Five years ago I decided I wanted to be a teacher. There were, I felt, lots of reasons. I liked math. I liked kids. I had enjoyed the time I spent volunteering in some urban elementary schools. I wanted a job. Teach For America gave me the hard sell. I enjoyed tutoring college kids. But, mainly, I wanted to do something about poverty. I wanted to do something about widening inequality, and it seemed schools were the obvious answer.
I was beyond naive. "Sure, I thought, teach the kids, they pass the test, do well on their SATs, "stay of the street," they can go to college, get a good job, get rich, problem solved. Inequality is a problem that is to be solved by our schools."
I've come to see this as a distinctly American, if factually inaccurate, view. Only in America would we have such a thin belief in public institutions. Only in America would we leave the impoverished to fend for themselves, and lean so heavily on under-resourced schools to overcome generations and cultures of poverty through 8 hours of daily instruction (and yes, Arne, you could change that to 10 or 12 and I'm not convinced it would make a difference).
So now, four years later, I'm trying to come to terms with three major realizations.
1) Schools are not the solution to poverty.
2) Poverty is the result of the machinations of our political and economic systems.
3) The job of a teacher is extraordinarily difficult: it is to develop meaningful lessons that cause students to learn to think for themselves.
