Summer 2016
ing them the love and attention they require in the moment,” she says. “And when I did teach, I really didn’t teach history because my students couldn’t read. I had to incorporate literacy skills and math skills and science skills into my lessons because the students were failing in so many different areas.” Choosing education as a career baffled her parents. “My dad, he always said that teaching was important work, but his expectations were higher: ‘You’re going to be a teacher? You could be an astronaut!’” she says. “People think of medicine and engineering as these highly professional careers that involve a lot of training, a lot of knowledge, a lot of intelligence, a lot of integrity,” Leibel says, “but people don’t always think of teaching that way. The more that we can do to show people that teaching is complex, that’s it’s admirable, and that it’s really a profession that involves a lot of skills and knowledge, the more we can raise the standard for what teaching looks like and who’s attracted to it.” Or as Brewster puts it: “I think paying teachers more money could attract more people to the profession, but I don’t think anybody will solve this problem until, on a global scale, there’s an appreciation for the craft of teaching.” Rodriguez says that, too often, “one exceptional kid is labeled as the one who’s going to make it out of the ’hood. Why would that person become a teacher? There has to be an understanding that this is a profession that takes you into the community to do good work. Unfortunately, success is usually framed by what kind of job can get you out of the community. “There is this connotation that, as a person of color, you’re already less intelligent, so of course you would go into work that people perceive as not as hard compared to being a doctor or lawyer,” Rodriguez says. “I’ve struggled with that. I’ve had to prove or argue how I’m in education because I’m a woman of color, not because I’ve settled on education. I actually chose education.” With the new htf Program, following an intensive summer training program, the 20 Harvard College graduates in the first class of fellows will take teaching residencies at urban public schools in Brooklyn, New York; Denver; and Oakland, California, then make a four- to seven-year commitment to stay in the classroom. “By making this a high-profile program where Harvard College students — ‘the best of the best’ — are committing to this career, we think it can have a profound ripple effect and implication about what it means to be a teacher,” Shed says.
having spent the last year at harvard as a student, Brewster says, “It’s so much easier than teaching because I’m only concerned about myself for a year and not 50 students.” Teacher “burnout,” he says, “is real.” It’s easy to see why as Brewster describes his job title at his middle school: “English teacher, counselor, mentor, father, spiritual adviser.” (Shed mentioned a similar list from one of the readings in the course he taught this past spring: “One of the authors says, ‘Teachers must be expert psychologists, cops, rabbis, priests, judges, gurus, and, paradoxically, students of our students.’”) Brewster would knock on doors after answering a phone call from a parent saying, “I don’t know where my child is. Can you please help?” Driving students to and from school, giving them money for food, mentoring boys who were never even in his class. “I’m not their parent, but I feel responsible,” Brewster says. He calls one former student his son. “He goes to church with me on Sundays. He got baptized last year,” he says. But “there were days when I’m in the [school] parking lot like, ‘I can’t do this.’ But I’d say, ‘If I don’t do this, who will?’” Rodriguez says she cooked meals, purchased winter coats, helped parents fill out job applications, visited juvenile detention centers, attended funerals. “I don’t think these things don’t happen in more affluent schools, but this was like a daily thing,” she says. When she got to the Ed School, she realized, “I don’t have any money in savings. Where did it all go? Oh, my students.” She points out that while all of the students in her school in Hartford were black or Latino, she estimates she was one of only five minority teachers. “Five teachers out of an entire building is just not enough,” she says. “If you’re the only teacher of color in a school, you become the house mom for all the students of color. It’s not sustainable if there’s one of you to meet the needs of so many.” Plus, being labeled
“And when I did teach, I really didn’t teach history because my students couldn’t read. I had to incorporate literacy skills and math skills and science skills into my lessons because the students were failing in so many different areas.” ESTAFANIA RODRIGUEZ
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