Empowerment

I really liked this section. I think it was my favorite section. It did a really good job covering the most important part of teaching, empowering our youth to change the world. That is what teachers are supposed to do. We are supposed to show them that they have the ability to affect the world around them, to change things. We are here to show them they can do anything.

I think my favorite entry in the entire section was the last one. It did a good job summing up the end of the school year and the book as a whole. Plus I liked the message it sent. The author of this entry describes it as giving their students angel wings. It is certainly something similar to that. Education id supposed to lift us up and give us freedom, like flying.

I also really liked the one about Mike, the kid who wanted to drop out of school because he failed his final portfolio. I loved the image of the whole class and all the teachers outside the building trying to coax that one kid inside. I was amazed by the community that had been created there. And I loved that the teacher never gave up on him. It was clear that the kid had struggled and failing the portfolio had brought up a lot of issues for him. I am glad that the teacher was still hopefully he would work through that and return.

Rejuvenation

I think my favorite entry by far was number 134. I connected with it in a number of different ways. First, I liked the connection the teacher made to himself and his own classroom once he was put around other teachers who were also doing incredible things. It really showed that even though he thought he was doing well, he realized there was room for growth after all. He is in many ways an example of a good teacher because he was able to reflect on himself and learn from his feelings of inadequacy. I think that a lot of teachers aren't able to realize that they are of equal fault when students aren't succeeding in their classes.

Second, I really liked his realization. I agree that it is a teacher's job to make sure that all of their students have a voice in their classroom. That is part of what teaching is about. Yes, we want them to learn English, Math, Science and History. But we also want them to learn how those things connect to themselves and in that way learn who they really are. Teaching and learning is supposed to involve some soul searching.

Third, I was one of those kids. I moved from the town I had spent 11 years in to a place where I new no one. I had no friends and for a long time I didn't speak up in class. I had learned in my previous school that doing so labeled you as a "walking talking history book" and that many kids would only be interested in being your friend so they could get you to help them with their homework which left you with no time to do your own while at school and a ton to do when you got home. There were many classes in school that I remained silent in either because I didn't want to appear too smart or because I didn't want to have to help my friends with their work or simply because I thought that if I did speak up I would spend the rest of the class doing all the talking. Other kids hated that.

Fourth, I think it would be really easy to become this teacher. It is really easy to feel you are doing everything right for your students even thought your not. It is very easy to believe that because one or two students speak every class, or because you are moving through the material so quickly, that you are doing everything that is needed to provide your students with what they need to learn. There will always be the kids in the class who are not afraid to speak up. It is the number of kids in the back who are not voicing themselves that you should be concerned with.

Disillusionment

Being a teacher is hard. As a teacher your job is to stand up in front of a room of at least 20, more often closer to 30, students and try to get them to all learn what it is you want them to learn. That in itself is impossible. Now imagine that you have to teach these students who all have problems. Some have a crappy home life, some are grieving, some are being picked on at school, some are exhausted from working all day and night to support themselves and some are simply tired of being trapped in a building where no one cares about them and who they are. It is hard enough to teach 20 or 30 teenagers anything but imagine trying to do it when they feel like they are in prison and you are their jailer. To top it all off teachers get no support. Most often schools are underfunded, and many teachers receive no help from administrators or fellow teachers because they are just as tired and frustrated by the whole situation as everyone else is. I know that being a teacher is a struggle. This chapter seems to be about how low we can fall and how sometimes even we, the teachers, break under pressure.

Engagement

I loved entry 51, about the teacher who was taking the student across the border and entry 66 about the teacher who spent 200 dollars to make sure her student could go to college. Those things seemed like things I would do as a teacher. I know that I am one of those teachers that cares an awful lot about what happens to her students. Sometimes that idea really scares me. It means that I will be open to a lot of heartbreak and a lot of happiness. Those things don't scare me. I believe that all risks have a chance of failure and my students are always a risk I am willing to take. The part that scares me is that sometime I might go too far. I see myself burying myself in debt or losing sleep and therefore my health worrying or going to jail for illegally taking a student across the border cause they need to get home. I love these entries because the teachers were honest about how far they were willing to go for their kids. But it makes me all the more worried about how far I am willing to go. I am already the person all of my friends and family turn to for help and advice. I am already the person that bears everyone else's burdens. And I do that for those people mostly without having boundaries of how far I will go because I love them and they are family, I know they will never ask me to go too far. Many of my students will have no one else. Where do I draw the line for them? Do I draw a line? Can a person care for someone else too much? And if so, how much is too much?

Challenges

I related to many of the stories from this section of the book. While I am not a product of gang violence or rape, I have never done any substances or lived with an addict, and I haven’t ever been homeless these things are much a part of my past. They all happened to my mom. My biological grandmother, I call her Donna because she has never been a part of my life, was a pregnant teen who gave my mom up to her mother, the woman I knew as Grammie Johnson. Grammie was a mean drunk. My mom dealt by doing drugs, which eventually caused her to drop out of school and run away from home. My mom has lived on her own since she was 15. My mom eventually got her life together, she got cleaned up, got her GED and went to bartending school. She met my dad and got married. They got divorced. While I did grow up in a home where money was always stretched thin, I was lucky. Unlike many of the kids in these journal entries I had a mom who knew what poverty could do to you and who knew what trying to get lost in something else, even for a little while can make you lose forever. My mom took any help she could get, and always put us first. She made sure we had everything we needed and most of what we wanted. If it wasn’t for her courage though I would not be in college and my brother and I would probably be in the same situation these kids found themselves in. In many ways I am a success story. In that way I connected to entry 36. I hope that someday I can share my mom’s story and even my story with them in order to give them hope. I want them to know that they can take charge of their lives, that they can change their circumstances no matter how bleak it looks and that money is not the obstacle in often seems when you don’t have any. Hard work and determination do pay off.

Anticipation

I really related to the third diary entry in this section because it was about a teacher’s first day ever teaching a class. I understood the feelings of inadequacy. I remember during practicum having the same thoughts and feelings and I often worry that no matter how much I know and no matter how prepared I am for a class, I will never truly know what it is I am doing. It is silly and I know that. 4 years of training for a job should be more than adequate. I should feel more prepared for my first teaching job. I also related to this one because the teacher had a small inner conflict about how much to share with the class. I was worried about that during practicum too but I realized very quickly that the students respected me more when I shared my interests and who I was with them, and even more when I showed interest in their interests. The seventeenth entry was similar to the idea of sharing. The teacher in that one was faced with students who wanted to know about sex and had not been allowed to get that information from other teachers. I think that people often feel uncomfortable talking about sex. And that is really too bad because how else are students supposed to get that information? I hope that if I am ever in a situation similar to this teacher, that I won’t be so embarrassed that I will forget that education is more important than those feelings.