfortunately my seat (Everything is definitely bigger in Texas) with a man named Ben who constantly seemed to want my guidance on the Soduku puzzle he was working on.

As we got into the air and eventually over Mississippi my eyes really lit up.  From the sky, every single inch of Mississippi is gorgeous.  Beautiful trees, farmland, swamp, I mean basically take the whole state and paint it green.  We landed our rickety jet on the runway and I stepped out to a cheering group of Teach for America teachers eager for me to arive if only to escape the confines of our little airport.

Now, I want to be kind to the great people of Mississippi when I say this, but take everything you would think about a capital city and throw it out the window.  It is gorgeous, don’t get me wrong, but I would not describe Jackson as a “sprawling cityscape”.  In fact Jackson is no larger than the small town I grew up in.

Anyway, we loaded up onto our shuttle and made the 4 hour trek to the Delta.  The farther we drove the more beautiful things got…and the further away we got from civilization.  A big city in Mississippi basically means that there is a Walmart and a gas station on the same block.

We trained for a few days, living in the local college dorms which sounds fancy until you realize that there is no internet, hot water, or well planned water drains in any part of housing.  Needless to say, showering was always a bizarre adventure, but I guess that is why our shower was also a small bathtub.

Training was exhausting, but well worth the effort.  Not long after arriving in Mississippi was it time to head to the great state of Texas where we would train in Houston in some of the cities “toughest” schools.

Which brings me to today (Sorry that took so long).  I have 8 wonderful girls that I teach Summer School to.  All of my girls failed math last year, and if they don’t pass the state exam this year they will all fail 7th grade and be forced to repeat.  We have learned many times over that failure to pass on to the next grade is as much a sign of a lack of education as it is the likely-hood of going to prison.  Needless to say my work has been hard, but incredibly rewarding.  I work everyday within a school of gang activity, fighting, cussing out teachers, and everything in between.  Yet, at the end of the day, my girls sit quietly in their chairs doing their work knowing that within the walls of my classroom they are not in a gang anymore, they are in math, and while many of them would just assume kill each other outside of the school, in my room they work in pairs to compare and order fractions, decimals, and percents.

The world I lived in in California was wonderful, but I am quickly seeing that my place is here, helping out these kids.  And when I move back to the Delta in a month, hopefully with fond memories and 8 girls who are moving on to the 8th grade, I hope that I still feel this way about the challenges that lay ahead.  And those challenges are plentiful.  A school with incredibly low state scores, more gang activity, and pockets of the town still stuck in an era of racial segregation and prejudice.  But, I don’t care.  The school looks beautiful, the kids will learn, their scores will rise, and just maybe one of them will make something of themself one day because I gave them the courage and the tools to ignore all the naysayers.  That is why I am teaching for America.

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