Notes from an Honors College graduate now involved in Teach for America
From Brittany Palmer,
Honors College graduate, May, 2007.
Click on one of the dates below to read Brittany's news from that month.
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If you had asked me a year ago what I would be doing now I probably would have said something like this: “Teaching at some nice middle school near Columbus.” Teach for America wasn’t really part of my vocabulary then, and I only thought about the state of North Carolina during basketball season. A lot has changed in a year.
After hearing about Teach for America for the first time, I thought the idea was intriguing, but I wasn’t sure it was actually for me. I didn’t know if I wanted to move out of Ohio after graduation, and I didn’t know if I was prepared to teach in a high needs area. Furthermore, I still did not fully understand the mission of the organization. So, I shelved the idea for a while.
I began investigating Teach for America a little more and I realized that the organization is built upon many of the same ideals that I hold. As an education major at The University of Akron, I had the opportunity to see a variety of different schools in and around Akron. The experiences that I had started to make me think more about Teach for America’s mission of ending educational inequality and ensuring educational opportunities for all children.
Even after all of the research I did, it wasn’t until the final application deadline neared that I began thinking very seriously about the idea of joining Teach for America. Still, I didn’t actually start my essay until about two days before the final deadline (better late than never). Even after starting, I had convinced myself that it would be interesting just to see if I could make it past the first round of the process. I never thought that I would be asked to participate in a round of phone interviews, or that later I would be asked to go to Cleveland to teach a lesson.
When I got to Cleveland I immediately felt out of place as I walked into a huge office building located downtown. I checked in at the security desk, took the elevator up to the appropriate floor, and found myself sitting in an office that overlooked the lake. I was led into a conference room along with about a dozen other applicants. Each applicant was responsible for teaching a five minute lesson, which was interesting considering most Teach for America applicants have no teaching experience. One person used an IPod to demonstrate literary symbolism in a Shakespearian classic (a hard connection to make in five minutes), while someone else did a really cool science experiment. Shortly after that final interview I was invited to join the 2007 Corps. I was able to list a preference on where I would like to be placed, so I selected Charlotte. I drove down to see the city that I had just agreed to teach in for the next two years and realized that the adventure was just beginning.
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December, 2007
Shortly after accepting the offer to become a 2007 Charlotte corps member, I was told that I would be going to Atlanta, Georgia to take part in the Teach for America Summer Institute. Charlotte, along with corps from Phoenix, Miami, Eastern North Carolina, and Atlanta, would be attending the institute as a beginning to our training that would hopefully allow us to become successful leaders in the classroom. I had heard horror stories about how challenging institute was, and after looking at our daily schedule I was a little worried about what I had gotten myself into.
I realized that my summer, which had so far been comprised of sleeping in until 10 o’clock, was officially finished. I drove down to Atlanta and found the dorm room on the campus of Georgia Tech that I would be calling home for the next five weeks. As a part of institute, I would be going to sessions to learn what it takes to be a part of a classroom in a high needs area and I would also be teaching summer school in the Atlanta Public School System. The first morning of institute I woke up at 4:30am so that I could get breakfast and catch my bus to the middle school where I would be teaching. I observed the eighth grade classroom that I would be a part of and went off to long hours of sessions. We arrived back on campus around 5:00pm and then headed to dinner and more sessions. Finally, at about 10:00pm, I was back in my room and ready to completely crash. I could tell it was going to be a very long five weeks.
Teaching summer school was an interesting, at times frustrating, but in the end a rewarding experience. I had never encountered eighth graders who were as street savvy as the ones I was expected to teach in Atlanta. I learned first hand some of the things middle school students living in a low-income area of a huge city had to face and the obstacles they had to overcome. One of my students, DeMario, was an eighth grader who read on about a fifth grade reading level. He was a huge challenge all summer, and there were days when he would just completely shut down. One afternoon, after I had called DeMario’s dad about his progress, DeMario decided he had enough and walked out of the classroom in the middle of my lesson. I had been in the classroom on many occasions, but I was never as shocked as I was that day. DeMario later apologized after he realized that he needed to finish summer school in order to go on to high school, and he made good progress the rest of the summer.
Institute was one of the most challenging experiences of my life. Many of the corps members pulled all-nighters a couple of times each week because we were working on lesson plans and trying to do anything possible to help our students succeed. Luckily, most of us were recent college graduates, so we were used to going strong on very little sleep. For many people, institute was their first time standing in front of a group of kids in a classroom, but by the end of institute, it was hard to leave our students. Those long hours paid off as we could see the growth that we had made as educators and the academic growth that our students had made. I walked away from institute with a lot more knowledge (including how to do the Soulja Boy dance- courtesy of my summer school students) and with a better understanding of the challenges I was going to face in my classroom back in Charlotte.
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February, 2008
Toward the end of summer institute we had learned what our placements would be for the fall. I was thrilled to find out I would be teaching eighth grade Language Arts at Northridge Middle School. With that knowledge in mind and institute finally over, I headed back to Ohio for some much needed rest. However, that vacation was short lived as I soon began to gather everything I needed in order to make my move to Charlotte. All corps members were expected to be settled in the Queen City at the very beginning of August. This would allow us time to attend several sessions designed to help us prepare for the school year. Finally we would be working toward a foreseeable goal! With school less than a month away, the urgency was setting in.
Orientation was a time for us to collaborate with 2006 corps members. With a year of experience under their belts, the veteran corps served as a great resource for all of us. I was able to plan with other eighth grade teachers and during our orientation sessions we worked on breaking down standards, writing unit plans, creating rigorous assessments, and developing big goals for our classrooms and our students. We looked at individual test scores for each of our schools and compared them to the highest achieving schools in the district. It was that disparity in scores that helped solidify in our minds why we had agreed to devote two years to our respective schools.
Although we had gotten a lot accomplished during orientation week, the best part of the week was the community dinners we were invited to in the evenings. Three days out of the week corps members were asked to attend a dinner sponsored by one or more community members. I had the privilege of meeting several great individuals who are genuinely concerned about the future of the city. It was awesome spending an evening with influential community members who are truly invested in the mission of Teach for America. Plus, the food was pretty spectacular!
To conclude orientation, I finally got the opportunity to meet the head principal of Northridge Middle School. This would be the first year any Teach for America corps members would be placed at Northridge, so I was a little apprehensive about the meeting. As I walked into the principal’s office, I could not help but to notice that he was wearing a Boston Red Sox jersey. Despite his lack of judgment in baseball teams, the principal was a great guy who was very excited about having several corps members at his school. We spoke a little about the student population and talked about goals for the new school year. As I walked out of the school I looked back and tried to envision what the school would look like in about three weeks with the hallways filled with students.
