GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Nice self indulgent article.  How about you wait until you’ve served 10, 15, or 20 years in the system before sharing your “experiences”.  They may actually have some value then.  I venture to guess that your perspective might be somewhat altered by then, also.
Just so you know, statistics (something the DOE is fond of manipulating as you will learn) say there is a 50% chance you will be gone within five years.

 Sounds like a Teach for America corpsman is enhancing his resume and having an eye opening experience in the hood at the same time.  How long is the TFA commitment? This dude is probably marking his calendar with a countdown until the LSAT.

You speak about privilege, but what do you say about a Puerto Rican male who grew up in a lower-middle class city in North Jersey, who didn’t grow up with both parents and lived with half a family who didn’t know English, and whose family sacrificed heavily financially for his education? Or to the students in your classes growing up who had all these privileges but went the “wrong path”: drugs, jail, etc.?

Like me, you had one of the greatest privileges of all: a supportive family who was able to have time to sustain you emotionally, physically, and so much more. So many parents of the students I teach struggle to work two jobs to help their children physically as fix broken relationships and bring aunts, uncles, grandparents, and more to continue to help their children emotionally. I didn’t have a father, but I had a strong family support system. Regardless of lack of money, a majority of my students who succeed have strong support systems at home. I personally feel that goes as long of a way, if not, more so than just being born in Westchester or in the suburbs or going to the best schools in the area.

It’s not just “enough” to be born in the right place (suburbs of Chicago) or going to the right schools. Like a majority of us, due to your family’s ability to sustain you as you were growing up, you got where you are today. I wished you would have written more about that particular privilege and expanded on it a little, instead of focusing on money, Facebook, and iPhones.

You’re describing a post-apocalyptic nightmare school world ravaged by mayoral control…but the disillusionment etc. you describe was in place long before this mayor.  I heard the same things from the “old and wizened” teachers in the Giuliani days when I was teaching, under Cortines, and Crew, and Levy, etc.    “Don’t worry, you’ll see…” is just a cop-out.  The reality is what we make of it, and we owe it to our students to rise above the fray and give them a positive experience.  If you don’t like your administrator, do something about it (like, go work somewhere else). But don’t poison other well meaning educators with your negativity.

All of you brained washed educators know deep down in your hearts that real education is not as difficult or complex as the BIG EDUCATION MACHINE has parents and kids believe – everyone is fully capable of educating themselves with a “real” education not the garbage that passes for education in the school system. The perverted school system in existence actually rewires and damages the brain and critical thinking abilities… but we all need a job  so you might as well “teach” and pretend you are really “educating” other humans. .

I was also a white privileged person teaching in a low income area. One tip. Treat them like people and don’t try to compare what you did to prepare for a test as a motivational tool. My kids knew I grew up wealthy w two college educated parents where I had a room to study and friends to study with. I never told them that they just assumed and figured it out. They also didn’t care that I used to write 15 page papers in college and I never threw that in their face when they had a writing assignments.

umm..kinda shmaltzy i-worried-we-were-different-but-we’re-all-the-same theme, along with let-me-help-you-be-like-me after all. maybe better suited for the Paris Review if George Plimpton would accept it. but he’s young, idealistic, and hey, we were all there once and gotta start somewhere so cut him a break. Never heard of Blue Engine but stopped reading their mission when I came to the word “rigor”, the contemporary cliche word in education indicating thinking has been replaced by ideology. Seems the “Betas” are extra teaching assistants in classrooms that increase college readiness by a factor of three. You might say that cuts classroom size in half. ok with that. Next problem is getting Bloomberg to hire an extra 80,000 Betas for NYC schools then we’re off to a start.

It’s quite revealing that Gotham Schools has no interest in finding students or veteran teachers to write about the influx of privileged, self-absorbed temps and missionaries passing through the communities and schools they’ve lived and worked in for years. 

After publishing the insipid and execrable Ruben Brosbe for far too long, GS gives us the same with a slight twist: uncertainty and moral qualms, followed by the uplifting realization that We’re All the Same and Want the Same Things.

There’s definitely a potential film treatment here, and it can be worked on before the author leaves The Bronx and goes on to Better Things.

Er, all young idealistic teachers who feel the urge to write such a column should first be required to read the Onion spoof, along with the spoof response penned by the idealistic teacher’s weary fourth grade student. 

Why doesn’t this clown first identify himself as a TFA scab temp prior to engaging in  self-flagellation, when career teaching professionals will be exposed to this nonsense?

He mentions several times all the ‘choices’ he made that gave him a leg up, and how he was ‘lucky’ to be born where and how he was.  There was a time, not too long ago, before America decided to import all the poor people of the world, when any average American kid was born into a two parent household in a stable community.

Whether rich, poor or middle class, there was a wide horizon of opportunity both glamorous and mundane.  Now our cities are overcrowded with refugees, ‘immigrants’ seeking a ‘better life’ (read: living off the freebies our taxes provide) and exotic criminal gangs.  

Idealistic young liberals like this young man then can live out their peace corp fantasies and be adored by their little native charges – and it’s a lot cheaper and easier than flying half way around the world.

This young man had better think about it.  In his lifetime this country will crack under a wave of racially-based insurrections and the multi-culti dream will go the way of Yugoslavia.