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Critics said the new Tom Cruise science fiction movie Oblivion really wasn’t that exceptional, but that won’t stop me from using it for an introduction to my reflection on the Metro Atlanta Corps Induction. If you’ve seen the movie (spoiler alert!) you’ll recall the pivotal moment in the plot where Cruise’s character realizes the trap played on him by the alien civilization, when he sees his idyllic world is one of infinitely more equal or greater to him across the face of the earth.
Now you know how I feel being surrounded by Teach For America corps members, staff and members of the Atlanta educational community for the past five days at Induction and in to the first day of Institute. Their stories are innumerable and immeasurably more powerful than my own, and their passion to make a difference outmatched only by their potential.
In such a short span, we have still subjected ourselves to the advice and mentoring of veteran teachers, community leaders and the first pieces of the TFA curriculum. Assumptions and false pride can’t last too long when hearing from Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) veterans, sit-in leaders, philanthropic foundation board members, principals, TFA National Vice Presidents and countless other foot soldiers in the next round of the march to social equity. I am already indebted to them all.
It’s difficult boiling down the information to a few key concepts from the past five days, but I’ve collected it loosely into the new contract we have been offered as members of this Corps. This is not for employment, or for services, but for our moral energy. We are being stretched by much more than the aptitudes of teaching. With those alone we would be a light bulb without a filament, or a story without a plot. The commitment is the heart of this struggle, and here are its foundational pieces for me:
- Loyalty: Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade, an influential education reformer in the Bay Area, argues we must bring true hope in education based on the ability to endure pain and share feelings alongside students as educators. The commitment holds loyalty as the link between student achievement and teacher performance, the conviction that students ought to have more than they are given and that teachers must give more than they think they ought
- Humility: TFA pushes this humility as a core value, along with leadership, transformational change, team and diversity. Humility, at this beginning stage of the contract, is what I must first offer. We have learned in recent days to analyze carefully the assets of the community of which we are a part in Atlanta and have already had about a dozen conversations with activists in the Atlanta area about the high stakes and high expectations which follow teachers through their work. Success is not bred in privilege or pedigree, but grown in the hard soil of sustained investment in the lives of students with an ear to the ground for new knowledge.
- Boldness: Let’s be honest, the social issues in and around education are deep-rooted and equally unjust. After hearing stories of decaying schools, of indifferent politicians, stalled reform efforts, gentrification, broken homes, incarcerated parents, lost economic opportunity and students FAILED by a system that should be designed to give them hope and fulfill their dreams…how can I not be indignant, or even outright angry? I once saw anger defined as a response to a perceived injustice. Well, here’s the injustice, pouring out of the very mountains of Georgia from which Martin Luther King, Jr. demanded freedom ring. The time to hold back on a bold new direction is over. The time to add my voice is now.
So sign my name to this new contract, to the agreement that I will give of my time and capability to confront the weightiest challenge of my own fear and then recognize my personal battles pale in comparison to the battles fought every day by thousands of children in Atlanta alone. There are thousands advocating for them already, and by signing my name, I’m like the last state to ratify the Constitution: hardly indispensable but still joining an unshakable union rallied around common principles.
There are countless others like and unlike me here in Georgia. But hey, one of the Tom Cruises still confronted oppression. Does it matter which one?
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
