Reflections+from+the+Curriculum

//**Reflections from a first year teacher…**//



When I entered my freshman year at Boston University I was bright-eyed, bushy tailed, and ready to do my part in changing the world. After traveling the world on a semester at sea and working with youth in the city of Boston in many different capacities I graduated with a dual degree in International Relations and Public Relations. A very expensive education had taught me how to think, but I still had no idea what I was going to do! After working for some time at an international travel company I decided to make the decision, which I had been fighting for some time… I was going to go to grad school to become a teacher.

I embarked on an intensive, yearlong masters program called Boston Teacher Residency (BTR), an organization whose mission is to retain urban schoolteachers beyond three years. This is essential when statistics show that most urban schoolteachers quit within this time. This grim statistic is understandable considering the emotional energy and physical time that is involved in teaching our youth. But what my first year has taught me is that when the curriculum is engaging and the students are inspired, the benefits of teaching far outweigh the cost. Becoming a teacher has become one of the most fulfilling aspects of my life. I owe some of this to BTR’s model, which is based off the doctor residency model. The idea is to provide real life “field work” and experience for teachers so that when the time comes to do the job they are ready and prepared. I underwent an apprenticeship where a master teacher taught me the ropes and allowed me to teach under her supervision. For one intense year I received the theory from my classes and the experience from my work in a second grade classroom in Dorchester. This year when I was embarking on my first year of teaching, I had all the tools I needed.

And with that experience I was sold on one essential idea when thinking about teaching and learning. Learning should be done on the field, and through experience. Real knowledge comes from investigation and experimentation. In the same fashion that I was able to learn how to teach, I want to be able to teach my students through fieldwork. At the Young Achievers Math &amp; Science Pilot School I led my students in expeditions around their city, to learn about their neighborhoods and essentially themselves. Along the way, they received and I received knowledge that is immeasurable. Students learned what it means to be a councilman when Sam Yoon came to visit. Their world became a little less black and white as they uncovered similarities to struggles people face in Chinatown that is similar to their own when we talked about affordable housing. Students talked about why people settle in Boston and eventually stay here. They learned about their own families, their own histories. When visiting Villa Victoria students learned to empathize with what it must have felt like for the Latino families in the sixties when the city tried to take away their homes, and consequently what it felt like for those families to stand up for what was rightfully theirs and win. When learning about the history of our own school, which came out of a grass roots movement, students felt a part of a history and dialogue of activism. When traveling to Jamaica Plain, Downtown Boston, Beacon Hill, the South End, and Chinatown, students realized that their homes go far beyond the confines of their neighborhoods. When recording their voices on WBUR and hearing it played back to them on the radio and the web (making it available worldwide) students for the first time understood the power of their own voice. This culminating event for me was the most moving. This is the whole point. If I am successful in helping my students uncover the power of their own voice, then I have succeeded.

In thinking about the grim statistics that are the reality of urban schoolteachers, I have to ask myself, “Annie, what is going to make you stick this out? What is going to help you to become a fixture in the Boston Public school system?” And my answer is undeniably this work… this fieldwork where the learning, knowledge, and self-discovery is apparent in my students’ eyes.