The Education of a Lifetime

For one of my classes we had to hand in a variety of writing assignments earlier in the quarter. Below is the "profile piece" assignment I did on my friend Megan Weeks. Sometimes when you get an assignment back with writing all over it, it's filled with corrections; mine was filled with her comments on how much she loved certain parts. I got A+ and my professor wrote that it was the best in the class. I thought I would share:

The Education of a Lifetime
By Kim Dunbar

Megan Weeks is praying it doesn’t rain. The cloudy skies seem ominous, but as she does every day on the way to work, she is hoping for the best.

Weeks is a tenth grade English teacher at South High Community School in Worcester, Massachusetts. South is an underfunded, inner-city high school in which Hispanics and African-Americans make up 57.4 percent of the student population. “It’s a crazy, unique place,” said Weeks. “We have no walls, no supplies, a leaking roof with garbage cans to catch the run off, but a whole lot of love.”

Weeks is hoping it doesn’t rain because the garbage cans and leaking water are added distractions she can’t spare for the sake of her students. It is hard enough to teach over the voices of her colleagues adjacent to her “classroom,” which looks more like an oversized office cubicle than a traditional classroom. “I honestly cannot imagine what it would be like to be able to ‘close my door’ and just teach,” she said.

Weeks began teaching at South High upon graduating from Clark University. Her experiences as an undergraduate are what influenced her future profession. “I decided to become a teacher after taking an Urban Schooling class. I knew I loved English and knew I wanted to help kids so it all came together for me after that class,” she said.

Weeks’s favorite part of her job is “being able to relate to the kids and just be myself,” she said. “I feel a true sense of accomplishment when my students are able to follow their dreams or even figure what their dreams are,” she added. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult for Weeks to do her job and enjoy it, as budget cuts and low test scores continue to plague the school.

The economic recession is affecting schools across the country, but it is magnified in schools like South, which was having a hard time before budget cuts became a regular event. For example, this year Weeks is allotted two reams of paper a month for a class load of 100 students, and because the school often cannot afford to purchase books for the students to use, Weeks finds herself purchasing collections with her own money.

For the last two years, South—which garners a two out of ten rating from GreatSchools when it comes to student test scores in Massachusetts high schools—has been pushing for its students to do better on standardized tests with the SWIFT initiative. SWIFT stands for “Strategic Writers In Focused Thought,” and is built around the core concept which Weeks summarizes, “if we get our kids to be strategic writers across disciplines they will have a better chance in succeeding in school.” She added that the idea is for the school to have many writing requirements, such as common assessments that each grade level has to complete on a monthly basis.

“Our students don't measure up compared to a student elsewhere in the state,” said Weeks. “I get my students reading at a sixth grade level as they start the tenth grade. To me, I have performed a miracle if I can find one book they actually read or one project they would love to do. Unfortunately, that is not how the state of Massachusetts measures success,” Weeks lamented.

In fact, Weeks said the lack of parental involvement and overall student apathy has been the biggest challenge of her career thus far. “Half of my job is just getting them to care,” she said. “Since many of these students have never seen family members achieve higher education or move out of the city, they don't know why it is so important to have an education. If the parents checked homework, asked questions, and reached out, these kids would really succeed,” added Weeks.

Something else Weeks thinks would help her students is an equal budget. “We do everything we can for these kids. If they received the same budget as the suburban kids I know we could do anything,” she said. “If this is truly the land of the free, then all Americans should be free to receive a high quality education. Learning is not just for the rich.”

In her five years at the school, Weeks has had many ups and downs. Both her laptop and her cell phone were stolen on separate occasions and she has suffered several bruises from breaking up girl fights in the hallways. But she refuses to leave her students for greener pastures at a better school. “The students at the ‘better’ schools don't need the help the way these kids do,” she said. “As long as I have the energy I will be in the inner city doing what I can to make a difference. I love what I do and I love to see these kids succeed,” she added.

Success according to Megan Weeks is different than another teacher’s definition of the same word. Several of Weeks’s students have matriculated to top colleges, including Holy Cross and Columbia, but those students aren’t considered her greatest accomplishments. “I am most proud of the students that push themselves so hard just to make it to state college,” she explained. “The smiles on their faces and the sincere 'thank you' I receive mean almost more than my first student going to an Ivy League college.”

If Weeks has learned anything during her teaching tenure, she has learned patience and the ability to understand that learning happens very slowly and to accept that change does not happen overnight. “You have to keep at it, even when it seems like you will not succeed,” she said.

But Weeks knows all too well that while learning can’t change overnight, the weather certainly can. But like all the other challenges she has overcome as an inner city teacher, Weeks has learned to deal with the rainy days, garbage cans and all.