A couple of weeks ago, I returned to Washington, D.C., while the New York City schools had off for Rosh Hashanah. I just got on the AU shuttle to meet up with some friends and old professors outside of Katzen when I heard a conversation between two young women. They were buzzing with excitement about preparing their applications for the '08 Teach For America corps.
It was soothing to learn that the students of American University are the same as they were when I left them in May: passionate about the world that surrounds them, infuriated by its injustices and called by their potential to make significant change.
Just a few months after my Honors capstone was submitted, I found myself riding a school bus on my way to Washington Heights in Manhattan. Some of the other '07 New York City Corps members and I were going to meet our sixth graders to administer reading diagnostics. We were prepared for our students to be reading at low levels, but it still broke our hearts to see those kids.
The first real challenge, however, came when one student couldn't read well enough in English to even complete the exam and score at a preschool level. We were trained for this when working with students who had just arrived to the United States, but this was not the case here. The child who couldn't take the assessment was Francisco, a 15-year-old in the sixth grade, born in New York.
I originally joined Teach For America because I felt passionate about the academic achievement gap that exists between children growing up in low-income neighborhoods and their affluent peers. But the day I discovered that this child had fallen so far behind because of the limited opportunities afforded him by the neighborhood in which he was born was the day my motivation changed.
It was no longer about the statistics of 9-year-olds in low-income communities reading at an average of three grade levels below their high-income peers. It was not about the statistic that only half of the 13 million children who grow up in poverty will graduate from high school. My motivations had 12 names now; one of them was named Francisco.
While the rest of my class read on the last day of summer school, I sat with Francisco and began reading aloud. We came across several of the words we had been studying together, and when I paused to ask Francisco to say the words in Spanish, I watched his face light up as he could translate each and every one of them. At our end-of-summer-school party, Francisco won the award for "Most Improved Vocabulary," and while the rest of the class did the "good job" cheer for him, I presented him the flashcards as a gift. He was so proud of what he had learned; he thanked me as he slipped the flashcards into his bag.
This is the change that is possible when promising leaders take on the challenge of inspiring the children of this nation. We have the power to teach children that while the academic achievement gap may be their reality right now, it does not have to be the determinant of their futures.
American University seniors, I challenge you to take on the mission. Teach because these children need you. Teach for the ability to make a change. Teach for the Franciscos sitting in every classroom in this nation waiting for you to walk into their classrooms to tell them they can.
Danielle Giusto Class of 2007
