After the last weekend, thinking as always about the next step, I hope that without the hours spent in (sometimes deep) discussion with a group of inspiring people, good people, solid and capable and intelligent people together to share issues and battles and dreams, I will still maintain my drive and ambition to work hard toward something that makes a difference, that I will find in myself what I see in them. (What is living and what is good? What is a good heart?)

I missed lunch with the crowd because I over analyze everything, and the evaluation took me a long time. Typical of my patterns. So I drove around a little, came back to Guyton, and now I'm doing what I always do.

When I first got into teacher corps, I looked around and wondered how I got in. After two years with my class, I have never felt more privileged to be part of a group.
It will be difficult to leave Mississippi for that reason almost as much as it will be difficult to leave the kids.

I wrote this under the guise of a cover letter....It's unedited, raw, and emotional, but I wanted to share it.

When I left for the Mississippi Delta, the endeavor was viewed by many as a sort of experiential personal growth- a charitable adventure to help break me of my idealism. In reality, I will depart tearfully from the Delta having gained far more from my students than they possibly could have from me, and leaving with them an important piece of my heart.

I have been furious with them, stayed up all night preparing for them or thinking about them, mourned their stories and my failure to mend the broken parts of the system- to offer them what they truly deserve. I have shared meals with them, spent hours in the car with them, taken them to colleges, coached them on runs, driven around town in search of them to deliver make-up work when they’ve gotten themselves suspended, or college recommendations just in case one of them decides to beat the odds. I have cried for them- in front of them. I have made a fool of myself to demonstrate any of a thousand concepts, rapped about mitosis, the kingdoms, prokaryotes, eukaryotes, DNA, biogeochemical cycles. I could spend days on end retelling the stories that have held me wrapped up for two years- the most intense and important years of my short twenty-three.

What I have found is an entire world of love and passion- a beautiful fight for the little flame of potential in a million kids with a million stories. I have seen that sometimes- and despite everything- a little ground can be won: a victory like no other, small as each tiny success seems.
I will depart from Rolling Fork, Mississippi, from Anguilla, from Leland, from the Mississippi Delta itself, with impossible goodbyes on my lips. Moving on, though, will I hope mean moving toward opportunities to make a greater difference in an area of broader influence- opportunities to interact with other creative, passionate people, to write, to brain storm and pool ideas- to change the world. It is more important to me than it ever has been- in fact it is one of the few important foundations upon which I want to build my life- to make a difference. I prepare to leave in May- bracing myself for the impact- with my ambitions to help affect change deepened by the realities of inequity, by the fire of potential and desire that still exists in our children in beautiful, incredible ignorance of the fight they face, and by the blissful victory of the occasional success. Those successes can be in the the classroom, on an athletic field or court, or more subtly- in minds or hearts of a student who inches a little closer to making the most of a talent, an intelligence, a secret strength that will make his or her life better.

Contradiction and constant flux

Also, in lots of ways and especially on good days, I am more proud of this than anything I have done. I hope that whatever I do next will be as meaningful.

I've always said "writer" when someone's asked me about myself, but two years after the start of teacher corps and my life in Mississippi, I have trouble choosing words to wholly describe it, or even to start.

It used to be that when I started to write, there was always a firm piece of ground to stand on. You always have the credibility and authority to write about yourself, to describe your experiences. And I do write; I am constantly describing flashes, the intensity of countless moments.

But I've had more trouble beginning this post than possibly anything else I've written.
I'm sore from the inside out; my thoughts start and stop incomplete, and imperfect. Nothing is right, nothing is good enough, nothing makes any sense.

If I were writing about myself, that would be one thing, but I feel like I have walked into a world upon which I have no authority to speak. There is beauty here, and I notice it and describe it often, and there is tragedy, and I do the same. But staring (or maybe falling) into this endless cavern I understand that I am infinitely small, unless I change something, and I have not changed a single thing.

At the end of two years, I am ashamed to write about my experience- as much as it has touched me, affected me, deepened my insights.

Landon wrote about how he could maintain, in his classroom, a place where students began to understand that there are consequences and rewards for actions. I have felt the opposite. I have felt like I came in with my ideas about right and wrong, with my idealism and hope, and been completely washed over by one of those waves that curl, crest, and break over your head- breakers. I feel like a fool, holding up a fly swatter in which I have complete faith, because it's always been effective before, and then a lion enters the room and examines my defense with raised eyebrows.

I've always believed in discipline, in pushing yourself farther than you believe you can go. That is, when you feel like you are being stretched too thin, you stop feeling and just do what needs to be done, until it's all been done.

I admire people like Jess, like Jeremy, who just make it work, who get the job done.

In the beginning of the year, I vowed to call parents everyday. For months, I did- or at least every other day. It sometimes helped. Usually, the kids were worse two days later, half- without exaggeration- the numbers were disconnected, or wrong numbers (even when I used my records, and the emergency numbers on the office records, and asked around for accurate numbers from people who knew people)- and then I started receiving death threats on my cell phone, that all the kids knew about and asked me about. That's not why I stopped- I shouldn't have.

I came into this with a particular set of ideas about the world, a particular set of beliefs. It's not that they've changed; they've deepened, and I've abandoned a lot of the younger aspects, a lot of the frills and fantasy. I feel ten years older than I was two years ago, and I don't mind. It is, however, a lot to process, and I'm not there yet. As I've already said- I am still too ashamed.

I wonder, in fact, if I will ever get over the shame of this particular failure. I did not just get it done. I am almost always behind in my grading (though how anyone can grade 120 papers, sometimes 240, each day is beyond me). My parent phone calls slowly dwindled, and I still do not have the hang of classroom management. I now just write them up. That works if I'm willing to write up enough of them. For what it's worth, I do plan well, I give excellent notes and often fun lessons, and I have a following of 20-25 kids who show up for after-school tutoring (which does mean something to me), and around 10 when I do it Saturdays. Spring break I had 5.

When I was hired, there were four of us who came down to interview together. The high school where I teach is on its third administration since then- fourth if you count the one that was running the place during the time we were hired, still left-over from the year before. It is the kids that suffer.

I hope that I have given the kids something they would not have had otherwise, that I have done something for some. I do love them, and I think there are a few for whom- maybe- it mattered.

I wanted to do better, and I wanted to do more, and I am tempted to stay and try again, but there are important parts of me that are slowing disappearing, and I have to believe that I can do more good if I am okay than if I'm not.

Teacher corps instilled in me a dedication to change- to work that matters. Rather than cure my idealism, like everyone expected, it is more important to me than it ever has been to make a difference, and I will make choices partly based on that priority.