My Teach for America Story
Students and I struggle and succeed in beautiful Mississippi.
After graduating college in 2013, I packed my car and moved from Los Angeles to the Mississippi Delta. I came to join Teach for America. The opinions here are mine and do not reflect the views of TFA.
My two years of teaching were filled with challenge and positive change.
There were hard moments. Our class set of Harry Potter books was confiscated. Student behavior could be difficult to manage. Corporal punishment was hard to fathom. I was sometimes cast as an outsider because I was a white teacher in a black community.
There were many more positive moments than negative. Students grew a lot in their reading and writing. The town where I taught was extremely supportive. My co-workers were amazing and loving. I had amazing roommates. I met BB King. Students lobbied the district to allow them to read Harry Potter. I truly loved the experience, the people and the place.
The Delta is a rural area that stretches from Memphis, Tennessee to Vicksburg, Mississippi. It’s the birthplace of blues, “The Most Southern Place on Earth,” and home to most fertile soil in the United States. Because of this, it became a hot spot for slavery and eventually sharecropping. The legacy is a majority black population, sharply segregated schools and economic inequality.
I thought I’d instantly be a great teacher, students would love me, and I’d transform their lives.
I had a lot to learn.
During the first six weeks 1,000 other new TFA Corps Members and I learned the fundamentals of education and co-taught classrooms in a supported environment. At the end of Institute, I thought I’d done a decent job moving students to academic improvements.
My teacher coach thought otherwise. At our final conference she told me one-on-one that my classroom was destructive. In TFA lingo that means you got an F on your teacher report card.
Less than two years later, my principal handed me her formal evaluation of my teaching and said, “ Mr. Brown, I rated you, ‘effective.’ That’s outstanding for a second year teacher.”
Here’s how I got there.
FIRST YEAR
With the word “destructive” looming in the back of my head, I worked hard planning my classroom.
I’d be teaching at East Sunflower Elementary, a K-6 public school of 200 students in the small Mississippi Delta town of Sunflower.
With the first day of school near, I entered my classroom and discovered that there would a be teaching assistant. We introduced ourselves, and prepared the class.
After the first day of school I exclaimed on social media.
The first couple weeks started well.
Then things started to unravel. Students started misbehaving. One student was so defiant that the school elected to use corporal punishment as a means of classroom management. After the student received a paddle to the behind — something that never happened to me as a child — , I fully realized this experience was going to be new and difficult.
My relationship with the TA deteriorated. I asked her to stop helping a student on his diagnostic test. She walked out of the classroom, and returned two days later.
After the first 9 weeks my class was one of the lowest scoring groups among 4th graders in the district. Seeing as how the district scored a “D” on the state report card the year before, this meant we were really low.
In the second 9 weeks I focused on building lessons that aligned to what students would be tested on. I also made learning more interesting, incorporating tutorials like Hour of Code.
In addition the TA and I patched things up, and overall the first semester ended well.
On our second 9 weeks test, students scored better than the district average.
In the second semester, I think I got better as a teacher. However, some of the same issues plagued the classroom.
The teaching assistant and I had an even bigger disagreement, and she was in the class way less. I take full responsibility for the dissolve of our relationship. I should have been better at investing her and building a personal relationship so that students would benefit from two leaders in class. Without her presence, students continued to act out. Teach For America emphasizes personal growth. Even when we encounter challenging situations, we treat them as learning opportunities. By losing the valuable assistance of the teaching assistant, I learned the importance of building strong relationships with members of the community. It was a lesson learned the hard way, but a lesson learned.
I combatted being isolated by trying to become a better teacher.
Every night I read books like Teaching As Leadership, A Chance to Make History, Teach Like A Champion and How Children Succeed. These books definitely made me a better instructor. I became warmer, stricter and focused on student outcomes. I demanded more out of students, and they stepped up to the challenge.
In addition I took the advice of my three roommates. One of whom was in his third year teaching, and had been nominated for national teaching awards. He taught me mindfulness and meditation. I became more aware of my emotions, calmer and more positive.
Overall school started feeling like a better place to go to each day.
I also tried to get involved more outside of school. I volunteered as a guitar instructor at the BB King Museum.
