I Don't KNOW

When anybody asks what I’ve been doing this summer, I say I’ve been reading. I’ve done little more than work with kids and read books about kids. I feel like I’ve finally found my calling, what I want to do with my life. I’ve decided I want to teach “disadvantaged” kids in segregated schools where good teachers are needed the most.

As I read another book by Jonathan Kozol, Amazing Grace, my heart beat faster than normal because I felt for the people about whom Mr. Kozol wrote. Although this book was written 14 years ago and primarily focused on poverty in America rather than the flawed education system, I wanted, more than ever, to become a teacher of these kids so that I can give them an education and empower them to leave their dangerous neighborhoods and seek a new life for themselves. When I finished the book, I had that great feeling of “I’m going to change the world!”

After allowing for about seven hours of sleep, I started another book. It’s written by a rookie teacher in the Bronx, the setting of Amazing Grace. The Bronx is on the outskirts of New York City and is among the poorest city in the United States and even in the world. Hopefully it’s improved since Jonathan Kozol published his book in 1995. This new book is making me think that I might not be cut out to be a teacher. It takes certain kinds of people to succeed at different professions, and I may not have the “teaching gene” as the author, Dan Brown (NOT the guy who wrote The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons and whatnot) called it.I began to picture myself as a first-year, young, inexperienced, nervous teacher in front of a group of rowdy minority students who don’t identify well with a white, middle-class woman. Just as Mr. Brown (then twenty-two years old when he first began teaching) struggled to earn respect from his students and also struggled to control them, I see myself having the same problem.

The book I recently finished by Rafe Esquith was about teaching with respect and trust rather than fear, but it appears that the best way to gain respect from these irresponsible and less-than-respectful students is to show them that they can’t act poorly without expecting punishment. Essentially, it appears to be best to scare them so the teacher has a chance to get their attention so that he or she can actually gain their trust. But can you gain their respect after instilling fear into them first?A difference between Dan Brown and myself is that I will spend many years preparing to be a teacher. Mr. Brown was actually a film major at NYU who was drafted by a program intended to bring college students into much-needed schools while giving them a crash-course in teaching. The program was a lot like Teach for America…but not.

Basically, he didn’t have much preparation or guidance, but how much will I be able to learn from college where most of the professors and students are white and middle class? I don’t want to teach middle class white kids. I just don’t want to. I can and I might have to, but that’s not where I’m needed. I guess if feels like I’m setting myself for a fall by wanting to teach the “unteachable” kids – and not the young, innocent ones, either. I’m passionate about these kids who I want to teach, but I just don’t know if I’ll be good at it. I’m investing so much time and energy into learning about teaching that it would be terribly sad if I quit teaching within a few years. I’ve never felt so passionate about anything in my life. I want to be a teacher and sometimes I feel like it’s the one place where I belong, but as I’m thinking more and more about what kind of person I am while I read books about failure and success, I wonder if I’m right. Can I succeed? WILL I succeed?

As I read books about educational inequality, I feel a burning desire to be in those schools that need good teachers. Then, as I read books about being in the classroom and about the wonderful things that teachers do with their children and how they manage it, I become scared that I won’t be able to succeed, and I want to succeed more than anything.

Part of me thinks, “I’ve been reading so much about teaching inner-city kids. I should know what I’m up against and whether or not I can handle it.” But I DON’T know. Argh. Sometimes I feel like I can – I feel like I can be Superwoman. Then when I put down my book and picture myself along with several dozen middle or high school kids, I doubt myself. Okay, so how can I convince myself that I’m fit for this job? Experience. Okay, well, I’ve had experience. Sort of. I enjoyed my time in Elma Middle School, but I wasn’t in charge and I didn’t feel comfortable taking control of discipline issues because I wasn’t the teacher. The same happened at camp. I didn’t feel like I had the authority to sit a kid down and talk to them about their actions. Given the opportunity, I think I could have done more than I wound up doing, but I have a habit of handing over the problems to someone more qualified.

I actually didn’t enjoy Dan Brown’s book much because he basically got scared out of teaching in the inner city. The administration was out to get him, and they refused to let him have his own classroom for his second year so he was pretty much put on probation. He then resigned and picked up a teaching job at a rich private school. He admitted that it was more rewarding teaching in the Bronx than in a rich area with privileged kids, but he still didn’t return there. He might have gone back eventually after finishing the book, though. It scared me because the book didn’t have a happy ending. He didn’t win over the kids in the end. And in the end, it was the administration that did him in, but the kids never gave him much respect.

It’s just so frustrating being so far from the students I’m so interested in, and I can only read books about people doing the job I want to have. Sometimes I wish I went to college in New York or California so could spend some time in inner-city schools so I can gage how badly I’ll fail. Time will tell, I guess. I just hope Time has the answers I want to hear.

-Elie