Quite a few people have asked me what I talked about, so I'll share here. I mean every word of it from my heart.
*****
I am so excited to have
this chance to tell you about our kids, these wonderful kids in our community
who have so much potential, and who flourish they’re provided with the love and
support they crave and deserve.
Let me tell you about my
experiences teaching in Oakland. I taught at Lockwood Elementary School, in
East Oakland, right by the Coliseum, for eight years. This school was in a
particularly rough part of Oakland. I didn’t know this before I taught there
but the police called this neighborhood the “killing zone” due to the high
number of murders that took place there. Although I left that school ten years
ago, we unfortunately have many of the same challenges today in our schools.
I was 24 when I started
working at Lockwood and I was not at all prepared for the level of need at that
school. Like any group of people, my students had a variety of family
situations. However, the level of financial need was consistent: it went from
fairly low-income to desperately poor, and life for all of my students’
families involved the difficulties that came along with raising children with
so much financial stress.
I was also not prepared
for the level of violence that these kids had to live with every day. Most of
my students’ families had no personal connection to the violence nearby but
they did have to live with the repercussions of it. The first time I got a note
requesting that I excuse an 8-year-old from doing her homework because she had
to hide from the drive-by shootings that were happening that night… well, I
started to realize that these kids were dealing with a lot more than most
people were aware of.
I was honored to meet,
and grow to love, students and families from many different cultures and
backgrounds. There was a wide array of talents, experiences, knowledge, and
skills, but there was also so much need.
I had students who came
to school hungry every day. We had a free breakfast program, but it wasn’t very
healthy. In addition, if a student’s parent worked nights or was preoccupied
with younger children, it could be difficult for that student to get to school
in time to take advantage of this program. For some kids, lunch was the only
substantial meal they’d have and, like school lunches almost everywhere, they
were not high-quality. This obviously led to issues like lack of attention, low
energy levels, and more. In fact, I had one colleague who ran an experiment on
herself, eating the school lunches every day for a week. She reported back to
us that she felt tired, sluggish, and a little ill all week. The kids who most
needed nutrition supplementation were not getting it. Unfortunately, the
quality of school lunches today is still a concern for educators in many
regions, including ours, and the effects on learning are exacerbated in lower
income areas.
Many of my students were
far below grade level academically, for a variety of reasons. Some had
non-English speaking parents, so they entered kindergarten without speaking any
English, much less reading or writing it. If their parents couldn’t speak
English, they were unlikely to be able to help with homework that had English
directions, so young children struggled to complete homework on their own. This
often made the students feel like they were, in their words, “stupid,” when
truthfully, they just needed some guidance, like every other child. Some of their
parents had had children when they were very young and had not had the chance
to complete their own schooling. And of course, many of the parents were
working multiple jobs and just didn’t have the time, money, or energy to help
their children or provide enrichment opportunities.
I want to be very clear
- NONE of this was because the parents didn’t care about their kids. But if
you’re concerned about your children having food on the table, a roof over
their head, and basic safety, their academic concerns are just not what you’re
going to be able to focus on.
In addition, our school
was in bad shape. The playground, which was really just an asphalt yard with
some broken basketball hoops, was actually crumbling. There was no grass and
very few trees - the yard looked more like a prison yard than a school yard.
Because of the area, we had trouble finding teachers and administrators, and
many used our school as a stepping stone and then, as they would see it,
“advanced” to safer, more affluent areas. This constant turnover affected our
students and families, who couldn’t build important relationships with school
staff.
We had a different
principal every year for the eight years that I was at Lockwood. How many of
you can remember your principal’s name from elementary school? I can: mine was
Mrs. Goodwin. The kids I taught quickly gave up on learning the principals’
names because they knew they’d just have to meet someone else the next year. We
have a new dedicated, homegrown superintendent in Oakland Unified and many passionate
principals and teachers. However, hiring and staff stability is going to remain
a challenge for at least the next several years due to severe budget
limitations.
In many more affluent
schools, parents and PTAs join with teachers in providing books and supplies.
