Category: education

We Rarely Ever Leave: Figuring Out How I Feel About TFA

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It’s been a while since I wrote about Teach For America.

I’ve mostly tried to… avoid it. After publishing something in Medium, I realized that I was sort of tired of talking about it. TFA had compromised the entirety of my adult life, and now I was in a strange place of anger, frustration, and also a deep appreciation for the people I had met. I just wanted to try and let it all go.

So I haven’t talked about TFA in a while. I used to tweet and write about it a lot, then I just… stopped. I cut the cord with TFA much like a break up. I stopped engaging. Occasionally, I asked our mutual friends (aka friends-still-on-staff) how things were going, I wondered what the org was up to at that moment, I’d go on long binges of stalking it on facebook (mostly to cheer on my friends’ work).

Recently, though, I actually quietly rejoined the organization as a part-time staff member (freelancer? contractor? IDK, I do some work for TFA and they pay me. It works out). I heard that TFA was looking to grow its Education 4 Justice program, a pre-corps social justice journey that corps members would go through during the year before they teach.

It was run by people in the org I trusted, so I decided why not apply? As I was writing the application essay, I wrote something that surprised me:

As an alumna who has recently been critical of the organization, I feel its my obligation to put in the work to fix the issues I see with Teach For America.

I got in, and when I went to the training I realized something very important: I am not alone in the work. It’s so easy to look at the monolithic “brand” of Teach For America (and yes, we brand very well, don’t we?) and forget that there a lot of individual rabble-rousers still in the org, making sure it grows from the white savior roots that have made the organization struggle in the past.

There are lots of great people who criticize the organization, but there are also amazing folks who are within the organization, using the power there for good. At the end of the day, the organization has attracted many dedicated, caring, really smart people.

And, as much as I at times have refused to admit it, working with other TFA folks felt, in some ways, like home. There is a culture of the org, especially among people of color or working towards social justice, a shared language that is soothing in its familiarity. As much as the org frustrates me, to deny its influence in my life would be to deny a large part of my identity and origins in education.

So, yes, there are still some things about the organization that make me really frustrated, and parts of the organization that I think need to be overhauled. I also know that TFA and a lot of its staff members put a lot of work into making me a decent teacher. I also owe any time and effort I can give to help make the organization a better tool to support and uplift communities.

I guess we rarely ever leave something behind. We can completely cut ties, but at the end of the day the parts of us that we perhaps feel strange about are still there. They are still tied to us– gossamer strings of memories, habits, influences– that can never really never be cut. We rarely ever leave the places we move on from. We merely stop occupying the space in the same way.

A Summer Letter to My Students

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My Wayfarers and My ‘Ohana,

The year has just finished, and I hear you singing outside as you’re wrapping up your year.

Today, I was at my desks, listening to your chatter, and I was struck by this perfect, simple thought:

I finally know what home is.

I don’t know if you’ll remember my class years from now, but I think I’ll remember you. I don’t know if my class will have a lasting impact on your life, but it’ll stick with me for a while. You were my first when I decided to come back to teaching. You showed me what it was to start digging into this work.

So, when I struggle with the concept of home, thank you for letting me learn alongside you. Thank you for helping me see that home has been right here, watching you all grow.

Please keep sharing your voices. Please, keep telling your stories. They are so worthy of being shouted from the rooftops. You are all so marvelous.

With lots of aloha,

Ms. Torres

Per7per4_1Per2_1Photo on 5-20-15 at 8.32 AM
 And special edit for yearbook because it ks the best and Maya asked for it. ❤️ 


Take Up Space (and Protect It Too)

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Recently, in my reading, my talking with students, I’ve been repeating the same mantra over and over:

Take. Up. Space.

Initially, it’s a phrase and piece of advice I’ve heard given to women and people of color over and over– take up space. Society so often tells us to silence ourselves, “shrink ourselves, to make ourselves smaller”  space for others: take up that space. Put your arm on the armrest in the airplane. Insist that able-bodied men move to the side as you run down the sidewalk. Write your articles in your voice and ensure that your voice is heard in White-dominant spaces.

Take. Up. Space.

I know I’ve been trying to do that more. I’m a big believer in speaking with your ears, but I’ve been trying to do as much as I can to get involved in work that matters to me: fellowships and writing for organizations I believe in or  just being involved. As Educolor founder Jose Vilson mentioned in his most recent piece: my experiences as an educator and as a woman of color needs to be taken seriously and valued by folks– myself included.

