Coming up with titles sucks

I came to this program with a very specific inquiry: How can I serve the needs of students in poverty in an educational system that's structured to serve the needs of the middle class? I have formed this question over the past ten years in my work as a college instructor. I first taught at a small state university and then in a large research university. My students were amazing, and I mistook their success for a sign of my own ability as a teacher. When we moved to Portland, I started teaching at Portland Community College and sent my daughter to a public school. I learned fairly quickly that there's very little I can do as a teacher to address years of neglect, abusive instruction and miseducation. Last year I started to work at my daughter's school as a parent liaison, and in that experience, I found my calling to work with young children in poverty.

It would take a short paper to discuss how each one of the classes we're taking right now is addressing my question, but I am overjoyed that in some way, they are. I have come to a new realization through reading Segregated Schools and our conversations in Zaher's class. We are uniquely positioned as educators because we are at eye level with the actors of our society 15-20 years from now. We are in daily contact with the next generation, and we know their potential, ambitions, desire, curiosity, fears, lack, anger. We can't work with our 20-30 children and call it enough. We have to challenge ourselves to excel in the classroom, and we also need to raise the alarm in our communities and demand change for children. So, my inquiry is changed slightly in that I've added this new component of how to affect change in society at large.

I don't expect to find answers to these questions, but I use them to focus my work. I have given myself this year to dig deep into these questions, learn, investigate, consider rather than act, and I'm struggling with the gestation period. Every muscle and nerve in me wants to organize, propose, answer, do something, so for now, I'm fighting that urge while trying to keep up with the reading.

Yep, that's what's in my head while I'm sipping my latte.