Opinion Whore
I'm out on the LiveJournal, doing illusions for opinions.
Though I am currently Job Impaired (look forward to an exciting entry about the three jobs I triumphantly won and tragically lost from Feb. to May) I am applying for jobs...on a somewhat temporary basis, as I'm also applying to do Teach for American in NO and teachNOLA. My reasons for doing so are myriad and I won't go into them at the moment, but I do want to know what my flist thinks of a few of the reasons I'm wary--read: fucking terrified--about teaching in New Orleans.
There are the obvious reasons: I would be a minority for the first time in my life, I don't have a lot of experience with kids except for tutoring, it is fucking hot in New Orleans.
Then there are some less obvious ones. As a lot of you probably already know, NOLA schools were already drowning before the storm. Katrina cleared the way for what a lot of people are calling an education revolution, in that charter schools have popped up everywhere, Paul Vallas--a man who brought a great deal of positive change to Chicago schools, by my estimation--is now Superintedent of city schools, and boatloads of new teachers with and without certification are pouring into the city trying to do their part. The New Schools for New Orleans website presents a positive view of these changes: newschoolsforneworleans.org/index.php
But yesterday, after reading some of No Logo, I went to Naomi Klein's website, which eventually led me to The Nation, which led me to this article (www.thenation.com/doc/20070910/tisserand) which is basically about how the area has turned its kids over to charter school proponents that are using the area as sort of petri dish for the effectiveness of charter schools. And these schools, the Recovery School District in particular, are leaving a lot of kids behind, and in the hands of inexperienced white teachers (ugh, reverse racism, whatever, a lot of studies have shown that minority students work much, much better with minority teachers regardless of experience level). The New Orleans teachers union has huge problems with how little they are involved, etc., etc., cue my descent into White Guilt Hell.
Congratulations if you made it through all that! My Rich Person Problem is: should I apply to this region regardless, because it does need help, and go into it with a hard candy shell, ready to cry in the bathrooms and feel totally overwhelmed for a time? Or should I let my political problems with some of this get the best of me, and apply somewhere with a larger white pop. or less crushing problems? Has anyone read The White Man's Burden by William Easterly? I haven't, but want to, and I don't want it to be like that...I also don't want to be a typical liberal letting my issues paralyze me into inaction, b/c instinctually I WANT to be in NOLA.
Let me know in the comments if you know teachers, if you are one, if anyone you know's done TFA and what they thought, what you think in general, what you recommend I read in addition to No Logo (which I'm fucking OBSESSED WITH). I swear I'll be fun again one day!!
And look! Multimedia! I am a good teacher already.
Though I am currently Job Impaired (look forward to an exciting entry about the three jobs I triumphantly won and tragically lost from Feb. to May) I am applying for jobs...on a somewhat temporary basis, as I'm also applying to do Teach for American in NO and teachNOLA. My reasons for doing so are myriad and I won't go into them at the moment, but I do want to know what my flist thinks of a few of the reasons I'm wary--read: fucking terrified--about teaching in New Orleans.
There are the obvious reasons: I would be a minority for the first time in my life, I don't have a lot of experience with kids except for tutoring, it is fucking hot in New Orleans.
Then there are some less obvious ones. As a lot of you probably already know, NOLA schools were already drowning before the storm. Katrina cleared the way for what a lot of people are calling an education revolution, in that charter schools have popped up everywhere, Paul Vallas--a man who brought a great deal of positive change to Chicago schools, by my estimation--is now Superintedent of city schools, and boatloads of new teachers with and without certification are pouring into the city trying to do their part. The New Schools for New Orleans website presents a positive view of these changes: newschoolsforneworleans.org/index.php
But yesterday, after reading some of No Logo, I went to Naomi Klein's website, which eventually led me to The Nation, which led me to this article (www.thenation.com/doc/20070910/tisserand) which is basically about how the area has turned its kids over to charter school proponents that are using the area as sort of petri dish for the effectiveness of charter schools. And these schools, the Recovery School District in particular, are leaving a lot of kids behind, and in the hands of inexperienced white teachers (ugh, reverse racism, whatever, a lot of studies have shown that minority students work much, much better with minority teachers regardless of experience level). The New Orleans teachers union has huge problems with how little they are involved, etc., etc., cue my descent into White Guilt Hell.
Congratulations if you made it through all that! My Rich Person Problem is: should I apply to this region regardless, because it does need help, and go into it with a hard candy shell, ready to cry in the bathrooms and feel totally overwhelmed for a time? Or should I let my political problems with some of this get the best of me, and apply somewhere with a larger white pop. or less crushing problems? Has anyone read The White Man's Burden by William Easterly? I haven't, but want to, and I don't want it to be like that...I also don't want to be a typical liberal letting my issues paralyze me into inaction, b/c instinctually I WANT to be in NOLA.
Let me know in the comments if you know teachers, if you are one, if anyone you know's done TFA and what they thought, what you think in general, what you recommend I read in addition to No Logo (which I'm fucking OBSESSED WITH). I swear I'll be fun again one day!!
And look! Multimedia! I am a good teacher already.
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