This weekend, though, I’ve also realized that access to my voice is a privilege not a right. I’m not saying I’m the be-all-end-all of human existence, but if I believe I am worthy of taking up physical/emotional/intellectual space, I think that also means that I get to unapologetically say that it is worth taking care of and protecting as well. Having to consistently speak up, especially around difficult topics, is emotionally taxing. Sometimes, “taking up space,” also means loving yourself enough to protect that space.

I don’t really know what that looks like yet. Most of it, I think, is self-care. There have been a few times this weekend where I was very tempted to jump in on conversations, often around ~Hollywood~. In spaces that are so clearly White and patriarchal, it feels mind-numbing to see those convos and not feel like any voice of reason will jump in.

Funnily enough, I got some of that clarity from catching part of Mr. Holland’s Opus on TV last night (I know, not really straying from White-patriarchy, but alas). There’s a scene where he brings up something I struggle with a lot as a teacher– there’s always more you can be doing, but you run the risk of neglecting your own life and family (and visa versa). It’s immensely hard to find that balance, both with time and with emotional openness.

A lot of that, though, comes down to me. I may want to jump convos that make my blood boil, but sometimes, it’s important to just… let that go. Sometimes, it’s worth deciding that the people still debating those things may not be worth my time, voice, and thought right now. If my space is worth asserting, it’s also worth protecting too.

These Are The Parts of Me That Suck

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It is probably no surprise to anyone that there is a solid list of things that I am… not good at.

When I worked in a non-profit organization, we were really big about knowing “our work styles.” We took a lot of tests to better understand what we were good at– and what were “areas of growth.” We identified what made us more effective leaders and productive humans.

And I actually really love and appreciate that, because once I did them it made me realize that the things my job was telling me I wasn’t good at were part of why I needed to leave my job.

It’s an easy stereotype, but that’s perhaps because it’s true: I’ve always been a little bit of the black sheep in my house. My parents and older brother are incredibly neat humans. While I grew up in a cluttered house, it was always very neatly organized. My brother is able to juggle and multi-task many projects at the state senate. My mom and dad often catch mistakes quickly as they write.

I am… the exact opposite. My apartment is often a mess (NOT unhygienic– I take out the trash, don’t leave food, clean up messes– but clothes. Clothes everywhere), my desk is covered in hastily made stacks of paper.

These are the parts of me that suck. I am not always good at organizing names or papers. I am often fluttering about, trying my best to get as much down, on the page, and out for feedback as possible. I don’t know why I developed like this, but I’ve always felt that I’d often rather get out my ideas– rough, raw, messy, unwieldy– and worry about the polish later. My best (i.e. highest graded, most awarded, etc.) work is often written hours before it’s due. My most successful, innovative lesson plans appear in my mind at 5:45AM that day.

I don’t mean to say that I’m throwing out papers, emails, etc with no grammar and a ton of typos, but I’ll definitely cop to missing a few commas, leftover articles, and occasional typos in my time. Clearly, the final draft of something really important will get multi-checked with my crazy-English-teacher-grammar lens, but most other things (blogs, informal emails) tend to be done how I speak– imperfections and all.

There are other things I struggle with. If I’m not interested in something, I am very good at justifying “tabling that project” until “the spirit moves me with a new idea.” I’d like to say I’m great at keeping myself accountable, but I need to really love something– my students, writing, running, fellowships etc– to actually do that. I will jam for hours, focused and unending, on something I really want to do. If you force me, though, it might take a little more arm-twisting.

And I can imagine this is annoying, especially when those mistakes ended up affecting something important. I’m not trying to excuse them. They are definitely things about myself that I should and am actively working to improve.

And yes, I’ve gotten better. Sometimes now, when I’m about to leave something for later or rush through it, my mother’s voice floats through my head, sing-song and sweet, saying “haste makes waste, mija!” I groan inwardly, stop, and make sure I properly complete the task (e.g. writing and mailing my rent check) so I get it done properly.

Still, at a certain point, I sort of had to stop and ask myself: at what point do I accept who I am, and work with my natural gifts (and challenges) instead of against them? Instead of forcing myself into jobs that asked me to be good at things that, time and time again proved were skills I lacked, when would I decide to find jobs and projects that actually helped me succeed?

This is part of the reason I became a teacher.

Let me clarify: you will be a much better teacher if you can do the things I listed above well. I’m not saying being a teacher is an easy job (ha!). Being a messy, disorganized teacher can be really annoying for students (especially when it affects grading) and co-workers. You also need to be able to sometimes get things done that you just don’t like.

