Dear possible Corps-Member-to-be:
My name is Jonthon Coulson, and I currently teach English in a small muslim fishing village in Indonesia. I came here on a Fulbright scholarship, which I was granted in my second year as a Teach For America Corps Member. I’m learning so much about education, the world around me, and myself here that it’s hard for me to put myself in your shoes; for that very reason, I feel I must try.
I was never really die-hard about Teach For America, but I’m writing this letter hoping to help people like me take advantage of this opportunity. When I was where you are, I was pretty sure I wanted to work on the Daily Show, or with Google. Education was something I talked about when talking politics with friends; I’d say “education is the long-term answer to all our nation’s problems.” When, I heard about Teach For America through posters on the wall, I attended an information session and decided to apply because I thought it’d probably help me a lot with the aforementioned career-goals which, admittedly, were probably out of my reach. And what the heck, maybe I’d help a few kids become better writers and thinkers at the same time.
Teach For America was one of the best learning opportunities I ever stumbled into. As an ESL Corp Member placed in the Bronx, my first classroom was comprised of students from eight different countries with wide ranges of English fluency and a pretty steady reading level of about fifth grade. I struggled for a while to find my style, I struggled for all of two years with my administration, and I struggled to see what the future might hold for my students. At the end of that year, over half of them had learned enough English (more a testament to them than to my “relentless pursuit of goals”) to exit the ESL program. My successes lead my administration to make me the head of the English department and slate me to teach the 9th, 10th and 11th grade classes. This was too much responsibility, and I struggled readily to fulfill these goals. Nevertheless, at the end of the second year, 94% of my 11th graders passed the national exam, and I had actually read a bunch of books I had only pretended to read in high school. I sometimes criticize Teach For America for its near-singular focus on numbers, and thus feel it necessary to say that these stats don’t begin to measure the value of relationships I built with the kids in my school. Perhaps a better measure of the transformative effect would be a simple count of the Myspace and facebook messages I still exchange with my students every time I can get to an Indonesian city advanced enough to have internet hubs. Whether we’re talking about college, controversy or our country, I’m always amazed at what is becoming of them, and what the future holds for kids who once that college was outside of their reach.
Your Corps Member status will make you eligible for things that are out of your reach too - and I say that in ignorance of your particular situation. Whether you hope to follow my path and attain a Fulbright scholarship (I’d be more than happy to help you in this regard!), head to law or medical school, stay in your placement school, or otherwise, Teach For America provides an excellent opportunity to test your mettle against a status quo we all - left, right and apathetic - acknowledge needs to change. There is no better place to evince this change than in our schools, and no better time than always. The work you do will be more rewarding than any you will do later in life; it will also bankrupt you of more emotion and energy in the process. Anything that comes after it will seem relatively simple - in my case, learning a new language while fasting for Ramadan in my little internet-devoid muslim fishing village didn’t really hamper my ability to teach at all.
I don’t know if I’ll always be a teacher, but I am fairly confident that I could get an interview at Google or start my own school when I get back - it would surprise my old self to learn that I now lean toward the latter. And while I’d love to credit my successes and shift in priorities to my work ethic or writing ability, the truth of the matter is that I’m a product of my opportunities. Teach For America gives you an opportunity to grow, mature, and develop…and subsequently achieve goals that were once far outside of our wildest hopes and dreams. I hope you consider joining the corps, and am confident that when you finish, personal ambitions will no longer be what motivates you. And the person you are not won’t old a candle to what you, and the kids you teach, will become.
back to work,
Jonthon Coulson (’06 NYC)
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