Teaching in the Bronx made me see the achievement gap and my reason for joining Teach For America in a tangible way for the first time. When on a walking tour of the Bronx with a student from the school I taught at, I saw more poverty and hardship than I had ever seen firsthand. I saw how many students lived in project housing where nothing but a tiny air conditioner in the window offered them reprieve from the summer heat. My student tour guide told me that most of the time the families in those apartments couldn’t even afford to turn the tiny air conditioning unit on, and thus it would be better for them to spend their time outside than in their apartment, because the scorching heat outside proved far more bearable than the hot box that was their home.
Seeing this made me wonder what types of external forces plagued my summer school students. How far did they need to commute (without a school bus) to get to school? What type of environment did they return home to? What type of after school job did they need to hold to help out their families? All of these questions forced me to consider all of the things that I as a teacher cannot control or affect. These factors were a mystery to me. And while I wanted to find out what the answers were for all of my students, it was S in particular who was the greatest enigma.
S was a girl who rarely came to school. When she did, she showed up late (by half an hour or more). For a girl who rarely came to school, however, her writing samples far surpassed those of her classmates. I found her work harder to critique than anyone else’s. She possessed an ability to break down complicated metaphors and infuse college-level analysis into a rigid Regents paragraph. She frustrated me more than any student I worked with all summer, because I knew I could push her to ACE the Regents and end up in an AP level class – if she would just come to class.
I tried lots of approaches to get S to my class. My first effort was to try and contact home. When I called the number she provided me with five times to both no answering machine and no answer, I went to my summer mentor teacher to see if she could help me find an alternate phone number. She gave me five phone numbers associated with S. I tried all of them multiple times and left several messages with extensive call back information. I never received a call back.
Once I realized how nearly impossible contacting her parents seemed, I tried having a talk with S herself. After one class where she came an hour late, I took her into the hall to ask her what the problem was. “S – why don’t you come to school on time? What keeps you from getting here?” She responded that it was tough for her to get out of bed in the morning and that she wasn’t entirely sure what she didn’t make more of an effort to get to class. I showed her a piece of writing that she turned in the week before.
“Do you see this?” I asked her. “This essay would have scored a six out of six on the Regents, no question. You have a real talent for writing, and you don’t seem to understand what that means. You told me on the first day of class that you want to be a crime scene investigator and that you want to go to college. I’m telling you that with the ability you have in writing and the write instruction, you have the ability to get into a great college that has a fantastic criminal justice program. I can help you pass this Regents exam and I can help you get into an AP class that will push you to get into a college like that. But I can’t want it for you – you need to want it for yourself.”
S hugged me and thanked me for believing in her. She told me that if I called her in the morning to wake her up, she would get to school. She promised to stay after to make up the work that she missed from being absent three times that week. She promised to come in ready to work the next day. And I believed her.
So the next morning, I called her house. No answer. I called again. No answer. I called a third time and her older brother picked up the phone and gave it to S. She told me she was getting up and that she would come in early to give me the late work that she owed me. But the half hour before school came and went with no S. So did the first English block. And then the second. No show.
I was beyond frustrated. My summer mentor teacher saw this in me and urged me to stop caring so much. She told me that S was pretty much a lost cause and that I couldn’t spend too much time obsessing over why she didn’t come to school. She told me that many more experienced teachers had tried every tactic in the book, and none of it worked with her. I thanked her for trying to make me feel better, and then went to a session with my curriculum specialist. The theme of that session – “There are no lost causes. We must do whatever we can to get through to ever single child.”
I took that message to heart. I couldn’t give up on her. So each day for the rest of summer school, I called S in the morning to wake her up. Some days she came, some days she didn’t. Some days she came with late work, some days she didn’t. I continued to try and call home. I continued to tell her, “If you’re waiting for me to give up on you, it isn’t going to happen.”
On the last day of summer school, S didn’t show up. Amid feeling so relieved that the experience was coming to an end and that I could finally get some rest, and feeling excited about what I accomplished with my students, was the emptiness of knowing that S failed the class in every way possible. She slipped through the cracks and would need to take 10th grade English over again instead of moving into an Honors or AP course that better reflected her ability. I couldn’t help thinking that I had done no good with her at all.
Then my advisor gave me a note congratulating me on all that I achieved that summer. Particularly, she thanked me for not giving up on S. She told me that although I didn’t know how I affected S, she was certain that S wouldn’t forget that I believed in her and thought of her as a talented writer and a good student.
I’m not sure if S really took that away from my class or not, but I know that I won’t soon forget her. She pushed me to think outside the box for ways to get through to her. She pushed me not to give up on her despite what she put me through. She taught me there are no lost causes, even when the odds seem stacked that way.
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