Corps Member Address

“South Dakota, South Dakota,
We are west of Minnesota,
We are teaching the Lakota on the reservations there.
We’re way up in the Great Plains,
but were down here now to get trained,
so we don’t all end up insane after teaching for two years.”

It was 4:00 am in the morning and I was struggling to get the catchy lyrics of my corps theme song out of my head. Actually, after my sixth lesson plan of the night, those song lyrics were about the only intelligent thought I had left. You see, I had already cried my eyes out in the hopes that the lesson plans would just go away—they of course went nowhere but I soon had puffy eyes and a vicious headache. I tried pleading with my Corps Member Advisor for a bit of understanding. She told me she understood perfectly—she understood that it was 9:00 pm and I had better get my butt in gear if I was going to pump out six lesson plans. Inspirational as her words were, I still managed to fall asleep on the floor of the computer lab around 3:00 am. I woke up soon after with two more lesson plans to go. As 4:00 am rolled around, an hour which I christened long ago “the hour of despair” I lost all hope of ever sleeping again. I decided instead to tweak the last few lines of the South Dakota Corps theme song. It went something like this:

“South Dakota, South Dakota,
It is west of Minnesota,
I’ll be teaching the Lakota on a reservation there.
I was way up in the Great Plains,
Now I’m in boot camp to get trained,
And I’m already insane after teaching for two weeks.”

At 4:00 am in the morning, my little ditty struck me as hilarious, but more importantly, it serve to motivate me. There was no way I was going to let Teach for America break me, darn it. I was part of a great movement of people that was working to obliterate the achievement gap. There was simply no way some Business Week #10 company was going to get in my way! My anger fueled me through the remaining hours (hour) of the morning until with great pomp and circumstance, I triumphantly shoved my lesson plans into my CMA’s folder. Take that Teach for America—my students will achieve!

Now fast forward to week three. It is Wednesday and another million lesson plans are due…Well, okay—just four but it may as well have been a million at the pace I write them. I am just about to brave the madness of the copy center that always heightens near the midnight hour. I am so filled with dread at the thought of the long hours ahead of me, I almost run right into my Corps Member Advisor, Miss C.P. She throws me an annoyingly cheerful grin. Does she even realize who she works for? She works for the enemy—the enemy who is trying to break us! This place makes the Marine Corps look like Spring Break in Maui. As does often occur during the later stages of exhaustion, the filter between my brain and mouth had shut down so I blurted out, “Miss C.—do you like your job?”

“I love my job,” she replied. Reasoning that she somehow must have misunderstood the question, I remained silent. She gazed at me, tilting her head to the left as she so often is inclined to do and added, “Why? Do I not seem to like it?” Dangerous waters, I thought. “It’s not that” I hastily replied, “it’s just…why are you working for Teach for America?” And then the strangest thing happened—her grin grew even bigger and her gaze even more intense as she replied, “Why do I work for Teach for America? I work here for my babies in the Delta. Every day I work my hardest so that the world is a better place for them when they grow up. All of this, it’s for my babies in my classroom and for the babies I have one day. I work for Teach For America because every day that I come to work, I am making a difference in the lives of children and that is powerful. I am a here because helping you become an excellent teacher will help my babies too. That is why I am here. That is why I am a part of Teach for America.”

I have thought a lot about what Miss C. said that night. It was an important moment for me for it was the first time that I realized that Teach For America was not some funky text font, special time zone or abstract idea—it’s us. It’s Miss C., loving her babies and pushing her corps members to do the same. It’s Brian Vannest, seeing every child as a genius. It’s Mr. P, willing to use his past successes and failings as a teaching tool for others. It’s Leslie Anderson and Vicki Foss, exchanging without complaint their Saturday of leisure for a Saturday of tutoring. Teach for America is me--struggling, complaining, flawed and entirely too unromantic to be the heroine of this story. But that is what I am—I am hero. And that is what you are. If you don’t believe me, look a little closer the next time one of your babies learns how to add for the first time. Pay a bit more attention when your kid walks with his chin a little higher in the hallways. Don’t ignore the grudging but sincere signs of thanks your high schoolers give you for being the first to demand more of them. You are heroes now and you’ll be heroes in your regions. And though TAL Rubric is there to remind us how far we have to go, don’t ever forget how far we have come.

Teach ‘em up,

BB, Teacher/World Changer