Reluctant Student to Unlikely Teacher
Something in my DNA does not like to give up. My father died when I was four, and none of the men on my motherâs side of the family graduated from high school. Although I grew up in a solidly middle-class, Leave It to Beaverâtype community, I attended a vocational high school about thirty minutes by bus from where I lived. My school was in the business of creating workers, not college students, and my very blue-collar family expected me to enter the union as a carpenter right after I graduated. I also didnât like school. I read slowly. I was always in remedial classes or being pulled out for extra help in math or reading. I never read of my own volition. Ever.
But when I start something, even if itâs difficult or dangerous, I have a hard time turning back. So, even though my high school was, at times, like a scene out of the movie The Warriors, I stuck it out. Just before my senior year of high school, I was asked to be part of a new program where students could test out of high school English classes and take college literature instead. I truly have no idea why I was picked for such a class. Batman and The Punisher were my typical reading materials. But when I heard my best friend, Gaeson, was taking the class, I thought it would be fun to take it together.
That year, I read the one and only novel-length book I had ever read up until that point, the memoir Death Be Not Proud by John Gunther. In the book, Gunther tells the story of his son, Johnny, who had been on track to attend Harvard University when doctors found that he had a brain tumor. The book is incredibly sad, and it made me miss my dad, who had died of the same disease. This was my first experience with the power of the written word. I remember reading a part of the memoir in which the author talks about wishing he had loved his son more. Gunther wrote:
I wish we had loved Johnny more when he was alive. Of course we loved Johnny very much. Johnny knew that. Everybody knew it. Loving Johnny more. What does it mean, now?Parents all over the earth who lost sons in the war have felt this kind of question and sought an answer. To me, it means loving life more, being more aware of life, of oneâs fellow human beings, of the earth.
Something about those words hit my heart hard. I hadnât lost a son, but a father, and this made me wish I had been a better son. The idea that a blot of ink on a page could make me feel something in my heart was a new and radical experience.
After high school, I got a job pumping gas and signed up for community college, mostly because, unlike my classmates or my working-class relatives, all of my hometown friends were signing up. Following the crowd seemed like the best thing to do. It ended up feeling like the worst thing. The professors assigned a ton of reading and expected us to study outside of class. My whole life I had been the well-mannered kid who sat in class and never got in trouble and handed in steady C-level workânot good work, just enough for me to graduate. College was a different animal.
Now I actually had to read the text and study. I had to be an active participant in work groups. I was expected to be an actual student. I started going to the free tutoring my school offered. I needed help with everythingâhow to take notes, how to study, how to do math. Iâd somehow made it through a whole life of schooling without actually learning how to learn.
I tripled down, and, for the first time in my life, I worked my ass off. I would literally say goodbye to my friends in September and tell them Iâd see them at Christmas. I listened to one audiobook on the way to school and then read another book in the library when I got to school. As soon as I got out of class, I would head to tutoring. When tutoring was done, I would meet up with my study group. When the library was too full, I would sit in the back of my â87 Chevy van and study there. I was a machine. For the first time in my life, I was figuring out how I learned. I was cutting out distractions and reading, writing, and listening more than I ever had before. I reviewed the class materials over and over again. These were all integral parts of how I grasped what was being taught. This was also my first realization that we do not all learn in the same way. I have kept this knowledge close to my heart in my own classroom and in working with nontraditional students who struggle to find their way in traditional schools.
Becoming the Teacher I Needed
Although I never dreamed of being a teacher when I was a kid, it ended up being the most natural fit for me. As a teacher I get to take the best parts of all of my previous dreams and merge them into one. It was like Iâd been gathering ingredients my whole life and hadnât thought of a way to combine them. As a kid, I wanted to be a drummer. I wanted to be on stage and entertain and inspire listeners. But after my band broke up, I went to a monastery and gave serious thought to becoming a priest. My faith has always been an integral part of my life. The idea of walking away from what had been a sometimes traumatic and tumultuous life to sit in quiet contemplation with God and to help those on the fringe who needed love was very appealing. I also spent some time in Zambia visiting very sick children in a hospital. The children lay in their beds day after day with nothing at all to do, watching a TV that showed only static. We tried to bring some light into their lives by blowing bubbles, giving them glow-in-the-dark bracelets, joking with them, and generally just creating some fun in their days, and this experience inspired me. Traveling the world to visit sick children and bring them joy, perhaps by becoming a clown, felt like a dream to me. Teaching has given me a way to take all of my life experiences and ambitions and turn them into my vocation. Iâve been able to sprinkle magic in the classroom and be a light in peopleâs lives. I grew up as the invisible kid in the back of the classroom. I never once had a teacher with whom I really connected, even though I sometimes desperately needed that connection. I wanted to be a helping hand to serve students and their families. I wanted to bring fun into the classroom. I wanted to help students figure out how they learned and to provide them with opportunities to grow into the young men and women they were destined to be.
But before I relate how I became that teacher, I have a confession to make: I was once an inexperienced and naive teacher who didnât get how the system worked. To be honest, Iâm still learning who I am, working through the many implicit biases that I continue to discover in myself. When I first went into teaching, I romanticized what it would be like to work in the inner city. In my heart, I simply wanted to help where help was needed, but I never gave any thought to the interior work I would need to do to be able to teach and connect with my students and their families.
In the spring of 2006, after returning from a short teaching stint at the Macha Girls Secondary School in Zambia, I began looking for my first full-time teaching job. I knew I wanted to teach in the inner city. I wanted to teach in a school on the margins. I wanted to stand like many of my heroesâSaint Francis, Rafe Esquith, and Father Gregory Boyleâwith the overlooked and underfunded. But when I began looking for jobs, I applied nearly everywhere in New Jerseyâfrom the rural Pine Barrens to the depths of Camden to the expensive streets of Morristownâto improve my chances of getting an offer.
