After a long, exhausting day, as I wondered if I’d done any good at all, seven former students burst through my door. “Miss J! You haven’t been after school lately! Where have you been?” they yelled. I’d taught many of them as 6th graders, then again in 8th grade, and now—they were sophomores. Practically grown up. “I have class all the time! I’m sorry! I have homework to do!” I responded, and they looked at me like I was nuts. “You are teaching AND in college?” said one. “Wait—you think you need to be SMARTER?!” asked another incredulously. “Dude. You know Miss J is on a quest to be an insufferable know-it-all,” a third said. I laughed. At the start of a new year, with brand new kids who didn’t yet get my zaniness—this was exactly what I needed to fuel me on. My former students hadn’t forgotten me. They weren’t embarrassed to be seen with such an uber-nerd. They knew I loved them like family. For the next three weeks, I saw over 40 of my former students and all of them said the same things “How are your new students? Are they being good for you? Do we need to talk some sense into them?” and of course “You’re back in school?!” Talk about validation.
I’ve been teaching middle school since 2006. At first, I was a fish out of water and had no idea about the challenges that lie in teaching low-income, high minority students. I was naive about cultural and language barriers. Clueless when it came to understanding social classes different from my own staunchly middle-class background. Many of my fellow teachers were in the same boat. While I have become more aware of the difficulties, I still struggle with the solution.
A colleague told me that to work in a school like ours, one needed to be a warrior, and she is right. In my short time here, I’ve already seen more than forty teachers come and go. Due to that, at my young age I’ve served as a mentor teacher, department chair, curriculum developer, and professional learning community leader. In addition, I’ve written plays, science simulations, song parodies, poems and raps for my kids, created a website for students new and old (www.stuckonscience.org) and an international club that sent aid to Africa and a thousand cranes to Japan. But despite all of the perks that come from a school where teachers are more migrant than the student population—there are very few people I could learn from…which is why I applied to USC.
USC’s MAT program has given me the opportunity to connect with people from different cultures, levels of experience and cities. Where else can I problem solve with teachers from LA, NYC and New Orleans in a single hour? My classes are relevant, useful, thought-provoking, startling at times, and more than anything else—filled with hope. Yes, there is a gaping abyss we call the achievement gap, but the professors at USC are trained to help us fix it.
