Jasmine at homecoming
Here we are together, two weeks before she passed away
Dear North Carolina,
My mother told me not to be a teacher. When I was an infant,
she realized that her teacher’s salary would not allow her to take me to the
beach to see the ocean. As I grew, she
told me to choose a job that would pay me well. She said that all people work
hard, but that some people get paid way more than others. Like they say in our great state, “She was
right as rain.”
I saw everything differently though. I saw the countless children that my mother
loved and the joy it brought to recall their antics and their successes. I saw her summers off without realizing how
many unpaid hours she was putting in to do her job so well. She was and is
excellent at her job and her students are lucky to have her. Still, I tried not to become a teacher.
In college, I steered clear of education, but the highlight
of my week was picking up my little buddy, Jasmine, a girl labeled at-risk for
dropout by her teachers. Defiant, rude, loud and as sassy as they come, Jasmine
made life difficult for her teachers.
She was kicked out of her high school for delinquent behavior. In their eyes, she was lashing out and out of control.
I saw a different side of Jasmine though. When she got in my
car she always changed the station to rap and cranked up the volume as loud as
it could go. It must have been hilarious
to see a waspy girl like me riding around with my sassy Jazzy and 102 JAMZ turned
way up loud. When we weren’t talking about her crush on Lil Wayne or Usher, I
helped Jasmine earn A’s by teaching her how to study for tests. We turned it
into a game, and then she aced everything. For all of her brash exterior,
Jasmine was a gentle soul on the inside. She loved babysitting her cousins and
she was as tender with them as any mother would be. She wanted to earn her
cosmetology license and she talked about going to college like me. I saw her struggle with her weight and worry
about finding something that would fit for her homecoming dance. My heart broke
along with hers several times through the years. I loved her and she became a friend instead
of just a mentee. I will never forget the day her mother called me to tell me
that she passed away. She was about to turn 16.
I couldn’t save Jasmine.
In fact, I believe she was the one who saved me from a dishonest life
with myself—I was meant to be a teacher all along. She showed me that much and
more. Five years later, I am a
teacher. I just earned my master’s
degree while working full time in the public schools and I am graced by the
presence of students like Jasmine all the time.
In the few years that I have worked in this profession, I
have lived so much. I taught a child who watched one parent murder the other
one. I saw that student heal, grow and flourish again in the classrooms at my previous
school. I taught children who had such low self esteem that they couldn’t see
their worth until teachers broke through layer by layer to show it to them. I
have watched, heartbroken as a kind cafeteria worker loaded up a child’s
backpack with leftover boxes of raisins at the end of the year so that he would
have something to eat over the summer. I
had no idea. I feel the sting of tears well up in my eyes even now as I remember
this. They are tears of hurt, knowing that I have glimpsed the abyss of need in
our communities but they are also tears of hope because I know that I have
found my purpose. I still have so much
to give. My mother told me not to be a
teacher.
Parents, I am on your team. I love your daughters and your
sons. I take great joy in crafting the
best lessons-- lessons so good that your children won’t even realize how much
they’re learning because of all the fun they have in the process. Once I teach a student, I always consider him
or her one of my children too. Teaching is not a simple act of imparting
knowledge. Teaching is a lifelong mentoring relationship—it is a calling—it is
love.
It hurts me deeply to know that North Carolina has gutted
the public education system in favor of vouchers and charter schools that can
pick and choose their student clientele.
It hurts me to know that the legislature and governor have stripped
North Carolina of the teaching fellows program to recruit and cultivate new
talent for our children. I ache in knowing that they also cut master’s pay for deserving teachers who have given everything they have for
a tiny increase in salary. Let us be clear. Master’s pay is a simple $3,000
jump from the base salary of a North Carolina teacher. To teachers who make
30,000 a year, losing this is a punch in the gut. This is $3,000 less that they will have each
year to afford a safe car, healthy food for their families, or the rising costs
of college tuition for their own children. And for what savings does this come? Is it for
businesses to have a tax break? Teachers
are educating the future work force. The least we can do is make sure that they
don’t have to live on government assistance while they do their difficult jobs.
Legislators will tell you that these changes are for the
good of the state, but they are shortsighted.
Without quality teachers our public school children—the poorest ones,
the ones who need it the most—will fall even more behind. They will blame it on the teachers, because
we are easy targets. We tend to keep
our heads down and do what we love—teach.
We don’t want to be involved in politics—we don’t want to make waves--we
just want to be able to live on a modest but fair salary. We want to work in schools that don’t have to
choose between ordering toilet paper or copy paper. Is this too much to ask? My mother told me
not to be a teacher.
I hear some of my friends and family ask, “What’s wrong with
these lazy teachers? Why can’t they get those test scores up?” I can’t begin to
explain the hurt and anger that those statements incite. With rising class
sizes year after year, little to no budget for supplies and rapidly falling
pay, these statements are demoralizing. Students can’t ace tests when they’re
hungry for nourishment, itchy from head lice or when they haven’t had any sleep
because they are homeless and scared at night. Even when schools do succeed at raising
test scores, as my mother’s school has, the teachers have yet to see the meager
bonus promised alongside that success. The only reward that teachers receive is
the intrinsic satisfaction of doing their jobs well and with great love.
I am one of the lucky ones. I am lucky enough to work in
Guilford County now, where teacher pay is slightly higher than most in the
state. In addition, my husband is not a teacher and so I am able to continue on
this career path of doing what I love because we can afford it.
Dear North Carolina, land that I love, please hear me when I
say, it should not be a luxury to choose teaching as a career.
My mother told me not to be a teacher. When I finally have a child of my own, please
don’t make me tell him or her not to be a teacher too.
Sincerely,
Katie Wall Podracky
N.C. Public school teacher, Greensboro
