Red & Black Column

My op-ed about the achievement gap ran in today's Red & Black (UGA campus paper). I wrote it over Thanksgiving, so it's a bit dated, but still effectively summarizes my philosophy for Teach For America.

Make a difference, teach for America

MATTHEW WILSON

Issue date: 1/10/07 Section: Opinions

Three years ago, I went home from UGA for Thanksgiving. Channel surfing late one night, I stumbled across a CNN documentary about Teach For America.

I watched the story of three recent college graduates who committed to teach for two years in some of the country's poorest urban and rural schools, and I was hooked.

Upon graduating in May this year, I decided to put law school on hold and became a Teach For America corps member. In September, I began as a sixth grade science and social studies teacher in Houston.

As I returned to Athens and UGA recently, I could not help but think back to that documentary that piqued my interest in the program that has now changed my life.

When I first heard of Teach For America, I had no idea what the "achievement gap" in America's education system was.

Before I began teaching, I read about it and talked with people about it, but I saw how it truly plays out on my first day of school in Houston.

The achievement gap meant that most of my students came to me in sixth grade on a fourth-grade reading level.

Some read on a second-grade level.

Their science and social studies scores were even worse than their reading levels.

In social studies, I was completely bewildered to find my students could not distinguish between a continent and a country.

Many thought Houston to be the capital of Texas and one student told me she was from a different country - she was from Ohio.

These simple geography concepts are ones they should have learned in second grade.

The achievement gap does not mean that my students are incapable of learning.

In fact, they have proven to me time and time again that when given the opportunity, they are able to perform just as well as any other students in America.

That is what I strive to do each day - to give them the chance to excel, and they often do.

The job is not easy. While my leadership experience at UGA has prepared me well for this real-world experience, I work harder than I have ever worked before, but I am invigorated by the progress I witness in my classroom daily.

Knowing that my students and I can overcome the multitude of familial, financial and circumstantial obstacles they face on a daily basis and rise above expectations, fuels me to continue to provide them the opportunity of educational equity that all children in America deserve.

My story is only one of many thousands that demonstrate the potential all students have, if given the opportunity.

Teach For America is a national movement that takes this shared dream and strives to make it commonplace in our country's most lacking classrooms.

As seniors begin to mail resum�s to potential employers and juniors begin to contemplate life beyond the Arch, I urge you to consider incorporating some form of national service into your future.

Many of you might be torn between the higher-paying corporate jobs and the less lucrative service-oriented jobs, but teaching is a paid job that gives you incredible skills you take wherever you go. Moreover, it is a responsibility we have.

If the end to our country's achievement gap is ever to be realized, it will be because our generation makes the decision that it is our top priority and that we refuse to stand idly by as countless children across America are denied the chance for educational excellence that we have enjoyed so freely.

- Matthew Wilson is a 2006 B.S.A. graduate living in Houston, Texas