Two years ago, I signed up for Teach for America and joined a revolution reforming education in our country. I came with high ideals, a strong work ethic, and an empty bank account. Somewhere along the way, my ideals were torn to shreds, my work never was enough, and my net worth became a growing negative sum. After plenty of steps forward and back, my value was looking up: my finances recovered, my work began to show results and my ideals returned, tempered by hard lessons learned and failures endured - what I like to consider wisdom.
Two years ago, I began teaching at
Locke High School. I taught a group of freshmen reading at or below a 3.5 grade level - terrifying, considering the federal government takes a look at third graders' reading scores to determine how many new prison beds to acquire. I was trained in a curriculum designed to help bring these students up. Two years ago, three days before my first day in the classroom, LAUSD informed me that they would not pay for the curriculum they payed me to receive training in. They essentially told me that these students had nothing but me to help them - an act that should have been illegal.
For months, I failed these students. I became a part of a system that has failed them since before they entered school. I watched ninth graders come to school less and less. I worked to build relationships with them and cried when I saw them slipping. My heart broke when I saw them skipping classes repeatedly and grew furious with myself for not helping them. Why should a student go to classes when the only way to learn is to sit in front of a text book they couldn't understand 80 percent of? Why couldn't I figure out how to change this?
I've witnessed race fights and gang fights, fires and people inhaling the fumes from fires, teachers drinking during class, teachers getting away with skilling class, administrators and staff cussing out students, 14-year olds smoking pot, 14-year-olds on things much worse than pot.
And somewhere along the way, I began to witness change. Change that began long before I stepped on campus. Change that began before 1965 when Locke became the first public high school serving the Watts community
in Watts. A school built in the center of five neighborhoods - a different gang owning the streets of each side.
I began to see students light up and choose to try. At the age of 14 - where my life choices consisted of what to wear to parent-chaperoned dances - these students were choosing to struggle with education instead of struggle on the streets. I saw them choose the believe in themselves and the possibilities of their future.
And from there, I've seen them still fail. Because I wasn't a good enough teacher, because it literally wasn't safe for them to walk to school or be in school, because they viewed higher education as something that happens if you're lucky and slanging drugs as a sure income, because they broke their own parole.
And I've seen them succeed. I've seen students jump from reading at a third grade level to above a ninth grade level in one year. I've seen the quietest student present to an entire class his personal vow to not end up like the 12-year-old drug addicts who live on his street. I've seen a student who at one point threatened to "slit my throat" make a point to stay after class to receieve extra help in writing, growing from writing without a single punctuation mark to writing clear, coherent thoughts.
This has very little to do with me - and this is not false humility. The point is these children want to learn. But when you live in a world where honor and affiliation are the only securities you can rely on, where staying after school to work and learn means putting yourself at risk on the walk home, where shootings happen often and the only therapy for Post Traumatic Stress is a hardened heart and a hero's sense of humor, an education - exactly what it is and how one achieves it - becomes something untangible, unrealistic, a waste of time.
These kids who have figured it out walk differently through the halls at Locke. There's a confidence that stems from something other than reputation. Nothing in our failing education system is to thank for these kids. But it is my belief that the right system - equipped with the right people - can steer every student to this course.
Moving forward, yesterday, I stepped onto Locke's football field along with students, parents, grand-parents, children, colleagues, the mayor, district officials and community ministers as we all held hands and gave thanks. We gave thanks to our individual answered prayers as we prayed as one that the rest of our hopes for this community come to fruition.
I have trouble identifying the specific moments that have changed my own life. My memory tends to clump events together. But yesterday, there was a definite shift at Locke. You could feel it in the air, like the air that escapes your lungs after you get inside your car, alone in the middle of a dark and empty lot.
People often say that our students can't learn because of their community. I wish every single Republican - I mean person - with this misconception could have witnessed this community yesterday - crying with relief and gratitude. I wish they could see the 1000 parents who have signed up to help with the Locke Transformation. I wish we could jump to the end of this year and have a 100 percent retention and graduation rate, instead of last year's 33 percent.
It's been a while since I've written anything other than a model five-paragraph essay. So, if you choose, bear with me this year as I record what I hope to be many more answered prayers, and the daily trials attached to them at the new Locke High School.
