A New Hope

"One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to have an excellent education," Teach for America tells me, as they work tirelessly to bring me around to their point-of-view on the achievement gap in America. By now, they have tens of thousands of corps members and alumni throughout the United States working on solutions for this civil rights issue of my generation, or so they tell me.

For a week at Induction, our first immersive intro to the nationwide organization, teachers past and present brought their stories to us as the new Memphis Corps '10, inspiring emotional replies and misty eyes in the audience. Gut-wrenching stories of failure and truly uplifting moments of hope and triumph. I do not yet have these stories of my own, but these individuals--these teams of educators and advocates unfailingly bring me to subtly wipe my tears as I attempt to hide what is still mildly embarrassing to me.

I soon realized that 13 hour days were only the first glance, a preview into the weeks to come at Atlanta Institute where I now am, sitting on a small blue couch, half-comfy and seemingly more concrete than padding. As I contemplate tomorrow's uninterrupted schedule of learning to teach, I see the clutter of communal snack items on the coffee table where my feet lay resting. There is a massive tub of "colors" goldfish--purple, red, and green... salty--that provides a pleasant counter to the saturated sweetness of mini donuts. The opposed pair silently surround the primary tool of survival, a new coffee pot for the sleep-deprived army of hopeful educators (educator-hopefuls) who now populate the dormitory built for Olympic athletes. My Jones water bottle stands steadfastly by, a lingering reminder of another life hardly past but undeniably over. It waits faithfully to preserve my memories and my caffeinated water that will get me through tomorrow's lessons. I must stay awake so that I can remember...

The stakes are so high, they remind us each day, because the kids in summer school these weeks need us to make it to the next grade. They desperately need intervention to advance most of a grade level in literacy in a single month. For the older ones, it's the opportunity to stride proudly into high school in August, or fail again. For all of them, it's a moment that could "change their stars," could invest them in uncommon passion for the future, could instill in them visions of possibilities, and not of dreams deferred. These are the openings in the dark curtain of illiteracy, the foil to the gap in achievement that plagues this nation's children. They are pieces of my vision for change that I will carry back to Memphis, the city of my education (and soon my educating) as the hope begins to materialize into a significant, measurable impact on the prospects for my hometown.

It is an old vision, an eternally human dream of every parent, for their child to attain an excellent education and find a life better than their own. And it is a new hope, that even one generation of driven, inspired, and excellent leaders and educators who reach out to the most under-served among us can make a dramatic difference for the trajectory of hundreds of thousands of students and this country as a whole. The goal is ambitious, but the need is fundamental and critical, and the relentless pursuit of highly effective strategies will show the attainability of these students' achievement and our collective success. The need is imperative, and the time is now.

Quote of the day:

This is the Time. Memphis is the Place

Athena Turner

Executive Director, Teach for America Memphis