Inspiration

I hear that it can, at times, be difficult to stay inspired at ED. That may be due to the fact that it only supplies 10 percent of the average school budget and has many political appointees, not to mention the fact that these employees work day in and day out without getting to see the fruits of their labor: the students.

Monday marked yet another opening of an art exhibit at ED, reminding all the ED employees of the reason they work hard each day. Basically what goes on is a formal presentation, with speakers from within the department, from Maryland’s state superintendent – where the art came from – and from two of the students that had their art displayed. My department was in charge of running the show.

In a much appreciated change of pace, I was out of my cubicle, away from papers, and not sitting down. Instead, I helped escort the caterers into the building. And while I was doing this, Secretary Arne Duncan just happened to be arriving to work, and so he said “Good morning” as he walked past. NBD.

I thought the presentation went smoothly, but after having Jackie ask me exactly how I thought it went and what I would have done differently, I realized that I need to pay more attention to my initial, critical instincts and critique things all the time– at least the ones that I’d be in charge of, or things that I can learn from criticizing – just like I now do with written documents.

After that, I ran off to an intern meeting with a White House staffer that works here at ED on Hispanic achievement in the U.S. school system. There were just under 10 interns there, myself included, all coming from interesting and impressive backgrounds. We are all in different departments, so most of us were seeing each other for the first time. Unfortunately, this is also an area in which ED struggles generally. LBJ, the main building, is spread out. There isn’t a truly common area, save the cafeteria, and if work doesn’t require people to interact, they don’t get to see much of each other.

But back to the content of our lunch. The conversation was all over the place. Some people wanted to talk about charter schools. Others about small villages in Texas that are basically like islands of third-world poverty in the United States. I asked what he knew about school teachers’ acquisition of Spanish, considering the fact that one in five public school students is Latino. This was of particular interest to me because of my job as an AmeriCorps VISTA. I worked in Austin, which is a small town that has seen significant increases in its Hispanic population in the last 20 years due to the packaging plant. The teachers were provided access to Spanish-language classes, but it was hit-or-miss in terms of who took advantage of it. Austin has seen serious tension at times, but typically is complacently separate. He had said that towns like my own, small, rural towns that are new to diversity, are struggling the most. Many teachers are staying mono-lingual, despite the fact that the first step to relating to and educating a student is t be able to communicate with her.

So the question becomes, how do you motivate teachers to take this step? To start, I think that much of this will come with the next generation. If it’s any indication of the greater scheme of things, there are more than a handful of students here at LCWS that speak Spanish. I think that because of the time that we’ve grown up in, we’re acutely aware of America’s comparatively weaker position globally. My generation has realized that learning another language will only be helpful in the future. And this will help, but there’s always more to be done. What else can be used to inspire teachers to do any and everything they can to meet kids on their own level?