What I mean is that I realized that my classroom afforded me with an extra set of eyes and ears that would keep me accountable all the time: my students. My classroom isn’t (nor should it be) Ms. Torres-getting-everything handled. It’s not really “my” classroom at all– I see my students as empowered enough to know they can correct me, work with me, and make sure that OUR ship runs smoothly throughout the year.

While being a teacher does ask me to be good at skills I struggle with, those challenges are often overridden by the fact that I really like my students. It’s cheesy, but because I want them to do well, even the parts of my classroom that cause struggle become a bigger priority. I mean, I hate grading sometimes, but man, I love my kids. I know that my consistent grading of their work makes them feel successful, so it gets done (not always as quickly as I’d like, but it does).

Here’s why I think it works though: I’m open about my imperfections with my kids, and I ask for their help all the time. I tell them, often, that I’m not perfect. I let them know that if they see something they think is a mistake, they should tell me about it. “Everyone makes mistakes!” I tell them, we laugh, and sometimes they even help me fix it (hello, teachable moments!). Because I grade pretty often, it gives them plenty of opportunity to ask me questions about why they got that score and correct it in a way that makes sure it doesn’t affect them too much (caveat: I don’t take heavy-hitter grades, like papers, lightly, and double and triple check them before I publish them. It’s only, for example, missing easy homework assignments).

The other important thing: I (try to) take feedback with humor, grace, and gratitude. If they and I both know that, sometimes, Ms. Torres is scatterbrained and needs help, there’s less of a fear that they’ll hurt my feelings if they try to help me. It also means that I need to know that people are trying to help me, and their feedback isn’t meant to hurt my feelings (this took time, but I got there!).

I’m not trying to say I’m going to remain bad at these skills forever, or that I should throw my hands up and say “TAKE ME OR LEAVE ME!” That said, I am trying to get better at leveraging the things I am good at– listening to others, respecting their opinions, being open and vulnerable about myself– to help me be better at the thing I really do love: teaching.

Anyway, this wasn’t the cleanest post, and I’m sure you’ll find a typo or two. It’s been a helluva two, crazy weeks, and I’m just so happy to be home for the next few months, and wrapping up the end of the year strong with my kids.

On Being and Learning Again

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I’ve felt… off-balanced lately. A little lost, a little weary and wary. Occasionally, like most folks, darkness comes in and you cannot help but question why it’s there and who causes it.

And while it’s scary, I’m lucky. I’ve seen the other side of darkness enough to know that “Easter will come,” things will brighten. I have family and friends who love me and make me laugh, a job I cannot help but find joy in, a partner who holds my hand the whole time and says, “I got you. It’s okay. We’ll be okay.”

Last night, and in the past few weeks, I have been struggling with the concept of “Enough.” In the NPO or education world– it often feels like I don’t do enough for the people in my life– my students, family, friends. Sometimes I feel like I’m too scared to take on the big challenges because I have this nagging need to take care of myself and do things that make me happy too.

So, on a whim, I found out that Fr. Greg Boyle, one of my favorite writers, priests, human beings, had been interviewed by On Being, one of my favorite podcasts.

I’ve read and listened to so much of Fr. Boyle, and what he shared wasn’t necessarily new to me, but just hearing it reframed again was so essential– I was immediately snapped back to myself. I know what I need to be doing. I know it will take time to get there. I know I must be eager, yet patient in God’s timeline.

I think, sometimes, we want to glance over reflections or lessons we think we’ve “already learned.” Yesterday, I didn’t want to reflect on body image because I thought, Well, I’ve written about that before, shouldn’t I know better?

We are so quick to forget our own flawed perfection means sometimes the lessons need to be restudied and relearned to gain a new, revolutionary potency in our minds. It doesn’t mean we’re silly, merely that we have the fantastically human ability to form and reform new and better connections with things as we grow.

So, with a renewed heart for the work and what it looks like for me, I’m coming out on the other side.

I highly recommend the linked podcast (I always choose the unedited version), and a few favorite tidbits below:

On perceptions of the communities we serve:

So you see how they love one another or there is nobody in need in this community, for example. But my favorite one is — it leaped off the page to me — and it says, “And awe came upon everyone.” So that the measure of our compassion lies not in our service of those on the margins but in our willingness to see ourselves in kinship. And so that means the decided movement towards awe and giant steps away from judgment.

So how can we seek really a compassion that can stand in awe at what people have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it?