A few parents invited me to attend church with their families. I’d started attending church regularly when I moved to Mississippi. Worship with my students’ families was truly exciting, joyful and awesome. Mississippi is the most religious state in the country, and has the most churches per capita of any state. I think living in the Bible Belt led me to be more faithful.
As I started to love my students more, we spent more time together. I took a group to the circus. On the car ride there, the student who received corporal punishment earlier in the year told me that he’d be visiting his father in prison the next day. Once I got to know my students, I began to empathize with them a lot more. We had such different backgrounds, but I felt more charged than ever to give them an education that would put them on a better path. As I cheered on my student as she won the circus’ hula hooping contest, I realized it was possible.
Our third quarter scores were mixed. We’d improved in math, but dropped in language.
The fourth quarter was mainly about preparing for Mississippi’s state test — the MCT2. I hammered test prep, including the myriad of obscure English concepts required by the 2013–2014 exam (sentence types, tools of persuasion, and a host of “writing” objectives that were entirely multiple choice).
We knew we’d have to wait until late summer to get the full results of the test. Separate end of year tests showed differing outcomes. Students had grown very little in writing, but excelled in reading. The 4th graders, on average, had grown 1.5 years in reading in just 8 months of school.
Despite my poor relationship with the TA, students had some success. Still they were far behind the state average, and the state was far behind the rest of the country.
At my end of year conference my teacher coach urged me to prioritize building relationships with coworkers and the Sunflower community. A strong personal connection to the community would be the only way students could learn in a way that significantly bettered their life opportunities.
One connection I did form during the year — teaching guitar at the BB King Museum — paid off. I got to meet The King of Blues himself. It was a treat that concluded my first year.
SECOND YEAR
I spent the summer teaching at a charter in New Orleans and vacationing with family and friends. With a few weeks until the start of school, I began planning for the year. I talked with my principal, who told me that my class had performed well in English Language Arts. With that, we made the decision that I would teach 4th, 5th and 6th grade ELA in 2014–2015.
On the first day of school in my second year of teaching, some of my students from last year walked in the room.
“Hey Mr. Brown!” one exclaimed.
“How WAS your SUMmer?” another asked in a goofy voice.
“Hello,” I responded to the first. “Now you,” I commanded staring at the second, “are going to straighten yourself up and start acting right.”
“Yessir,” he responded.
After a year of misbehavior, I’d had enough. I knew I needed to come in firm.
I also knew I needed to build relationships with coworkers and parents. I found a plan on the Department of Ed website for a Parent Teacher Home Visit Project. I asked parents if I could come into their homes and discuss their hopes for their children. 25 families agreed. In the first couple weeks of school I got to meet my student’s parents in Sunflower.
It was wonderful to come into their homes and see where my students lived. The homes were well-maintained and the parents were friendly. Several families offered me food, and I ate the best fried catfish of my life.
The Home Visit Project helped both parents and I empathize with each other. We could see that we shared a vision for their students success, and that even though we were different races, we were ultimately human.
In the early months of school our test scores for the previous year were published in full. Out of 576 schools in Mississippi, East Sunflower ranked 559. That put us in the 3rd percentile, meaning 97% of schools did better than us.
2013–2014 MCT2 Mean Score Grades 3–6 in Descending Order
We had no choice, but to be optimistic and have a growth mindset.
As my principal confirmed during the summer my students struggled in Math, but did pretty well in English. In reading and writing students performed significantly better than the year prior, even outscoring the district average.
The results for the rising 6th grade class were alarming. I’d be inheriting a class of sixth graders with the lowest English scores in the entire state. This was reflected in an early reading test that pegged the 6th graders on a 3.5 — a third grader in their fifth month.
When I told the class the results, I framed it as an opportunity to grow.
Many latched onto the idea.
Still there were issues. Early in the year, I called a student’s parent by cell phone and was suspended for three days without pay. Any use of cell phones violated district policy.
Instead of appealing the suspension, I took it. I thought back to a teaching book that said anytime administrators and teachers fight, students do not benefit.
On my first day back from suspension, I asked to meet with my principal. I sat in her office and asked her about her leadership story. Ms. L told me how she became a youth director at her church, then became a teaching assistant, worked at a district office, became a teacher, got her masters, and ultimately became a principal. It was an interesting story, and she asked me about mine.
