April 2023
20 Minute Read
Volume 2. Issue 4.
World Changers!
By Ben Colas
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After watching Waiting for Superman, The Cartel, and The Lottery as an idealistic 20-year-old, my eyes were opened to the inequities in our country’s education system, especially for those living in low-income communities.
A child who isn’t proficient in reading by 4th grade has a two in three chance of ending up in jail or on welfare. At many of these schools 70, 80, or even 90 percent of students are below grade-level. The worst teachers can’t be fired. And the kids are stuck within their local district unlike many wealthy families who exercise their right to school choice by moving to a new neighborhood.
According to the documentaries, the solution to this unfortunate situation is simple. First, we need to get rid of — or at least radically reform — teachers’ unions. Unions make it nearly impossible to reward good teachers or get rid of incompetent ones. The worst of the worst — the ones who you’d call the cops on if they approached or spoke to your child in public —get paid to hang out and play cards away from kids. Reform, the documentaries say, is impossible without starting here.
Second, we need to open more charter schools. The idea around charters is simple: provide more autonomy in exchange for accountability (including being accountable to the families who have to opt-in and can opt-out if dissatisfied). The schools are publicly funded and independently run, which provides more room for creativity around curriculum, calendar, and contracts. Many of these charters have impressive results. Summit Public Charter Schools in New York City have students that complete college at nearly two times the national average and pass at least one AP exam at double the national average. In the 2022 New York State Exams, 82% of Success Academy charter students passed math compared to 38% of district students. While it’s reasonable to assume that parents who go through the effort to enroll their child in a charter are also more likely to be reading with their kid and fostering learning experiences outside of school, it’s also reasonable to assume that they enroll their child in these schools because the experience is objectively better.
With such promising results, demand is the key challenge. Some charters have a waitlist 14,000 students long, and placement is determined by a lottery. But unlike the NBA, where having a worse record increases your chances of a franchise-altering pick in the draft, there’s no consideration for how rough one’s neighborhood school or home situation is. Everyone has an equal chance of being selected, and tragically, there’s just not enough charters to meet the insatiable demand.
As I digested the sad state of affairs, I felt both frustrated and motivated. I’d received a great education, social capital, and opportunity because of where I’d grown up, why shouldn’t everyone else? The documentaries offered a simple solution that was in reach. All we needed to do was work up the political will to stand up to the unions and expand charter schools. Then inner-city kids would have the same opportunities that I was blessed with. This was clearly a critical issue for our country and all I needed was a way to contribute.
That led me to Teach for America (TFA). If education is the battlefield, TFA is the tip of the spear operating in some of the most difficult school districts around the country. The organization is built on a basic idea: take high-potential, recent graduates, call them Corps members, place them in high-poverty schools for two years and provide the coaching and support for them to become effective educators. After that time, some will stay in the classroom. Most will go on to do other things but will be advocates for education reform regardless of where they end up and will be well positioned for success in their fields as a result of their experience and transferable skills gained in the classroom.
Critics complain that Corps members aren’t well-trained, don’t stay in the classroom long-term, and that the worst schools shouldn’t be staffed by inexperienced ideologues. Proponents argue that Corps members are teaching in hard-to-staff schools, are better for students than having a long-term sub, can be as effective as traditional teachers, and even if they do leave the classroom after two years, they’ll still have a positive impact on learners and the education field broadly. Like most issues, the truth is more complicated.
To me, TFA sounded like the intersection of my passion, experience, and talents. The documentaries and books fueled my interest. And my time volunteering at a detention home for at-risk teens and on service trips to inner-city Chicago during spring breaks had prepared me for the next step. Finally, I was relational, high-energy, and overly optimistic. Education was the civil rights issue of my generation. Six years later, announcing his 2020 presidential run, Beto O’Rourke’s “I want to be in it. Man, I’m just born to be in it,” summed up my naiveté. If he would’ve consulted me, I could have warned him that ego plus a sense of destiny is a recipe for disaster.
Shortly after Memorial Day, myself and 50 other soon-to-be Cleveland teachers headed to Phoenix for TFA bootcamp. While others spend years studying to become educators, we crammed all that into 4.5 weeks. I spent two hours a day teaching fourteen well-behaved Hispanic students in summer school, and the rest of the time received training and coaching.
As instruction went on, my high opinion of TFA began to waver. I was eager to learn strategies for fostering strong relationships and culturally relevant teaching. Instead, I sat through lessons on how Abraham Lincoln was a racist. I must have been misinterpreting the Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural all these years. Years later, on runs through the National Mall, I’d jog up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and observe people of all ethnicities, ages, and backgrounds appreciate and reflect on Lincoln’s significant contributions to our nation. If this guy is actually an irredeemable villain, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Economists talk about opportunity costs — what you could have done or gotten but didn’t as a result of a choice. Dinner with the family is the opportunity cost of working late. The opportunity cost of being lectured about Abraham Lincoln was time that could’ve been spent developing strategies to foster strong relationships with students and families across cultures, or learning about classroom management, data driven instruction, and curriculum. In other words, topics that would be relevant to my job as a teacher.
Throughout that month of training, I improved from completely inexperienced to baseline competent. That growth gave me confidence that I could succeed in my own classroom. Yes, teaching from 7:30-3:30 would be different than teaching for two hours with another teacher in the room, and yes, the backgrounds and experiences of 27 African-American Cleveland kids would be different from the backgrounds and experiences of 14 Hispanic kids, but c’mon. I’m just born to be in it.
