What am I doing here?

The answer to that question is simple:

"If you're aware of injustice, you can either ignore it, say there is nothing you can do about it, complain about it and not do anything, or put your energies into doing something about it." - Ben Cohen

This is me, putting my energies into doing something about poverty, about the educational achievement gap. That's what I'm telling myself at least. Because many days I don't know what I'm doing here. Or I don't know how I'm doing it.

I'm a first-year teacher, still working on official certification, recently relocated from St. Paul, Minnesota to wicked rural eastern North Carolina. I'm white, teaching in a 100% African American school. I was a straight A student (until college...); my kids read and perform math multiple years below grade-level. I can name all 50 states, every European and South American and most Asian and African countries if given a blank map. My kids don't know what country they live in. I am polite to a fault. Most of my kids can't make it through an entire period without cursing or name-calling. I am female. Every one of my students is male.

What am I doing here?

"Ms. L... Slaves got paid, right?"

What? No! What are you asking me? Do you seriously not know what slavery is? How am I supposed to tell you that my ancestors treated your ancestors like dogs?

This was my first week of school. We read the Autobiography of Frederick Douglass in preparation for a speaker from the non-profit that funds our alternative-setting school. Our speaker was a well-educated African American man, who started his own business and was very successful despite coming from a very underprivileged background, similar to my boys. Frederick's writing had apparently had a huge impact on this man, and he wanted to share that with our kids.

Suddenly it wasn't seeming worth it.

Not only was I responsible for reading the entire book aloud to them, because there was no way they were understanding it on their own, now I had to explain slavery?

"Nope. Slaves didn't get paid. Let's talk about this word: Dehumanize."

This is how I began teaching Frederick Douglass. Breaking a word into pieces and explaining that people once treated each other like animals.

From this point my reading students have grown a year in 4 months, my middle schoolers conquered two continents' worth of geography and history, and my high schoolers can now tell you how a bill becomes a law.

But we still have a lot of ground to cover before graduation, before my boys will have mastered enough academic and social skills to return to a traditional-setting school, and that is why I'm here. Or so I keep telling myself.

"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe." - Frederick Douglass