|
I'm originally from the Boston area -- grew up there, went to college there, and spent my first two years in the working world as a management consultant there. But after two years of consulting, I decided I wanted to do something a bit more meaningful. Hence, my decision to join Teach For America.
TFA is an organization that places recent college graduates in underprivileged rural and urban areas with critical teacher shortages. After being accepted to the program, I was placed as a 5th grade Social Studies teacher in Marks, MS.
Marks is a town about an hour-and-a-half south of Memphis, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. It is a very rural area -- only about 1,700 people live in town and there are about 9,000 people in the whole county.
It's very different from what I grew up with around Boston. I took for granted things like museums, the symphony, sporting events, etc. These are things that are simply unavailable where I live now (the nearest large movie theater is over an hour's drive away!).
I also took for granted the many resources that were available at my school -- things like supplies for science projects, classes in art and music, practical things like woodshop, metal shop and home economics that I took when I was in middle school don't exist here. Our school doesn't even have a physical education program, much less a gym, and we didn't have a school library until this year.
These are a few of the many reasons that I decided to bring students to the Boston area, so they can have some of the enriching experiences I took for granted growing up -- experiences that, I hope, will motivate them to make a difference in their community when they grow up.
|
|
