It’s hard to describe what my job is exposing me to. In any given moment I am taking in profuse amounts of new information and experiences. It is the best kind of schooling for me. Hands-on, experiential, moment by moment--at times it feels like I have to shoot first and ask questions later (to use an unfortunately analogy).
As the AmeriCorps member, I am thrown into an atmosphere full of people who spent at least four years learning about their jobs before getting into them, and in many cases who have amassed years and years of on-the-job training and research and even added months or years of coursework for a graduate degree. I have walked into a world of PBIS, ERI, EBIS, ELD, CIT, Easy CBM, OAKS with more and more acronyms piling up constantly. It’s worse than church. I walk into meetings and lead tutoring sessions with four and a half years of training in English literature, five years of seminary training, and absolutely no training in public elementary education. Time after time, day after day I feel like I’m applying what I’m learning and then being taught it. My job is constantly busy, often overwhelming, very demanding of my mental creativity, and sometimes stressful.
And I love every minute of it.
Under AmeriCorps, I work as a member of Partnerships for Student Achievement. Twenty of us work in elementary and high schools in four different school districts spread around Washington County (bordering the west end of Portland’s Multnomah County). While we do generally the same thing, the specifics are catered to each district and each school.
We all work in Title I schools. Title I was created in 1965, and because I’m too lazy to try and summarize or paraphrase it, I will simply quote the Title I purpose in its entirety: “The purpose of this title is to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging State academic achievement standards and state academic assessments.” This is followed by a twelve part list of how this is accomplished. In short, Title I exists in schools with a high percentage of low socio-economic students and under-performing test scores, especially where there is an achievement gap. The achievement gap, if you don’t know (I didn’t until I started this job) is the performance gap between ethnic groups/races and/or economic levels. Title I is what gives schools the budget to do free and reduced-price lunches and to do special academic interventions. Many Title I schools have full-time certified Title I teachers.
These days I am learning how different it is to be poor because my current situation makes it so versus being poor because your family has never been anything other than poor. At my good friend and mentor’s suggestion, I recently picked up a book called A Framework for Understanding Poverty. The author, Ruby Payne, makes a clear distinction between situational poverty and generational poverty. Consider a few of these statements from her quiz, “Could you survive in poverty?” She asks the reader to check off each item we understand how to do:
1. I know which churches and sections of town have the best rummage sales; 2. I know which grocery stores’ garbage bins can be accessed for thrown-away food; 3. I know how to get someone out of jail; 4. I know how to get a gun, even if I have a police record; 5. I know how to live without a checking account; 6. I know how to live without electricity and a phone; 7. I know how to move in half a day.
Now compare this to the middle class quiz: 1. I know how to properly set a table; 3. I know which stores are most likely to carry the clothing brands my family wears; 4. I talk to my children about going to college; 5. I understand the difference among the principal, interest, and escrow statements on my house payment; 6. I know how to get a library card; 7. I repair items in my house almost immediately when they break--or know a repair service and call it.
(She also has a “Could you survive in wealth?” quiz which includes items like, “I fly in my own plane, the company plane, or the Concorde.” I can’t even comprehend this kind of life.)
At my school, approximately 78% of our students are on free or reduced lunch. Many of them partake in our free breakfast option every morning. We have a high number of children who read and do math well below their grade level, and a number of kids on behavioral plans. Starting last year, my school began offering our backpack program. Parents who qualify for free or reduced lunch can sign their child up to receive a weekend backpack of meals and snacks for their child. Currently, we have almost 30 students taking backpacks home. Many of these students fall on the despairing side of the achievement gap. The connection between poverty and low achievement levels can not be overlooked. I have very few financial resources, but my other resources are bountiful and gracious. I have emotional support, spiritual support, mental support, good health, fantastic role models, and what Ruby Payne labels “knowledge of middle-class hidden rules.” I watch some of our children walk through the school doors every day looking like the weight of the world is on their shoulders. Many of them have very few, if any, of these supports.
But these kids are impressive. Against all odds, they keep coming to school and they keep learning. They struggle. And fighting against the never ending machine of poverty coupled with ambitious public school budget cuts can feel crushing on those who work daily with these children.
I had given up on the public school system. Someday when I had kids, I knew the only reason they would ever be in public school is if I couldn’t afford a good private school. All I ever heard in the news was about failing test-scores and strikes and impossible budget deficits. One of the school districts a couple of my fellow PSA members work in cut well over 200 teachers over the summer. When I heard that number, I just about choked. It was all over the news. The problems of the public school system were too vast and too wrapped up in hierarchy, out-of-date tradition, and government red tape for any difference to really be made, so I had washed my hands of it.
And then I got a job working here, and that vast public school system became local and began to have little six-year-old names and seven-year-old smiles and five-year-old stories and started giving me hugs; their faces would light up when they saw me. The public school system became human. Giving up on this system became giving up on the 290 little faces I see every day.
These kids make this job amazing. It’s a taxing job and the end of the week is welcoming, but I always look forward to seeing the kids walk through the door on Monday morning.
Despite maddening budget shortfalls and nearly unmanageable class sizes, the teachers and other staff at my school take it in stride and are always far more positive than they by all rights should be. There is not one teacher here whose class I would not want my child in. They are each unique in their own style of teaching, and they are all fantastic at what they do. I love to walk into their classrooms and see how their personalities shape their classroom structure and style. It is teaching me that there is no one ideal way to teach, and I am learning the importance of having a variety of personality types in one place. They stick together. They rely on each other and learn from one another. I hear stories from some of my AmeriCorps co-workers who won’t eat in their staff lunch rooms because the atmosphere is exceptionally negative. I’ve never once felt discouraged or uncomfortable in our staff lounge. Every teacher is glad to have me there and they are always willing to answer my questions.
This week, I begin my after-school programs. I was originally slated to begin both of them, but I had to push one back another week after failing to consider the time it would take for the letter I’m sending home to first be translated into Spanish. On Thursday, I will begin a knitting club, and the following Monday, I’ll start a photography club. I get the joy of putting my ideas into action and developing projects and strategies for these clubs, but unfortunately the stress of having no budget to go along with them. I am searching heavily for donations, but there is still a lot of work to be done. But this is how it goes, right? Some things come easily and other things we have to fight for; these often come wrapped in the same box.
I don’t know what is going to come of this year. I don’t know if I’ll stick around for another year, if the school will even want me, or if I’ll end up moving on to new things. I don’t know if I’ll succeed in finding what I need for the programs I’m running. And I don’t know if my principal will even be around at the end of the year considering how hard the district runs her into the ground every day with a workload crazier than any I’ve ever seen, and considering who some of my friends are, that is saying a lot. I don’t know if I will still enjoy this job by the time June rolls around. But right now, I love it. My finances are miserably tight and most of my friends still live too far away for me to see, but despite that, I am having the time of my life. I am so blessed, and I love my job!
Does this make me a bad Christian? Is God unhappy with me? Sometimes, I think it’s my responsibility to change myself, that God expects this of me. Now that I’m reflecting on it, I realize I think this quite a lot. Of course, when I ponder intellectually about it, I know that, theologically, this is very problematic. But sometimes it is so hard to get my heart to believe what my head knows.
