The Comparison

I have never been one to associate spring break with resort-style places like so many of my friends in college (Cancun! Mexico! Hawaii!), so this break was just what I needed. The anticipation of leaving Oakland started way too far in advance, probably due to the fact that March was officially "the longest teaching month" at our school. It did not help that the looming California state assessments were nearing, prompting my Teach For America advisor to get too close for comfort. Interestingly enough, these days it is not the actual teaching job that generates the stress so much as the influence from Teach For America. I understand their goal and philosophy, but there are times when I feel like TFA doesn't acknowledge the hard work that we do day to day. Pushing us to become better teachers is fine, but I often feel that they are more concerned with getting the results they need from us to show the public. I have even heard of some teachers making their tests a little bit easier so that their data for their students suggests a little more achievement; apparently the biggest reason they do it is to get TFA off their backs. I suppose my frustration with the organization that accepted me comes from the fact that my total student achievement (TFA is obsessed with numbers) hangs around a 60%, when our "Big Goal" is 80%. I understand that there are a lot of things I can do to improve my teaching effectiveness, but I wish that these results were taken in the context of our school's test scores. TFA's Big Goal might be 80%, but my Big Goal is to improve our school's test scores.

That being said... (that was not the direction in which I intended on beginning this post) my roommate and I got on the road headed for Seattle pretty quickly after school got out, with the only immediate goal of getting the hell out of California. Teach For America is a great training program in establishing high expectations out of yourself and your students, but throughout the year the organization loses effectiveness, as it seems so out of touch to specific issues that each school is dealing with. My roommate shares this belief, especially since his school was labeled as one of the lowest performing schools in California, dishing him a lot bigger issues to deal with than how to please his TFA advisor. Needless to say, the 13-hour car ride gave us time to vent about it all.

It was probably very healthy for us to not think about teaching for a week, but it turns out we both visited our respective high schools - to gain perspective, I guess. I really don't know what I was expecting to get from the visit; all I know is that throughout the year, I have found myself thinking many times about how easier or less stressful my job would be if I were teaching at my own high school.

I had some interesting reactions to a day of sitting in on math classes, and if it weren't for my roommate having similar reactions, I would feel apprehensive to sharing them. First off, it made me realize that TFA is an amazing organization, and truly knows the correct values and expectations to instill in teachers. I really do not believe that I am arrogant, but we both agreed that if we were to put as much time, energy and planning into a teaching job such as one from the high school from which I graduated, we could easily be the best teacher in our respective departments. Now that's not to say that the students weren't achieving; there were plenty of "if only..." thoughts running through my head as I mentally compared the behavior and academic progress between these students and my own...

What truly blew me away was first the thought that this was my education - what I came from. And yet, in many ways, I believe even these students aren't getting the education they deserve. Perhaps TFA has brainwashed us all to think that no teacher has it all figured out yet, but it seemed upon my visit to my hometown high school that no student was really being pushed. From my perspective, you may be able to understand how that situation seems like a waste of an amazing teaching opportunity. Of course, there are many differences to be seen between the two schools with which I am most familiar. First off, school starts 50 minutes earlier, which is still funny to me, since even at our late starting time I'll still only have seven students on time in first period. Having hour-long classes makes a huge difference compared to our 52min classes at RHS, especially since homework rarely gets done at the consistency of Skyline High School in Sammamish, WA. Because of this, we have to fit in Independent Practice time so that I can trick my students into doing homework problems before they leave. At Skyline, teachers seemed to take a much more leisured pace with the material, with a loosely structured agenda - compared to Richmond, which no doubt requires planning of instruction down to the minute in order to prevent chaos in the classroom. And it's not just that the students are much better at self-governing; the biggest contributor to the difference in behavior is that there are no student-student conflicts in class! Oh what I would give to have a class without a set of students that would literally kill each other if they sat next to one another.

So actually, I return tomorrow to school feeling a little better about myself. Things like class sizes, classroom resources and technology, and the expectation of homework over the weekend may have saddened me a little in thinking of all the ways my school could be better, but I am beginning to understand what was meant when I was told that I could teach anywhere after teaching here.

Teach For America's whole mantra is to close the achievement gap, but the interesting thing is that the TFA teaching strategies would be just as helpful I think in upper-middle class schools too. The irony is that while the implementation of these high expectations would improve the education of the students even in upper-middle class schools, that would almost detract from the original goal of closing the achievement gap, since both reference points would be improving at the same time. So what's more important - closing the achievement gap, or collectively improving the education of the country? Food for thought.