A Tuesday In Early December...

A Tuesday in early December was about as bad a day as I can remember at the high school I teach at: At least three violent fights had broken out – one resulting in a girl's head being smashed through the office window and another resulting in a boy being stabbed repeatedly in the face by a pencil. I wasn't a witness to the one in the cafeteria, but I heard it was ugly.

It was 3:00 – twenty minutes before the end of the day and part of my planning period– and I had seen enough. "This place isn't worth another minute of my time," I said to another teacher who, along with me, was ducking out of the building early. "That's for sure," she replied.

From the doorway of a classroom, a lingering student said, "There you go, another teacher who doesn't care about the students."  His verbal jab didn't sting me a bit at the time, though I later felt lousy about what I'd said. The biggest burden I've had in the past two years is that I do care – a lot - about what goes on at my school.

So much is being made of the various reformers and reform movements in the education world. I think it's great to hear people acknowledging the various challenges of teaching, especially in troubled urban schools where the achievement gap between minority and white students expands by the hour. I'd just like to hear more conservatives talking about solutions to the problems in inner city and high poverty areas.  This is an area where our core values can be expressed so clearly: personal responsibility and accountability, making the most with what you have, advancing based on merit and achievement.

My colleagues in Teach for America are passionately committed to closing the achievement gap. We work at it relentlessly, with a sense of possibility and with an acknowledgment that we are working in often desperate schools that are understaffed and under-resourced.

I admire my Teach for America colleagues and our mission, but am sure that I could count the number of self-identified Republicans among us on one hand. I want to know what other conservatives think about urban poverty, the crisis in urban high schools like the one I teach in and what and who has the answers to help the kids in these areas. The kids I teach are like family to me now. I consider them "my" kids and wouldn't leave the school for the brightest or shiniest school because I know I can teach them and I've done so much to relate with them and see life from their perspective. Also, I fear who would take my place if I left.

Rather than leave early that day, I should have stepped in to make the situation better. There should have been some structure in place, something I could have done in preparation, to help the school heal and come to peace rather than seem chaotic. I don't put the onus on someone else or on the kids. It's up to me to do these things. Isn't that what conservatism is all about? As voters rejected GOP failures this Fall, conservatives should be relentless on urban issues linking failures to the liberal mind-set that dominates policy.