My first interview was at a middle school in Cherry Hill, a sprawling suburb in South Jersey. It is a fairly diverse community, but some areas tend to lean toward middle and upper class. I grew up just a few towns away, and in high school I spent my nights skateboarding and eating microwave burritos in Cherry Hill. Most of my friends in the neighborhood were second-generation immigrants whose parents pushed them to do well in school so they could have a lifestyle their parents never had. Whether it was skateboarding, playing in punk bands, or school, these dudes got after it. They were an impressive bunch.
When I arrived for my interview, I was met by the schoolâs entire leadership team. I had a great interview, and I was asked on the spot to come back in a few days to meet with the superintendent and to do a sample lesson. I was thrilled, but a part of me was also hesitant. As I walked out of the building, I noticed an enormous fish tank at the entrance of the school. It was beautiful. The water was clear, and the fish looked expensive. It didnât appear to have any educational value. It was simply calming, fun eye candy. That night I had a hard time getting that fish tank out of my head. Did I want to teach at a school that could afford such an extravagant expense? In fact, did a school like this even need any more good teachers? But on the other hand, who wouldnât want to work there? It was great! As promised, they invited me back a few days later, I presented my sample lesson, and I crushed it. That night, they phoned my house to offer me the job and asked me to come in the following day to sign a contract. What they didnât know was that, the day before I received their offer, I had gone to visit a charter school in the Cramer Hill section of Camden.
The school was only a few years old and was housed in a factory. Half of the building was a middle school, and the other half was an entirely separate high school. Upon my arrival, the building coordinator met me and gave me a tour. The environment was very different from that in Cherry Hill. The hallways were like a maze, and many of the classrooms were tiny. The thing that hit me the most was the fact that every window in the entire high school wing had been boarded up, allowing for absolutely no sunlight in the entire space. After the tour, the building coordinator took me into his office, a small space he shared with the vice principal, who introduced himself as we entered. It was barely big enough to house both their desks. My interview consisted of two questions. One: What was my classroom management strategy? And two: What was it like to teach in Africa? That was it. I answered their questions, and I was told I would hear back from them.
Nothing about this school should have made me want to teach there. The interview was so short I felt like I wasnât really being considered for the job, and no one even mentioned curriculum or students. But I felt like it was the kind of school that might need good teachers. After being interviewed by administrators who did not seem focused on students, I thought I could be a caring presence in a place that seemed void of care. I was left with a dilemma: Cherry Hill was waiting for me to come in and sign my contract, but my heart was pulling me toward the school in Camden. I waited a day. Then another. Still I heard nothing from Camden. I did, however, on the second day get a call from the vice principal in Cherry Hill asking why I hadnât shown up yet to sign my contract. I donât remember what I said, but I was able to hold them off for another day. I told myself that, if I didnât hear back from Camden by then, I would take the job in Cherry Hill for at least a year and then reevaluate the situation.
To my relief, the charter school called me back that night and offered me the job. I called Cherry Hill and told them I was sorry but I was no longer available for the position. Then I drove right over to Camden and signed my contract.
In the five years I taught in Camden, I saw a lot and experienced a lot with my students. The fights were brutal and many. Several of my students were killed on the communityâs violent streets. Teacher turnover was overwhelming, and student buy-in was difficult, to say the least. The upside was, of course, the kids. I had the honor of being a trusted confidant for many students who had stories they needed to share. Like the student whose mother always wore her hair down because the studentâs father had attacked her mother with a fork and left her scarred. Or the student whose roof leaked because the previous summer her father had shot a gun at her and her brother as they ran up the stairs. The bullets missed them but put holes in the steps and the roof, so every time it rained the water would come through the punctures, the puddle in the upstairs hallway serving as a reminder of their dadâs unpredictability. Or the girl whose boyfriend was shot down just after finding out she was pregnant, leaving the young mother wondering what to do next.
When I say I was honored to hear these things, itâs not because I liked hearing about my studentsâ tragedies. Itâs because those kids could have gone to anyoneâa friend, parent, coach, or counselorâbut they chose me. Still, the stories were a heavy cross to bear. How do you go from a young person showing you the scars on her arms from cutting herself to teaching about The Odyssey? Over the years Iâve become more adept, but in those early years I didnât know what to do. Those stories would often leave me feeling like I had no right to be in that classroom. These kids needed more than me. How was I supposed to help them when the system didnât care? But I was wrong. I was wrong to think I needed to fix anything. I was wrong to think I was merely dealing with broken students trying to navigate a broken system. And I was wrong to think these problems were unique to those living in neighborhoods like the one where I taught.
Over the last few years Iâve had the opportunity to meet thousands of teachers through social media and at conferences all over America where Iâve been asked to speak. If youâve ever met me in person, you might have noticed not only how much I love meeting people and telling stories, but also how much I enjoy asking questions and hearing other peopleâs stories. The latter has been life changing for me. Stories from teachers at schools in neighborhoods that look completely different from mine have shown me that we are not all that different.
I was too foolish to realize when I was a young teacher but Iâve since learned from my many conversations with educators that every teacher and student is fighting a battle no one else knows anything about. As I sat in professional development sessions and had drinks with colleagues late into the night after the conferences had ended for the day, I realized that teachers from some of the richest schools Iâve ever heard of were working with students who were struggling with pain and heartache and loss just like my kids were. Kids who cut themselves, not because they didnât have enough but because they felt the need to be perfect. Kids whoâd lost friends, not to gun violence but to suicide. Kids whose parents werenât around, not because they were locked up but because they chose their careers over their children.
Teaching isnât just about uploading inf...