Teach For America Can Teach Conservatives Unexpected Lessons

After teaching my high school journalism students about the great investigative journalist, Nellie Bly, one boy raised his hand and asked if I was just trying to be like her by teaching at this school.

This was an insightful question, though I quickly reminded the student that Nellie Bly had only spent ten days in the insane asylum from where she did her expose. I have been in the school a year and a half now! The students know of my background in journalism and often question why I teach at their school, one they don’t consider to be a good school, but their school nonetheless. His question stopped me in my tracks for a moment. This is usually a question I only ask myself.

I made a two year commitment to the organization Teach For America (TFA) to teach high school in a low-income area. I was placed in a school with many problems – lots of rats and holes in the ceilings and walls are among the least. Believe me, two years is not going to save the desperate schools where we are sent to teach.

I would say most members join TFA because they feel a sense of duty to the country and realize that schools in low-income areas are a source of national shame. Some join because it looks killer on a resume if you’re trying to go to law school or get into a big financial firm. Very few join because they want to make their career in education. What we all gain, something that the vast majority in our country does not, is an inside look at how it really is in these schools day after day. No matter where we go or what we do after TFA, we’ll never forget what we’ve seen.

I was accepted to TFA two years ago this month. At that time, I was in graduate school for journalism and reporting on politics from the Capitol in Washington, D.C. as a stringer for a Midwestern daily. All my life I dreamed of being a daily beat reporter. Something about walking around the Capitol, though, made me feel like a phony. There I was – 22-years-old–rubbing shoulders with big shot Washington journalists and insiders and interviewing senators about bills I knew nothing about; really, you want me to research and write about the FARM BILL!?.

Dangling out there was this acceptance to TFA. I made the decision to join TFA as I walked up the steps to the press room at the Capitol one afternoon. I was no longer willing to suck up to Dana Milbank or Dana Bash. I didn’t give a rip when I walked by Madeline Albright in the hall. What made me join TFA, and this is what I told the student who asked me the question about my possible Nellie Bly motives, is that teaching where I do is real!

I feel nervous every single day I go to work. My day flies by everyday because I’m helping people in need, coming up with unique lessons about literature, and coaching my favorite sports. I help clear up halls where members of the Crips gang do their gang handshakes and try to intimidate teachers and I’m not intimidated by them. I look them in the eye and ask them to “Please get to class.” I stand there until they go.

I will be writing under a pen name on this blog out of respect for the privacy of my students, school and colleagues. What I write comes from almost two years worth of journals I’ve kept detailing experiences teaching in a very challenging school, where gangs, drugs, teen pregnancy, HIV, single-parent or no parent families are among the issues causing a vast achievement gap. I still teach at the school and actually plan to continue on either here or another city school when the year is over. I can’t say this is what I want to do all my life, but I know that I love doing a job that so few in the country are willing to do and do well.

All the students I teach are African American, except for one white student. The school is classified as 99% African American. I am one of a few white teachers in a building of approximately 1,300 students.

I plan on writing a lot about things conservatives don’t talk very much about – urban issues. It’s like those commercials and billboards warning parents that if they don’t talk to their kids about sex, someone else will. Well, if we don’t address urban issues and present conservative solutions, the opposite side will continue upon their mission to “solve” social problems through big government liberalism. And the wrong message will continue to win.