My old fellowship articles? They’re messy. Raw, really. Just honest records of how close to breaking I was back then. COVID hit hard. Remote learning dragged on. I was drowning in it all. But that fellowship gave me quiet. Space to name why I actually started teaching in the first place. I’ve left the classroom nearly two years now. Writing keeps me here. It helps untangle the knots education left in my head.
The Lie of the Meritocracy
I came from Title I schools. Public schools, under-resourced. I stepped into a classroom to find the lens that explained my own history. Why did some kids learn to read and others didn’t? Why did some schools have books and new tech while others fought for basic supplies? Who made it to college and who got left behind?
Teaching was supposed to be the shortcut to these answers.
It wasn’t. It was painful. And fast.
I worked a dual shift. Teaching at a public charter school by day. Driving out to the suburbs to tutor in the evenings for cash. The contrast was violent. One side of town versus the other. The reality hit me every single day: student success is never just about the teacher. It’s not about one good school. It’s a system. It starts before the first bell rings.
Some kids can read because they got phonics early. Screened for disabilities in kindergarten. Not magic. Policy. Some schools have resources because housing laws and decades of segregation cooked property values differently. Some kids survive the college maze—FAFSA, Common App, the stress of it—because their families had money. Because they had stability. Resilience isn’t a character trait you can teach. It’s an asset you’re given.
Zip codes. Race. Class. These weren’t just topics. They were the cage.
The Grief of Clarity
Leaching wasn’t just about being overworked. Everyone says that. But for me, it was worse. It was the death of a specific lie: that education is society’s great equalizer. I realized I wasn’t exceptional. I was lucky.
I graduated. I went to college. Why? Because my family assumed it was inevitable. That belief started at birth. My academics helped sure. But so did stable housing. Good health care. Adults who loved me. Adults who were comfortable yelling at doctors and principals alike. White-collar privilege doesn’t just mean nice dinners. It means getting learning issues fixed instantly.
Think about it. Kids spend most of their lives outside school until they are eighteen. The classroom is a small island in a huge ocean of outside factors. The promise of school depends entirely on systems that have nothing to do with textbooks.
That isn’t to diminish teachers. Please don’t misunderstand me. Teachers are miracle workers sometimes. Find me an adult who doesn’t remember a teacher that changed their trajectory. Hard. But teachers can’t lift the sky if the ground underneath them is sinking. Big gains happen when the ecosystem supports the school. When kids arrive healthy. Safe. Fed. Secure.
Hope and Dread
So what do we do? Two paths are visible now. One glimmers. One terrifies me.
In grad school we talked about place-based partnerships. Getting everyone in the same room: healthcare, housing, youth services, city hall. Aligning them for kids. Harlem Children’s Zone is the famous one. But models like StriveTogether or Partners for Rural Impact are spreading. Here in Boston, groups like the Children’s Council try to look holistically at what shapes a child’s life.
I hope in these efforts because they finally get it. Teachers already knew this.
Students aren’t blank slates walking through the door at eight a.m.
They walk in carrying the weight of housing instability. The lack of a dentist. The hunger. Place-based work stops asking schools to cure poverty alone. It builds support around the teachers.
But the dread is real too. Frustration with public schools has a target. When you’ve sold people on the idea that schools fix everything, and they clearly don’t close the gap, the institution itself looks broken. Especially now, after the pandemic fractures everything.
Take my home state of West Virginia. There, anger fueled the Hope Scholarship. Education savings accounts for everyone. Sounds empowering. It’s not. It bleeds resources from public systems most students depend on. It feels like a surrender. A dismissal of public schools as the engine of democracy.
Many inequities were never inside school walls to begin with. They were in the legislature. In the zoning office.
I’m done teaching, but I’m still working on this. I believe we shouldn’t abandon public schools. We need to fortify them. Surround them. Policy needs to build those external systems so teachers can finally do what they do best. Not fix broken societies. Just teach.
