I titled this post "being honest, being real," because I think it's okay for me to just lay out everything that's gone down the past few weeks in a way that is raw and real. I know those of you who take the time to read this love me and aren't going to judge me for what I have to say. Also, I've started to realize the way I reflect best is through writing (trust me, TFA makes you get in touch with your feelings whether you want to or not...)
First of all, I'm going to preface this by saying I feel frustrated.
Throughout my time at Institute, I've been trying to be good with managing my time, but since that has never been one of my strong points, I've found myself getting behind on things and then struggling to keep my head above water. I've also been frustrated because I haven't been able to be as good of a girlfriend as I should be, and that's been evident in the way conversations between A and I unfold. It's so strange because I've always had some feeling that I am remotely in control of what's going on. Not entirely, but I've always at least had a sense of what my next action should be and these past 5 weeks have thrown me in all sorts of directions.
Frustration has also come from the feeling that I've failed my students.
Before you stop and send me something encouraging via FB message or text or email, let me just say that I know I didn't fail them. I did the best I could this summer and I've seen a ton of growth in some of them (can I get a whoop whoop for seeing 170+% growth in one of my kids???)
The fact of the matter though is that only SOME of my students reached this...not ALL of them. And that's what I was really pushing for. I wanted to see these students grow and learn the value of education, but that just didn't happen, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that some of them will never feel the way I do about their education or its importance.
This summer I was teaching a rising senior with a first grade reading level. This student could comprehend some of what we were reading but he could not formulate a sentence, write, spell, or read for himself.
He was a rising SENIOR. In high school.
I remember calling A on the phone and crying to him about the situation and asking him quite passionately, "who the HELL has been responsible for this child the past 17 years?"
That's a question I still can't answer and it's one that haunts me now. I worked with him one on one a few times and thought we were making progress until he just stopped showing up. I later found out that my student dropped out and will become one of the statistics of students who are illiterate dropping out of high school.
I guess what I'm getting at in this post is that LITERACY MATTERS, PEOPLE. I cannot stress that enough and I feel like this whole experience has made me so aware of this! Literacy is the foundation on which all skills are built and if students don't have a working concept of how to read or write, they will forever live their lives being BEHIND. And not just somewhat behind, they will be detrimentally, disablingly behind.
Institute ended yesterday and as weird as this sounds, I wish it would have lasted longer. I think about my kids who have seen incredible growth and who have a renewed passion and urgency for learning and I think about the ways in which I could have better shaped my few stragglers.
I'm not here to save them though. I'm just here to teach them. I'm not here to save them, but I'm here to show them a door that may have been hidden for a long time, and I'm here to cheer them on as they choose whichever door they want to go through! That was a lame metaphor, but it's one that someone mentioned to me before and has stuck with me this whole time.
With that being said, I'm New Orleans bound tomorrow and then PD at my school starts Monday, so the real adventure will be beginning soon.
Here's a great quote I found about literacy too :) All of us can be literacy teachers too, by the way! It doesn't matter if you are a college student, graduate, parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, it doesn't matter. We can ALL be literacy teachers.
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