Being at such a small school, I know probably too many details of my students' lives. I don't often talk about the all negatives in my conversations about work because of something my CS said at Institute. She told the story of someone else's presumptions about her students and how she hated to reinforce those. She said she talked about the hard stuff with other corps members because they had students of their own; they knew. But when she talked to others she tried to highlight her students' achievements, moments of warmth and brilliance, their potential.
Doing this has proven to be exceedingly difficult, because it is the very bad stuff I try to avoid that makes their successes all the more joyful, frustrating, and heart-breaking.
To my original point, I know about the feuds, the friendships, who goes with whom, who should never sit next to so and so, and who made the mistake of beating up another young man so severely that he is in a coma on a CTA bus last week that was being monitored by a camera. I was in the office this morning when another mother came in with her son claiming that he had been assaulted by students from my school. And I was in the middle of reviewing vocabulary when the principal came silently into my room with the young man so he could have a look around to see if he could identify his assailants.
"Who was that, Ms. Geraghty?"
"Uh, you know, probably a prospective student."
"...what's prospective?"
"(sigh...) a potential student. (silence) Like, an eighth grader who might come here next year.
"oh. ok."
I'm part of the conversations in which kids discuss whether they'll have to transfer schools next year because they're afraid to get shot outside our new building.
I hear the stories of abuse, neglect, loneliness, abandonment, sorrow that make their very presence in school every day a success. And it's hard not to want to gloat about the A they got, the conflict they settled, the new record they set, without also explaining how much farther they have to come to get to those goals. I suppose that's what makes keeping expectations high so challenging. They may be just as high as those in other places. But the journey is so much longer. D. A-B isn't really doing much better this semester than she did last semester, at least academically in my class. But I know that in my class she knows she is welcomed and cared about and looked after, that I notice when she's gone, give her opportunities to be successful wherever I can, ask her about her life, and expect her to do more. The TFA goal is 80% 80% 80% mastery mastery mastery. but the reality is much different. That's something I've had to reconcile with my idealism; of course we have to keep lofty goals to always keep moving forward (my spanish I kids are hovering in the low 70's right now). But perfection isn't humanly possible. There will be failures. And I think failure has become less scary a word than it was at the beginning. Because if there's one thing I've learned this year, it's the importance of perspective. I may not have been a stellar teacher. I made more than my share of mistakes. I failed my kids many times by many accounts. But, unlike 1/4 of our staff, I haven't quit. I've done the best that I can do and kept my sights on the goals, remembering that acting with compassion and faith is oftentimes more important than expecting to be able to act with expertise I haven't earned.