This week, I cracked open my teacher-journal from the 2011-2012 academic year. My last entry reflected a reality quite the opposite of my present:
On the way to my classroom, you can smell a decaying animal through the vents of the radiator in the hallway. When I’m being reflectively dramatic, I meet the stench of the animal and believe it to be a flagrant metaphor for what working in this school, for this administration, has done to my spirit. In my most practical moments, I just wish I could get someone to remove the f!@# dead animal from the vent five steps away from my classroom door.
Because misery loves company, I sent the blurb to my friend Jess Gartner shortly after writing it. She later responded with a photograph of her own classroom, captioned with “it’s a sign”:
As a teacher, I witnessed a courageous student beat up a bold “gansta” mouse in class with his sneaker, I ran to the empty space where my window used to be and looked down below to make sure no one was hurt when it randomly crashed, three stories, to the pavement outside, and I’ve watched leagues of roaches crawl out of gaping holes in walls that pounds of spackle could not fill.
Yes, teachers are the single most important factor in influencing a child’s academic achievement. But I fear that this understanding has led us to view good school facilities as a nicety rather than a necessity.
Is it possible that we can focus on removing ineffective teachers and improving facilities at the same time? Last week, I attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new building that houses Newark Collegiate Academy, a charter school in New Jersey. The ceremony not only emphasized that we can focus on providing excellent service and facilities simultaneously, it suggests that we must.
As I watched Mayor Cory Booker deliver an impassioned address about prioritizing our kids and heard teachers speak of a noticeable difference in the school’s climate, I started to imagine some of my kids and colleagues from last year.
I wonder what Brielle would think of this drama studio and how Jabari would have looked playing basketball in this gym. I wonder how the librarian would feel being able to use the space solely for learning purposes and not for various meetings since there would be conference rooms for that. And if that classroom— the one on the third floor with huge windows that display the skyline— was mine, I might just move in there.
Most importantly, sitting in that audience, I finally understood that a school’s facility will either sell or completely undermine its promise of excellence to excellent teachers, students and families; we can no longer afford the latter.
