Struggling with Urgency

It's been an incredible 5 weeks at Institute. It's surreal in a way to think about how much myself and my fellow teachers have grown as teachers in the classroom, as planners, and as motivators in our students' lives. Yet I still have to capture the passion and outrage that I feel when I sit and reflect on the faces of the achievement gap that walk into my classroom every morning. I have to capture it and transform it into a sense of urgency and into my best work for the kids.

It's not enough, as my advisor was telling my group of TFA Corps Members, to come to school with lesson plans and deliver a lesson to kids like it's any other job. 'If this doesn't make you outraged, if the gap that you see doesn't make you mad as hell and make you work your butt off to give your absolute best for your students, then frankly you're doing something wrong.' The culture at institute and in my group urges us to OWN the results in the classroom and take the responsibility on our shoulders for transforming our passions into student achievement. To quote the Academic Impact Model we are so fond of at TFA, Teacher Action-->Student Action-->Student Achievement. It is on me to walk into the classroom feeling how utterly critical each moment of teaching is to these students futures. When statistics say my young men are more likely to walk in prison than through the Sallyport (to borrow a Rice University metaphor), I must not forget the weight of my work and the value of our collective efforts in the classroom.

Although this sort of speaking does not yet feel quite natural to me, especially considering the number of buzzwords that flow through it, I need to latch onto the emotion behind it as a drive for my efforts inside and out of the classroom. I'll see my students for the first time in little more than 1 month, which is as far as I am now from my first day in the classroom. The task is daunting, but I believe in my own vision to make a difference in students' lives.