My first year out of my Master’s program, I taught ninth and
tenth grade English at one of Boston Public’s monstrous high schools (~1,000
kids). I came in bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to work hard and change
lives. I had read countless books, I had written countless papers, and I had rocked
student teaching. Oh, yes. I was ready.
…Actually, no, I wasn’t. None of those books, none of those
papers, and none of my student teaching experiences had prepared me for a
constantly-changing roster that assigned 36 kids to a room with only 31 seats
(“Don’t worry—they’ll never all be here,” another teacher said); 120-minute
blocks; and an administration that was so hands-off that unless a student was
puking or bleeding, I had to take care of it myself. If I assigned a detention,
the student was serving it with me; if the student didn’t show up, I had the
power to suspend. Within the first week, there was a huge fight involving
ripped out earrings, broken glass, a metal stapler, blood, and a concussion in
the room next door. Unfortunately, that was only the beginning of the violence
that my students and I had to witness that year.
Here’s a journal entry that I wrote on October 24, 2005:
I have come to realize that
teaching in this school is a lot like riding a terrifying roller coaster...in
the dark.
When you walk in every morning, you
have no idea whether it will be a good day or a bad day. You work hard to make
it a good day. You plan like mad, you get to school at 6:00am to prepare, you
try to be ready for anything. But then you go and screw it up. You make a few
mistakes. Small, but crucial. The day begins to unravel. The kids feel it. You
feel it. You try not to show it, but the tension in your voice is too obvious
to hide. Your frustration builds. Their frustration builds. You lose what
you've worked so hard for the past month and a half to gain: their attention,
their respect, their effort. The class is lost. Gone. Unfortunately, you teach
two-hour blocks...so you still have 100 minutes to go.
And by the time your day ends, you
are so exhausted that you can barely throw the broken pieces of your brand new
bathroom pass away without crumbling. You wonder if any other job exists where
one can work so incredibly hard and feel so completely defeated if
even one part of the plan goes wrong. No job can be this hard to do
well. Surely no job under the sun.
Kathleen Cushman says, “Good teaching requires the courage
to look honestly at what is and imagine what it could be.” When I was
struggling through that first year in Boston Public—a time I commonly refer to
as ‘the winter of my life’—I looked at how poorly the school was run, how
unsafe my students felt, and how alone I felt, and I imagined a school that
served the same population but did it well. So I started looking, and I
found City on a Hill. Here was a school that took the kids who lived next door
to the kids I taught in Boston Public and got them to college! (As a side note,
I hate it when people say that charter schools ‘weed out’ the worst behaved or
the most behind students; it simply isn’t true—I can tell you, they serve the exact
same kids.)
Here’s a journal entry that I wrote on August 30, 2006,
three days into my first faculty orientation week at City on a Hill:
I'm really excited about this
school. I definitely work with a fantastic group of people. I feel supported in
so many ways (which can't be further from how I felt a year ago at my old
school). The exact moment that I realized
this: My planning partner (who is also the Principal—all of the administrators
teach!) and I were looking over my classroom contract from last year (a
five-page document) and were able to cross off 90% of the ‘classroom procedures’
I had made up for my room because they already have school-wide systems in
place that cover them. Everyone is on board; I am no longer an island unto
myself. Hoorah!!
For me, quite literally, City on a Hill was a dream come
true.
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| Ms. Gentry with her senior advisory on their last day of classes - May 21, 2010 |
Christine Gentry is a Ph.D. candidate in
the English Education department at Teachers College, Columbia University and a
Curriculum Coach and Lead Instructor at Student
Press Initiative. She taught high school English in inner-city Boston for
five years, four of which were at City on a Hill. She studied English and
Sociology at Baylor University and received her Master's in English Education
from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her long-term plan is to teach
future urban English teachers at the college level while always teaching at
least one high school class.
