Tom’s story

Tom Dunn, my Institute co-partner this summer in Atlanta, made The New York Times! His intriguing story of death row lawyer turned inner city school teacher graced the newspaper’s Education section yesterday:

ATLANTA — “Pick your head up, buddy,” Tom Dunn said to Darius Nash, who had fallen asleep during the morning’s reading drills. “Sabrieon, sit down, buddy,” he called to a wandering boy. “Focus.”

Mr. Dunn’s classroom is less than three miles from his old law office, where he struggled to keep death row prisoners from the executioner’s needle. This summer, after serving hundreds of death row clients for 20 grinding, stressful years, he traded the courthouse for Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School.

The turmoil of middle school turns many teachers away, said the school’s principal, Danielle S. Battle. Students’ bodies and minds are changing, and disparities in learning abilities are playing out.

“A lot of people will say, ‘I’ll do anything but middle school,’ ” she said.

But this is precisely where Mr. Dunn chose to be, having seen too many people at the end of lives gone wrong, and wanting to keep these students from ending up like his former clients. He quotes Frederick Douglass: “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

To read more of this New York Times article entitled “Once Convicts’ Last Hope, Now a Students’ Advocate”, click here.

Good luck

A 2009 study funded by America’s Promise Alliance ranked Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) 50^th out of our nation’s 50 largest cities’ school districts in terms of graduation rate. Although the common perception is not to categorize Indianapolis with Detroit, Cleveland or Baltimore public schools, the reality is that IPS students are less likely to graduate from high school than students living in these other big cities.

Today, one of the Indianapolis TFA Program Directors confirmed something that I already knew: John Marshall Community High School where I will be teaching is what some people consider the worst IPS school in the district. Every time I mention that I will be teaching there people respond with a sigh and a weary “good luck.” An Indianapolis Star reporter wrote that recent issues have “sent this school into a tailspin of chaos and unruliness.” The academic results of the school show similar struggles. For the 2008-2009 school year, the average percent of students who passed both the Reading and Math portions of the ISTEP in the State of Indiana was 74%. However, at Marshall the average percent pass was a mere 33%.

While I am a bit intimidated by everything I have heard about Marshall, a school where 73% of the student body qualifies for Free Lunch, I am also extremely excited. I didn’t apply to Teach For America to teach at a school with no problems. I applied to make a difference at a school and in the lives of students who actually need me. There are many good things happening to breathe new life into Marshall this year including practically an entire new school administration and staff and new community programs.

I can’t wait to dive in, get my hands dirty, learn a lot and work 24/7 to help bring about the changes so desperately needed at Marshall. Many states determine the number of future prison beds needed by factoring the number of children who cannot read on grade level in 4^th grade when tested. This is why it is imperative that I teach like lives depend on it… Because they actually do.

AP article: more college grads join Teach For America

WASHINGTON (AP) — When school starts next fall, Teach for America will send an unprecedented number of college graduates to teach in poor communities across the country — but not as many as the group would like.

Teach for America this year chose 4,100 recruits from more than 35,000 applications. While the group has never accepted every applicant, this was the first time it had to turn down people who met all its rigorous criteria.

“For the last nine years, really the only constraint on our growth has been recruits, just finding enough people who we really believe are ready for this,” said Wendy Kopp, the group’s founder and chief executive.

“This is the first year when we’ve had to turn away people who would have met our admission bar in any previous year,” Kopp said.

To read more of this May 28th Associated Press article by Libby Quaid, click here.