On doing the work:

Question: …what more can I do other than shrugging my shoulders and writing a check?

Fr. Boyle:  Well, don’t stop writing the checks!… but we must obliterate the illusion that we’re separate…How do we dismantle the barriers that exclude? How de we dedicate ourselves, in our own way… how do you participate in the birth of a new inclusion, where nobody is left out?

And that takes humility! …Humility asks the poor on the margins, “What do you need? How can I help?” 

Hubris says: “here’s what your problem is and here’s how you fix yourself.”

On mutuality in “service”:

I’m not the great healer and that gang member over there is in need of my exquisite healing. The truth is, it’s mutual and that, as much as we are called to bridge the distance that exists between us, we have to acknowledge that there’s a distance even in service. A service provider, you’re the service recipient and you want to bridge even that so that you can get to this place of utter mutuality. And I think that’s where the place of delight is, that I’ve learned everything of value really in the last 25 years from precisely the people who you think are on the receiving end of my gifts and talent and wisdom, but quite the opposite. It’s mutual.

On the work as Christ did it: 

I haven’t found anything that’s brought me more life or joy than standing with Jesus, but also with the particularity of standing in the lowly place, with the easily despised and the readily left out, and with the demonized so that the demonizing will stop, and with the disposable so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away.

Source: http://goo.gl/7MNO3h

The Paradox of High Expectations

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Recently, I received an invitation to a group on Facebook that filled me with a strange joy and abject terror.

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Yes. It is, in fact, time for my 10-year reunion. Time seriously flies.

I do want to make something clear: I loved high school. I had a great group of friends, and thankfully still have many of them in my life. I had great teachers who pushed me, challenged me, and also humor me with a visit when I come back. All-in-all, I was very, very lucky, and look back on high school with great fondness– a privilege I know that not a lot of people have, even at my own school.

Still, I dealt with taunting– some of it the normal high school stuff, but some, as  I’ve written about, around race. In middle and early high school, I remember quite a bit of racially charged taunting, and I know my older brother faced similar things. Anecdotally, I always felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb– one of a small handful of dark-skinned kids in my classes.

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Conversations With Literature – Using Instagram With “The Count of Monte Cristo”

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So, after hearing Pop Culture Happy Hour’s show on “Required Reading,” I was struck by something that Margaret Willison and Glen Weldon mentioned. To paraphrase, they said: “Literature shouldn’t be in under glass as at a museum. It should be something students have a conversation with.”

What a reminder and revelation! I’m currently teaching The Count of Monte Cristo. I’m planning on eventually turning it into a mock trial, per this amazing lesson plan, but if you’ve read the book, you know: it starts out slow. There’s a lot to get through. It’s going alright, but that podcast specifically made me take pause and really consider what I could do as a quick, fun lesson to reinvest them a little.

I did a lesson with Tom Sawyer where I had my students make fake instagram accounts on Google Drawing as part of understanding characterization. I decided to do the same for TCoMC after Dantes’s 14 year prison stint. It also happened to be a Tuesday. This led to…

TCOMC #TransformationTuesday Assignment

Their assignment: Fill out a fake Instagram post for any of the characters we’ve met so far in the book. How have they changed since Dantes went to prison?

I give my students the templates via Google Classroom, since each student can get a copy of the template I created (templates below).

The results

Overall, I thought this assignment went well, especially as a good informal and formative assessment. This project help me realize that, with the amount of twists and turns in the book, I definitely needed to give some of my students more scaffolding (eg a character map) to remember what’s happened so far to characters.

It also helped me get a better understanding of how my students are perceiving characters, as well as gave me the opportunity to talk through some important character points they may have missed (eg Mercedes overcomes of low expectations about her ability to become educated from Dantes himself).

That said, this was another great chance for my students to show their creativity. ALL the ones they did are available here, some favorites below:

  
What I’d Change or Add: Due to time, I didn’t follow up beyond this assignment. I wish I had given stricter guidelines as well. Also, next time I’ll give a writing portion to ensure that they were actually focusing on characters and not just doing a fun insta post that was tangential to the book (I did this with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and found it to be useful).

Also, to increase the conversation aspect, I think that you could make this an AWESOME long term project and assign characters to members of a small groups. Then, have them talk to each other via the fake instagram accounts! A lot of students used comments to show connections with other characters, which I didn’t even ask them to do. I think there’s something interesting there.

Alright, more to come soon, I’m sure. Hope this was helpful!

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