A Teacher's Journal: My Personal Shame

My confession is sparked by a seemingly one-sided article in the News and Observer questioning the merits of our community's commitment to balancing the percentages of free and reduced lunch students in buildings across our district. As T. Keung writes in a loaded opening sentence:

Don't expect Wake County school leaders to prove that their policy of trying to strike a districtwide balance on the number of low-income students at each school helps those children academically.

They just can't.

Perhaps I can.

You see, I've spent the better part of my fifteen years in this school system working in the affluent schools of Western Wake County. I was lucky enough to be a part of the first faculty at two high performing, low poverty schools: Davis Drive Middle and Salem Middle---and I've passionately served those communities well for nearly a decade. I've earned a solid reputation as a teacher who goes the extra mile and who resonates with the student population.

I've coached multiple teams, influencing the hearts and minds of the boys who have played for me. I've offered after-school clubs and inspired countless readers and writers. My classroom is characterized by engaging conversations and opportunities for students to learn skills that they will need to succeed in the 21st Century. We use digital tools to explore our curriculum and to create content for the Web.

And I'm proud of what I've done for my students. They are generally better for having known me.

But in the back of my mind, I've always wondered if there weren't students who needed me more. After all, Salem Middle School is lucky enough to have a sea of accomplished teachers----and our students come to school with advantages that students living in poverty will never have access to. Shouldn't I take my skills to a building with a higher percentage of students who struggle?

Most of those who criticize our commitment to using economic factors in student assignment decisions would say yes. The answer to improving the performance of students living in poverty isn't reassignment, they argue. Instead, it's ensuring that every child has access to an accomplished teacher. Consider this quote from T. Keung's piece:

The lack of a study proving that reassigning poor students helps them academically leaves Wake school officials open to critics such as Abigail Thernstrom, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute, a policy research organization that supports school choice. Thernstrom said more effective teaching is the best method for educating low-income students -- not reassignment.

Sounds easy, doesn't it? Just stop moving kids around, pay no mind to alarmingly high percentages of poverty, and improve teaching. All will be well with the world.

The problem is this: Recruiting and retaining accomplished teachers in buildings where poverty rates soar is no simple task. Consider my story as an example:

A few years back, I decided to leave Davis Drive Middle School because I needed a bit of a professional change. I'd grown stagnant. In the process of interviewing, I landed a job teaching science at Seneca Middle---the ficticious name of a Wake County school where I had several professional acquaintances. Seneca and Davis were different places. At the time, Davis Drive had less than 7 percent of their student population living in poverty and Seneca had almost 30.

My time at Seneca was amazing in many ways. I worked with some of the most passionate teachers I've ever encountered---people who had a heart for children living in poverty and who worked long hours trying to meet needs that children at Davis never had. They spent countless hours providing free tutoring before and after school and counseling kids whose parents were going through troubled times.

They found ways to fund needed supplies for students who had nothing. They organized volunteers from local community groups to provide role models for kids that needed someone to look up to. They learned about gangs, developed effective practices for motivating struggling learners, and marshalled the resources of the system whenever it looked like a kid might fail.

And like me, they also left work every day completely exhausted!

Swamped by demands that I never had to deal with while working with affluent students, I thought about quitting early and often. I had few skills that were tailored to the setting where I was working and there were no real opportunities to learn more.

The shocker for me was that despite doing a dramatically more difficult job, I was getting no additional time or resources at Seneca Middle than I was at Davis. My planning periods were spent in special programs meetings or in filling out discipline referrals. On countless occassions, I floundered in the middle of lessons because many of my students hadn't yet mastered the basic skills needed to move forward with even simple tasks.

I spent hundreds of hours planning lessons that were appropriate for the wide range of students in my classroom. Then, I'd spend hundreds of hours trying to find the resources to deliver those same lessons. Then, I'd spend hundreds of hours picking up the pieces after those lessons didn't work.

All for the same pay as I was getting at Davis Drive.

Now, if I were an altruistic kind of guy, I would have walked the same path taken by the dedicated professionals who have chosen to make their careers in high poverty schools. To me, these teachers are Saints that put the needs of their children above themselves. They knowingly take assignments that are demanding and rarely seek to draw attention to the very real challenges that they could let go if they simply found a new place to work.

But I'm not an altruistic guy. I quit Seneca Middle after just one year. And that's a source of great personal shame for me.

Think about it: Teachers are supposed to be selfless, aren't they? We're supposed to be socially aware and willing to give to others. We're supposed to stick up for the little guy. With a bit of gumption, we're supposed to attack any challenge---and inspire our students to do the same!

Instead, I walked away, returning to a position in a school where my students are equally deserving but far more likely to succeed with or without me. I knew that my qualifications and experiences would get me hired again in an "easier" school and felt strongly that my decision was justified---after all, nothing was being done to make work with students of poverty more desirable.

"That's a source of shame we all share," I'd argue. "When we're willing to publically recognize that positions in high-needs schools are far more demanding than positions in schools serving more affluent populations, I'll consider moving again."

The fact of the matter is that our district's commitment to balancing the percentages of students living in poverty at each building makes sense to me because I know just how hard work in high poverty schools really is. By using economic factors in our assignment decisions, we're creating schools that at least have a fighting chance of attracting and retaining enough accomplished teachers to serve students well. Even though I was too selfish to stick it out, thousands of other teachers are willing to "give it a go" in buildings across our county because percentages of poverty are manageable.

Nowhere in our district will you find schools that are simply miserable places for teachers to work----and in the long run, that contributes to student achievement and to the overall health of our system. Employers that look at Wake County as a potential home for their companies can find successful schools from one side of a very large county to another----and a part of the reason for that is we've worked to make teaching easier in communities that might otherwise be riddled with poverty.

Now, I'm willing to be open-minded. I understand the draw of neighborhood schools and stability for parents and students---Heck, I grew up in one and loved it.

But neighborhood schools don't serve everyone equally. Some neighborhoods struggle with almost overwhelming challenges brought on by poverty----and those neighborhoods will struggle to ensure that every child has access to an accomplished teacher unless we plan to provide teachers in more challenging schools with longer planning periods, smaller class sizes, increased salaries and more social service professionals.

To do otherwise is an open admission that we just don't value every child in our community equally.