Education

I applied first deadline to Teach For America. I found out last night that I get to bypass the phone interview stage and have been invited to attend the final, in-person day-long interview. Yay! Over the next couple weeks, I'll need to figure out my region and grade & content area preferences. I've always said I wanted to do high school English in a large urban area like NYC, Chicago, DC, or Atlanta. I think I still feel this way, but I've recently become much more open to the possibility of a rural region like the Mississippi Delta or South Louisiana. Why? Because the need in these regions is at least as great if not greater than the need in urban areas. Because the possibility of impact is greater in a rural or small town community. I might have the opportunity to start a soccer team at an urban middle school, but it's likely I'd have the opportunity to start a soccer league in one of the rural communities. I love I love I love the city - it has been my passion for the last 3-4 years at least, but somehow I'm feeling tugged to seriously look into rural and small town America. We'll see!

By the time children growing up in low-income communities are in the 4th grade, they are already three full grade levels behind their peers in, say, Johns Creek. You know what this means? It means 9 year-old little Johnny in Nowswhereville, MS is reading "See Spot Run" when little 9 year-old Suzy in Suburbia, GA is reading Harry Potter. Fifty percent of children growing up in low-income communities will graduate from high school. That's ONE out of every TWO. Those that do graduate will read, on average, at an 8th grade level. One in ten will graduate from college. Why are more of us not enraged by this reality? We spend so much time blaming this-that-and-the-other politician and policy in our discussions of the current economic crisis; maybe we should spend more time tending to our nation's educational crisis. I honestly believe education is the key to it all - to breaking from the cycle of poverty, to realizing one's career goals, to effecting legitimate, lasting social and economic change, to reducing the crime, teen pregnancy, and substance abuse rates, the key to it all.