The Achievement Gap as a Literacy Gap

Thought of the Day

At one of today's instructional sessions, my school team (comprised of 7th and 8th grade English and Social Studies teachers at M.S. 331 in the Bronx) walked into a giant lecture hall with a rather grandiose atmosphere. At the front of the hall was a large screen with the following words glued in large font: "So strong is the link between literacy and being a useful member of society that some states use grade-level reading statistics as a factor in projecting prison construction."

One of the things that Teach For America has been emphasizing repeatedly throughout the session this week is that the Achievement Gap is a literacy gap. In other words at the root of the inequity in educational levels across the nation is an inability to read and write. As one could imagine illiteracy not only affects the traditional core areas of reading comprehension and fluency, but also hinders the ability to conceptualize and understand topics ranging from science to social studies. The literacy gap begins in primary school and only magnifies in adolescence.

When I first received my summer assignment to be an 8th grade English teacher in the Bronx, I wasn't terribly excited. It wasn't that I was upset or disappointed, I just sort of felt that it would be good training but not something I would pursue in the Fall. While I have always done well in English, I felt that Math or Social Studies would best suit my interests and strengths. Nonetheless, I have realized from sessions like the one described above that every teacher is a literacy teacher. The most important thing I can do as a middle school teacher is to help my students better their reading and writing skills. This realization seems not only to have empowered me to approach my post as an English teacher with more energy but also to view my role as a teacher with a greater sense of urgency. The education time clock is slowly winding down and if my students don't learn how to read at grade level soon, they may never catch up. I will definitely keep this in mind as I make my way to M.S. 331 tomorrow for the first time.

Daily Round Up

• 5:30am wake-ups: These early morning are starting to hurt. The most interesting thing is how hungry you get - by 10:30am you've devoured that sandwich, bag of chips and apple and are thinking about your neighbors granola bar. New strategy: supplement my TFA lunch with some key additions.
• The Purple Monstrosity: I've heard others are lovingly calling the Corps Member Manual "Harold," but I don't have much love for this 830 page beast so far. Here's to hoping.

• Telestrations: Best game ever. Period. Big shout out to all the awesome corps members on my floor who joined me in some evening fun with the game. Though I'm terrible at art, it was tons of fun. Check the game out here.
• Fire Alarm #3: I called it at dinner and sure enough it happened.
• Lessons from Lesson Planning: Just finished my first one ever. Found it to be a fun but time-consuming process. Looking forward to finding some ways to be more efficient.

So its past midnight which means I missed my goal for bed time. So without further adieu, I'm going to bid you farewell till next time. Later days.

New Beginnings

It's interesting how our attitudes towards social media change over time. I often pride myself on being an "early adopter" of technology. Even if I don't own an item (due to my ever-so-humble means as a teacher fresh out of college) I often like to read up on the latest gadgets and gizmos - 2 of my favorite sites include Digg and TechCrunch. It therefore comes as a little bit of a surprise, at least to me, that I haven't ever really experimented with blogging before. Aside from the work I did for Prendismo while a freshman at Cornell, I have never spent much time taking any of the Blogging Web 2.0 toolkits for a spin. But as they say "there's a first for everything." This will be my first time blogging in my first year of teaching during my first year of living in NYC.


Before we get started, first a little bit about myself. I was born in Baltimore and raised in Los Angeles, California. I attended Cornell University where I majored in Economics and Government and minored in Information Science. While at Cornell I was involved with Greek Life as the IFC President, research in Applied Economics and Government, mentor programs with local youth and relations with Cornell's campus in Qatar.  My senior year I was accepted into Teach For America, and I am going to be teaching Special Education while attending Fordham University for a Masters in Teaching. I enjoy surfing, body-boarding, learning about technology, playing basketball and, of course, interacting with kids.

Right now, I am training at TFA's regional site located at St. John's University in Queens. Last week during induction, the entire NYC corp was introduced to TFA at a sort-of broad visionary level. The week was a blur of meeting people, sitting through presentations and discussing the achievement gap via numerous angles and measures. It was sort of similar to freshman year of college with a more professional twist. Though fun and exciting, it was a little on the repetitive end as many of my fellow corp members agreed. I also had the misfortune of having my car towed today which led to a rough start to the week. Nonetheless, I'm excited for the rest of this week and the beginning of classes next Tuesday.

One of the things all the staff and alumni have said is that teachers always have the best stories. Having been here for a week, I can't help but agree with them on that point. In fact, the inspiration for this blog in large part comes from my desire to be able to share stories with anyone who happens to stumble upon this blog whether a teacher like myself or not. These stories will  probably be mostly fun, perhaps revealing at times and maybe, just maybe, occasionally inspiring. Regardless of the outcome, my goal is simply this: to share my story.

So here we go. I hope you can bear with me as I tell the tale of a 1st year teacher in the Big Apple. I don't know when or how often I will blog and I'm not sure if there will be any consistency or theme to my posts. But I would definitely love to hear from anyone out there who has feedback or advice, so definitely leave me a comment or shoot me an email. Later days.

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St. John's University