Every morning Stephanie Day wakes up at 5:30 a.m. and takes the M6 bus, past the capitol building in Washington, D.C., to one of the most under-resourced communities in the country.
As a University graduate and corps member of Teach For America, Day spends three weeks teaching sixth-graders “what nouns are” and pushes through the frustration of working with 12-year-olds who have never learned the alphabet.
“When I walked into my classroom I had heard the statistics,” Day said, running through them quickly as she has many times in the past. They are between two to six grade levels behind in reading and math. Fewer than 50 percent will graduate from high school, she said. This is how her students are labeled.
Students at this school and other schools in southwest Washington have been overlooked and cast away, suffering through the growing epidemic of educational inequality, she said.
Teach For America is an organization that seeks out top college graduates who are willing to commit to two years teaching in some of the lowest-income areas in the country, according to the organization.
The teachers become the students, searching for unique ways to reach out and educate underprivileged children who have been ignored by their educational systems for years, Day says. She knows the realities of these facts firsthand.
One hundred percent of Day’s students are black and 80 percent are on free or reduced lunch, she said.
“I saw a bare room with 15 desks and 15 chairs,” Day said. She added that the lead paint was chipping off the walls in her fifth and sixth grade special education class, where students were less than responsive to her promise of an education.
“At the end of that year my students are leaving me and I have to do what I can,” she said.
Dion, one of Day’s students who was initially difficult to motivate, became one of her success stories. On the first day of school last year, he pulled his hood over his head, placed his head on his desk and fell asleep. Although 12 years old, he tested at a third-grade math level.
Day spent extra time with Dion after school playing basketball, which she admits she is horrible at.
Slowly the hood came off, she said, and he sat up and participated in class.
At the end of the year Dion tested at a sixth grade math level. He is now one of the top students in his junior high math class, said Day, who still talks to him once a week on the phone.
“It’s daily dedication,” she said of the amount of commitment required to teach these children. “There is no award at the end of the day.”
Day said her students are constantly told that they are not good at anything, and that it is her job to motivate and prove to them that they are, which often extends outside of her classroom responsibilities.
Forming relationships with her students’ families is part of the commitment. She said she talks to them regularly and even steps in to help reinforce rules, such as bedtime, by calling them on the phone at night.
In her second year of teaching, Day has agreed to stay at her assigned school for another year.
“I feel like I can’t walk away,” she said, although eventually she would like to pursue a career in teaching and training future special education teachers.
In addition to being a full-time teacher, Day is in graduate school at American University. She will receive her master’s degree in May.
Day is on campus today looking for graduating seniors interested in Teach For America.
The University is a service-oriented school, she said, adding that her organization wants the type of graduates it produces.
Corps members are sent to one of 25 urban and rural areas, places such as Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City, and paid an annual salary between $25,000 to $44,000, plus benefits.
More information about Teach For America can be found at www.teachforamerica.org.
Contact the people, culture and faith reporter at [email protected]