Roommate Reflections

One of my roommates, Kyle, wrote this article recently for a high school magazine that is distributed to schools across the country. It's targeted towards high achieving juniors and seniors who are looking towards college.

I really like what he writes.

RESPECT YOUR TEACHERS

By Kyle Palmer

As a teen-ager, the last thing you might want to do is feel sorry for your teachers. But, take it from this young man recently removed from his high school years: those teachers deserve your respect.

A year out of college, I joined a program called Teach For America (TFA). It’s a national nonprofit organization that sends high-achieving college graduates into low-income school districts across the country to teach for two years. TFA has more than 4,000 current members working in 26 regions throughout the United States.

I am an eighth-grade English teacher in Houston, Texas, a city with one of the largest public school districts in the country. With no previous teaching experience, I am typical of many TFA corps members. And, with a high college GPA, I am also typical. TFA says the average corps member held a 3.5 GPA in college. I came into this experience having worked hard my whole life—in academics, in sports, in hobbies, in everything. Nothing has compared with the work being asked of me now.

I get up at about 6 every morning. I’m at school an hour before the first bell rings, making copies and preparing materials. I teach five classes and lead extra-hours tutoring sessions during the day. I don’t usually leave school until about 6 p.m. Then, I go home and plan lessons for the next day, grade papers and call parents.

These efforts are not Herculean. They are, once again, typical. All the TFA corps members I’ve encountered in my six months in Houston appear to be just as committed and driven (if not more so) than I am. It’s a true inspiration to work so closely with these people and see the results of their efforts. In a short half-year, I have come to appreciate the work of teachers and the truly wide-ranging influences they have on the students in their classrooms.

It is a new feeling for me to have this ever-present sense of responsibility driving me. Every morning I get up and I think about what I need to do this day to make the lives of my students just a little bit better. As a first-year teacher, of course, I am making mistakes and learning (sometimes painfully) on the job. But I hope that each day I’m in that classroom I’m making the lives of more than 110 eighth-graders in Houston a little better.

It’s a truly unbelievable feeling to know that everyday you have that kind of effect—that what you do on a daily basis impacts the lives of dozens of impressionable minds. So, that’s why I say respect your teachers. Your futures, after all, are partly in their hands.