Kill Yourself

Is Teacher Corps making a difference? My gut says no.

Have you ever heard of the Law of Thirds? The Law of Thirds says there are three distinct groups of people. (The relative proportions may vary, but we call them thirds for shorthand.) The law of thirds pertains to teachers and leaders of all sorts. According to the Law of Thirds, the first group of people will be successful no matter what you do. You simply usher them from one success to another. The middle third are the ones you can do the most to influence. They need your influence and are receptive to it. Then you have the bottom third. These are the one who cannot be helped. Some people are simply too stubborn or lazy or stupid to change, no matter what you do. You can sing in falsetto, and they won’t listen. You can parade naked ladies, and they won’t pay attention. (Of course, I exaggerate, but you get the idea.) A school is a culture, and cultures act a lot like people. They have to want to change! Teacher Corps attempts to help the students of Mississippi by sending new teachers to the worst of the worst schools—cultures of failure, to put it bluntly—and expects what, exactly?

There is a mythology at play here that needs to be addressed. Popular culture circulates an unrealistic archetype of the individual altruist hero single-handedly turning an entire village, classroom, or school, on its head. It is an appealing notion. Send one Peace Corps volunteer to Africa and you can change an entire village. “Sustainable development” is the catchphrase. And you know what? It is complete hogwash! There is a kind of idealistic hubris to it, as if we select few know something the rest of the world does not, indeed the very secret to happiness. As if all we have to do is whisper it in someone’s ear, and all will be well! The lone, amazing teacher who changes everything is a feel-good story, to be sure, but it is the stuff of movies, not everyday reality. “Stand and Deliver” and movies like it are only loosely based on reality, at best, and only present the entertaining, Hollywood side of the story. Many of them are completely fictional, and those based on true stories are at best one in millions: Rare, and in some cases (such as Stand and Deliver) dubious upon closer inspection. Miracles are just myths, and no one can measure up to a myth. People and cultures are the way they are because of forces much larger than the influence of one individual (not to mention itinerant) outsider.

The fact is, every Teacher Corps teacher is temporary. The other teachers, the principals and superintendents, the parents, and even the students, will all be here long after we are gone. The thefts and the fights, the inane interruptions over the intercom and countless interruptions to the school day, students wandering the halls all day long, the aimless leadership from the top down, and the almost contagious apathy were here before us and will also remain.

As unpopular as the “troop surge” in Iraq has been domestically, it makes sense to me. If our soldiers are to be engaged in Iraq at all, sending adequate numbers is elementary. You cannot win a war if your soldiers are spread too thin to control the situation on the ground. I wonder how different Teacher Corps is. How much change do you really expect to make with 20-30 new teachers per year in an entire state? Each of us is but one of many teachers. We are one out of at most three Teacher Corps teachers at our schools. We are temporary, we are outsiders, and we are outnumbered. There is no way we are going to change the schools.

By the phrase “making a difference,” I think of something big, something lasting, something systematic and world-changing. On such terms, my answer is no. We make our differences on a small scale. There is no doubt in my mind that I am a better teacher than my students would have had for Algebra II without me. I also think I have made some positive influence (just by my presence, reminding them that “Kill yourself!” is not a respectful thing to say, teaching them how to play chess and Set, etc.) in the lives of a few students. I love my students (some of them more than others) and I think a few of them may even love me back in their own, mostly unspoken ways. But those are exceptions, and those students who love me most are probably the ones who would have succeeded, even without me. I have not set the world afire, nor will I.