“I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. I’m saying it’s going to be worth it.” (can’t remember the credit … any thoughts?)

This quote is everywhere in my school: in classrooms, in the library, rolling off teacher’s tongues…

When I first saw it, I thought, “What a good quote for our kids to see. This can be motivating when the work is difficult.”

What I didn’t realize is that that quote probably means more to me right now than them.

This job is rough. It includes a horrendous number of hours, a lack of appreciation, a meagre pay check, and kids who express a weird sense of entitlement mixed with laziness. Oh, and the whining…

I love my kids, and I feel confident that they are good people and will become better in my classroom. As much as the education I am giving them has to be centered around Language Arts, I know they need to grow as people in order to succeed…ever. But, that process is gradual and may actually not show up in them at all this year. Or next.

Every day, I get home from school and my roommate and I discuss the day. She has high schoolers. They are a little less malleable than say, a 6th grader. Inevitably, we ask ourselves, “how do they even think that’s right? Who told them it’s ok to not do work? To not care about failing?”

I went to a reunion with the rest of the Tulsa corps last night. In recapping our first month of teaching here, we collectively asked the same questions and decided, “this is much harder than we thought it would be.”

I guess it’s not meant to be easy. I’m sure all teachers, regardless of where they teach, face problems to a degree we previously hadn’t thought possible. However, the problems on the short end of the achievement gap stick are more than extreme. Not only are we working with a population that, like any kid, resists authority and the idea of “school,” we are working with kids who, outside of our classrooms, may not get any support.

The odds are stacked against them. I work at a school where 94 percent of the kids live below the poverty line. Many students have lost their parents, live in shelters with their families, are live in foster care. Some of my students have expressed to me that they are facing bullies at school and at home. They have seen drug use and crime. All of the anger and confusion that may be associated with this seems to translate in class disruptions or into the power of their fists that they throw at others.

Similar, if not worse things, are being seen by all of the Corps in every facet of education in Tulsa. Multiply that by the 30+ regions TFA is in across the country, and the many others where even similar programs don’t exist, and the scale of the achievement gap becomes desparingly real.

Despite all of these circumstances, somehow, learning has to happen. Reading, writing, arithmetic, and life learning.

OK has some of the lowest standards in the country. NCLB gave the state standardized education. Even so, it is not up to par with the rest of the nation. So much so that even though my school came off of “the list” of failing schools this year, we are in some weird “bubble” position. When we adjust our scores to newly imposed higher standards (the national government finally made the state wise up a little), we still are not a legitimate, passing school.

Beyond that, in a proposal to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Tulsa Public Schools reported that only 7 percent of TPS graduates are “college ready” (TPS, pp. 6). (PS, TPS, although in the Top 10 finalists, was turned down for the Gates grant).

According to the Tulsa World, only 58.2 percent of students graduated from TPS on time. Although the figure was supposed to improve, we are told that graduation rate has declined. What does that say about the gap in Tulsa? It says the odds are even higher against my students. Against most students here.

There are humans behind these numbers, which makes them even more complicated, yet…inspiring.

I see tremendous potential in all of my students. And I know they are great people who can become infinitely better. They can rise above the hand they were dealt. But, getting them to realize all of this is more than tricky. In some ways, it seems impossible. But, if I won’t let that word into my classroom, why should I feel that way?

Because this is rough. I guess if it were easy, we wouldn’t have the problems to begin with, right?

~MJ