I shared that I got interested in education by being a student-athlete tutor at USC, and I became interested in social justice by leading an affordable housing campaign at the university.
I walked out of the room relieved, with a sense that I knew my boss as a person. It was a solid foundation on which we could positively impact students. From there, our relationship improved dramatically, and we never looked back.
My fifth grade group felt this impact. They responded well to the strict start, and became one of the most passionate groups of learners. I loved watching their hands fly up as they competed with each other to see which of their groups could earn the most points and do the best.
The sixth grade group also showed improvement. This was especially true when I became the Offensive Coordinator of the Ruleville Middle School football team. A large group of sixth graders and I rode the bus to Ruleville a few days a week for practice. I loved working out with the student-athletes and leading their drills. Our class culture improved significantly. Of all the students, many of the football players showed the most growth on their reading and writing assessments.
Coaching was one of the most enjoyable things I did, and improved my classroom greatly.
This year students were preparing for the PARCC assessment, aligned to Common Core State Standards. It was a brand new test, and relatively new standards. It was harder than the MCT2, with lengthier passages and a real writing section.
It also tested students more. Instead of one end of year test, students now had an assessment in March and another assessment in May.
We prepared as best as we could. I constantly had to balance students learning foundational reading skills with test prep.
Writing seemed to go extremely well. At the beginning of the year many students barely wrote a paragraph about their dream job. But by spring students were producing pages comparing and contrasting the theme of texts.
A consultant, a teacher coach hired by the district, however, took issue with my teaching. To get students excited about reading I chose for us to read Harry Potter and answer PARCC aligned questions.
The consultant e-mailed the superintendent, and said I needed to do more test prep.
The superintendent told my principal to confiscate all 30 Harry Potter books.
The students and I packed up the books. Many kept asking, “why are they taking the books?” They expressed they loved Harry Potter and wrote letters asking for the novel’s return.
I too wrote a letter. It took almost three weeks, but eventually we got the books back. Because we were unable to finish in the remaining days of school, I gave them out on the last day.
Statistically, the school year was relatively successful. Students had gains in reading that amounted to just under a year of growth, as measured by STAR Reading. In writing, as mentioned, students grew significantly. The results of the PARCC Assessment will be released in summer and fall.
I’m confident that our school did better than in 2013–2014. This year we had a team of teachers with a great deal of experience. Prior, all of the teachers in the upper hall, except one, were in their first year. This year we got along better as a staff, students were more controlled and overall it was more enjoyable.
Despite the censored book fiasco, my principal and I stayed on friendly terms. When she handed me my “effective” rating at the end of the school year, I smiled in relief.
My three new roommates contributed to making the second year of teaching better. They all brought a unique, optimistic outlook to education, and inspired me throughout the year.
In 2015–2016, Mississippi will have another new state test. It will be a challenge for teachers and students to adjust to the third new test in as many years.
While I taught for just two years in Mississippi, it was long enough for me to come to a couple realizations. The first is that the education system is in desperate need of integration and improvement. The schools in the south are segregated. The white private schools have families with more economic resources, creating separate and unequal schools.
At the end of my two years, I was invited to speak at the Baptist church where I’d been a member during my TFA commitment. Before the speech I learned that this church actually helped found the white private segregation academy in Indianola. I weaved this point into my speech, and asked members of the clergy to push for integrated schools.
After the speech, the preacher rescheduled lunch with me, and the principal of the white private school, Indianola Academy, refused to talk to me. I felt pushback from a handful of other members of the church. However, overall, a lot of the church members said, “We needed that message,” and thanked me. A few people also inquired about how to create integrated schools. I was encouraged by the large number of people who supported the message of equality and integration.
The second realization I came to is that students want to learn. My students were quick to engage with material that mattered to their lives, and also showed a real love of learning. It takes experience and an excellent teacher to inspire joy in learning, but it is possible even for brand new teachers. Young people deserve a quality education. That comes from creating schools with outstanding teachers and school leaders.
The most transformative two years of my life were spent in Mississippi. I learned how to be an effective teacher. The community of Sunflower supported me and its students. I grew as a person, and will carry the students of ESE and my experience in the Delta forever.
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