Our school didn’t have a PTA and most of our parents couldn’t help out much,
although they did when they could. And supplies and books were more important
for kids who didn’t have them at home, so teachers used their meager paychecks
to buy these for their students.
My first year teaching
was hard, for all those reasons and more. It was really hard. In my second year
of teaching, there was an announcement at my church that Randy Roth, former
pastor of First Covenant Church in Oakland, had started an organization meant
to support students and teachers in Oakland. I heard his talk and cried
throughout it. This was what we needed - we needed a community to come
alongside us and help. We needed to not do this alone.
Randy told us about the
schools Children Rising had started working with and I knew them. They were needy
schools, but they weren’t on our level. We had consistently scored 59th out of
60 in elementary school testing, and we were in the poorest and most violent
neighborhood in Oakland. Through my tears, I begged Randy to come to our
school. He told me that he wanted to, but that the neighborhood was so
dangerous that he couldn’t get volunteers to come. This was in Children Rising's first year.
Seventeen years later, I
am thrilled to say that not only has Children Rising been at my former school for many years
(even through it changing into two small schools) but that they’ve spread
throughout the East Bay, and that I have seen and heard of their good work from
teachers, kids, parents and administrators. They have provided mentors, reading
partners, math tutors, science labs, and much much more. Most importantly, they
have created a team to come alongside each school community, because every
single one of these kids needs and deserves a team of people on their side.
This is not simply about
getting kids up to certain academic standards. It’s not about providing pencils
and books. It is literally a matter of life and death. Let me tell you what can
happen without a team of community support behind these wonderful kids who are
at such risk. I have two stories that are hard to share and hard to hear, but
they are important.
Jorge was a child who
was intensely aware of how much he needed help. He told his second-grade
teacher that he needed help “learning how to be a good person.” He explained
further that other kids had parents who could help them learn to be a good
person, but that he didn’t. His dad was missing, and his mom was dealing with
the stress of East Oakland by using a variety of substances. It’s a long story,
and Jorge gets a whole chapter in my book, but the upshot is that he continued
to ask for help in every way he knew how, and we just didn’t have the resources
to help him. Eventually, anyone in his position would have gotten beaten down
by the circumstances. He was pushed even further by witnessing the murder of
his friend, at 13, and gave up and joined a gang. And if you think about it, of
course he did. He was craving community and people on his side. If he had had
those people on his side in another context, I don’t think our tax dollars
would be paying for him to be in Corcoran State Prison for 19 years.
Fred was another child
who was very close to my heart, and who also cried out for help. I had Fred in
both first grade and third grade and, while he was known as a terror around
school because of his behavior, he would come to me when he was upset, telling
me that he couldn’t deal with his feelings and that he felt like no one cared
about him. He was expelled in elementary school and incarcerated as a teenager.
As a young adult, trying to leave the gang he had joined, he was shot and
killed. I recently found his journal from third grade. I haven’t had the
strength to read it, but I remember him writing profusely, because he wanted so
badly for somebody to listen. I firmly believe that if he had had the type of
support offering by Children Rising, he would still be with us today, making the
world a better place.
Both of these stories
were completely avoidable. These kids were at a crossroads, and if there had
been a team of people to advocate for them and help get them over the hurdle,
we would not have wasted these precious lives.
Now let me tell you a
different story. Stephanie had more family support than Jorge or Fred but even
more than that, she had community support. She had a big sister through Big
Brothers Big Sisters. She had teachers who helped her out, following her from
year to year to make sure she never fell through any cracks. She had a church
community and knew that people in her community had her back. While Stephanie
dealt with the same violence and poverty as all of my other students, she had a
village around her, supporting her and building her up. Last year, Stephanie
graduated from Howard University and is currently in a double master’s program:
education and biology, while serving as a teacher intern in Baltimore. THIS is
what can happen when a child knows that people believe in her.
