I work in a place called Hunts Point in the southeast Bronx, where literacy and mortality rates rival those from some of the world's developing nations. Only one year and 40 miles out of Fitz Randoph Gates, and I am a world (or perhaps two) away from Princeton.
Why am I in this world? The short answer: I am a 2004 Teach For America corps member. I teach sixth grade at Middle School 201, one of the lowest-performing middle schools in the entire New York City school district.
Among my friends last spring, my decision to join TFA was greeted with outward enthusiasm, which I sense belied an underlying puzzlement. I was agreeing to work long hours in seemingly impossible conditions for one-third the wages of my friends bound for the financial district.
Why did I forgo the compelling benefits of the road most traveled by Princeton graduates for a life of trials without good pay?
By the time they are nine, most children living in low-income communities are three grade levels behind their peers in wealthier communities. These same children are seven times less likely to graduate from college, and many will not ever attain a high school diploma. In New York City today, roughly half — 47 percent — of students entering city high schools do not graduate. And, sadly, that number is dramatically higher in neighborhoods like mine in the southeast Bronx. These numbers are borne out in my sixth grade classroom, where not one of my 22 students came into this year reading on grade level, and several of them are four grade levels below standard.
If you believe that someone's birth should not determine her life prospects, these are deeply troubling statistics. Needless to say, many of our nation's children are not experiencing an education that provides them with a large range of future choices or empowers them to make healthy, fulfilling and productive choices.
When I took a long, hard look at the inequity that defines our system of schooling, I felt compelled to join the fight to improve the situation. While the American fight of freedom and democracy has been projected abroad — into the heart of the Middle East — there is a different fight for freedom raging here at home. In the language of political theory, this is the fight for positive, effective freedom — freedom as empowerment. And, if you've read your Dewey or de Tocqueville, you know that there is no more important fight so far as democracy is concerned. I find myself on the frontlines of this struggle.
As a TFA teacher, I have been entrusted with the care and direction of 22 young, brave souls. I spend six hours a day, five days a week, 180 days a year with these kids. And if I do my job well, I have the opportunity to expose them to the fruits of learning. With a few, I have a real opportunity to change their trajectory. By spending hours with them after school, I can move them academically to a place where they might qualify for entrance to one of the cities better high schools.
This is a daunting responsibility. There is a lot of sweat, and sometimes a few tears of frustration and sadness. Yet, I never have any trouble getting out of bed in the morning because my kids are counting on me. The work we do together is meaningful and necessary.
As I work alongside 11 other TFA corps members in my school, the most exhilarating part of the experience is the daily reminder that I am part of a movement. In my school and other schools in 22 cities and rural districts across the country, you can see and feel the seeds of change — the seeds of empowerment.
The central mission of Teach For America is to invest young, talented people like you, Princeton seniors, in this movement. The movement thrives by taking people like you and putting them in the classroom for two years so that the work you do later in life as a senator, judge, lawyer, doctor, administrator, professor or teacher will be informed by your awareness of this problem. In my opinion, there is no better way to enter the nation's service.
Josh Anderson graduated in 2004 as a Wilson School major. He is originally from Chicago and can be reached at janderso@alumni.princeton.edu.
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