Obviously Howard
University is a nationally recognized university and I’m so proud of her. But
I’ve had other students take a different path to success, and in a way, they
have achieved even more than Stephanie. Saafir is one of those. Saafir has
actually fallen through the cracks in many of his schools but he had a Children Rising volunteer when he was in my third-grade class and she made a huge
difference. She brought him and his classmates healthy snacks, worked as a team
with me and his 4th grade teacher to make sure he didn’t get lost, and believed
in him. When he was in high school, she was even able to hire him for an
internship! He got a little lost at Oakland Tech and ended up transferring to a
continuation school to finish high school. He agonized about this decision, and
it would have been easy for him to drop out during his senior year. But he had
this history of people believing in him and I am SO proud to say that he is
studying at the College of Alameda. I got to be at his high school graduation
and it was one of the proudest days of my life.
If you have ever had the
pleasure of working with any of the kids at the schools Children Rising serves,
you know that the benefits are not just for the students. The volunteers are
set up for success with training and controlled environment, which makes a huge
difference. Setting the volunteers up for success this way makes them able to
really focus on what the kids need: academic help and positive, supportive
relationships with adults.
Let me tell you what I’ve
seen as a teacher, and more recently, as the former Director of Education at
Harbor House Ministries, from these tutoring relationships. I’ve seen kids who
could barely recognize letters at the beginning of the year excited about
reading at the end of the year. I’ve seen kids who didn’t believe any adult outside
their family could possibly care about them end up totally secure in their
relationship with an adult from a completely different background than
themselves. I’ve seen jaded, cynical (for good reason) teachers who were moved to tears because of the generosity of Children Rising volunteers
and staff. I’ve seen volunteers bring food to kids who hadn’t eaten a
substantial meal that day, or possibly that week. I’ve seen a group that
doesn’t come to schools and tell them what they need to do but who humbly asks
what they need. I’ve seen kids who I thought would drop out of school before
6th grade (yes, that is frequent) bring books to me and say, “Guess what! I can
read this!!”
Again, this is not
simply a matter of getting kids up to grade level, although that is important. This
is a matter of helping children and youth at a key crossroads in their lives.
If they get the help they need, it will make all the difference in the world. This
is a matter of life and death.
We’ve all heard that
third grade reading levels are used to predict prison population. As a teacher,
I could look at a child in my class and know, with depressing accuracy, if they
were going to make it to 25 alive and out of prison. Do you know what the one
thing was that would surprise me and prove me wrong? It was intervention by
someone who cared.
Oakland has a tremendous
community spirit and I am so excited to see community, like many of you in this
room, who are making a dramatic difference in these children’s lives. It’s not
hard to do - two hours per week by one member of this community, supported and
trained by Children Rising—can change two children’s lives forever, over the
course of just one academic year. And that’s not even counting the amazing
changes that take place in the volunteer’s lives!
There are many people in
the Oakland community with wonderful hearts and a desire to make a difference
in a young person’s life. If everyone in this room made a point to talk about
the need and how to help, whether by volunteering, donating, advocating, or
spreading the word, we could have ALL of the volunteers and resources we need
to help the next generation of children. Imagine that. Imagine the potential in
these kids becoming fully realized. I am hopeful that, as a state and a nation,
we will someday establish our priorities to have all of our schools finally
resourced as they should be, but until then, it’s up to us here in this room,
and our greater community, to make the changes.
There are about 1,600
third grade students in Oakland Unified who are reading substantially below
grade level. That’s a lot. But… if Children Rising could increase their 150
reading tutors to 800 - 800 people volunteering only two hours a week - we
could wipe that out. We could have the vast majority of the third
graders in Oakland reading at or above grade level. As a former third grade
teacher, this idea gives me chills because it has so much potential. Third
grade is a crossroads. This is the last year that anyone helps them learn to
read; after that, it’s all reading to learn. Increasing individual tutoring
could change everything and empower so many precious children.
Please continue your
support and help us to spread the word. These kids are amazing and deserving
and they ARE our future. It’s actually very easy to make a big difference.
Thank you for listening and caring so deeply for the children in our community.
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