Here I come Cleveland, Ohio.
Right before summer training, I interviewed and received an offer from Imagine Harvard Avenue Community School, a charter school in Cleveland’s Corlett neighborhood. Today, the median family income in Corlett is $36,000 and the median home price $49,000. Not much has changed since I arrived ten years ago. Imagine Harvard. What a fitting name. Even more fitting was The Imagine network of schools’ core values of integrity, justice, and fun. Who couldn’t get behind those? While it may have been prudent to ask why there were open positions available at this school at every grade level, the thought never crossed my mind. The discovery that there was no curriculum and no supplies when I was given the keys to my classroom was another missed opportunity to do some more investigation as to what was going on and what to expect.
The Friday before the first day of school, posters were hung, desks were arranged, and optimism was high. Sure, we didn’t have books, supplies, or curriculum, but that was all overrated. Our school still needed a fifth-grade teacher, an art teacher, and a gym teacher, but it’d be fine. That was their problem. As for me, I had passion, conviction, and optimism.
At 7:30 students began to enter. As I stood outside my door to greet them, a mom walked by to drop off her child in the class next door.
“Damn. I want my kid in your class. He needs a male role model.” I didn’t realize at the time that would be the highpoint of the year.
The first sign of chaos came when we went to the gym at 9:30. We received an email that morning that although we didn’t have an actual gym teacher, we could all be gym teachers ourselves. I thought kickball would be a safe choice for our time in the gym. After a booming kick, Jerome — the biggest kid in the class — sprinted down the third base line knocking over anyone in his path. This set off the next 20 minutes of kids sprinting in every direction and crashing into each other. As we shuffled out of the gym I realized I was lucky that everyone still had all their teeth.
By the end of day two, after a couple fights, some flipped desks, taunts of “black taco,” and “ratched mama” and threats that followed, I realized that my vision of a classroom with a firm foundation rooted in love, joy, and care was actually a house of cards. Nothing would go as planned.
A good conversation about September 11 concluded with me being told I “should’ve died in the Twin Towers.” “Mr. Fake Polo,” and “a crackhead who lived in a dumpster” were two of the kinder names I was called. After realizing that I was not “light-skinned,” but rather white, nearly all the hands shot up when Marshawn jumped on a desk and asked who wished they had a black teacher (I couldn’t blame them). A successful day had nothing to do with lesson delivery or academic growth but rather if fewer than two fights occurred.
While the chaos and dysfunction in my room was exceptionally bad, the rest of the building wasn’t doing much better. Our vice principal, new to leadership, would send emails with the subject line “could you tell me why there is a student hanging out of your second floor window?”
Here was the body of that email:
...is seriously a question that a woman walking down the street said to us yesterday.
As a reminder, KIDS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO HANG OUT OF ANY WINDOWS AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON. We are trying to get students to enroll here, and avoid being on the news (unless its good!) so please use your best judgment in deciding what kids are allowed to do, and please be sure to supervise them at all times.
Other days, we’d get emails from her explaining how she almost hit a homeless person on her drive in to work and was very overwhelmed but was then reminded that she’s leading a “team of life changers.”
Our principal was also serving as principal of another school down the road. At a staff meeting the year before, she and the charter network’s regional director announced the school was $250,000 in the black. As people high-fived, they realized their mistake; the school was $250,000 in the red. The next morning they’d call people to the office over the loudspeaker and fire them. Apparently, if she could be principal of two schools that would help close their financial gap. Needless to say, it’s tough to build and foster a culture when you’re gone 60% of the time.
By late September, 10 out of the 50 staff members had quit. Unlike the rest of the world where a dignified resignation involves a two-week’s notice, teachers would send emails on Monday morning saying Friday was my last day, I’m never coming back.
Eventually Mr. Jackson was hired as an art teacher. A balding white man approaching 60, he looked more like someone who gives you shoes at the bowling alley than an artist or inner-city teacher, but I wasn’t complaining. Most days, we were with our students from 7:30-3:30 without a break. Now I’d get 30 minutes of planning time during art. I dropped off my students, walked back to my room and let out a deep exhale, savoring the peace and quiet.
As I began picking up trash off the floor, I heard yelling from the art room. Moments later, Jaqueline came running into the classroom demanding I intervene. As I walked to the room, I could see Devonta standing on a table screaming at the teacher.
“Mr. Colas!” she yelled when she saw me. “You better get yo TWIN BROTHER before I get him!”
A week later, Mr. Jackson packed up his crayons, never to be seen again.
While there were occasional moments of comic relief — Janice insisting being a Christian meant she needed to go to the bathroom ten times per day and Jerome warning me that if I eventually had 4 kids that’d be a damn lot of child support to pay, the dysfunction — at both the classroom level and school level escalated each day. The principal would disappear for days on end. Teachers from her other school hadn’t seen her for days either. More teachers quit. A teacher requested new lights in her classroom and was told “the thing about lightbulbs is… they cost money. And we kind of don’t have any.”
As the year went on, I became increasingly discouraged. The headwinds were no doubt significant: the school was under threat of being shut down by the state, we had no supplies or curriculum, only one kid came from a home with married parents, and 100% of the student body was low-income. And yet, none of those were insurmountable; as proof, there were a couple successful teachers in the building where rigor and relationships were the norm. I had to face the reality that I failed to foster an environment in which students felt safe, welcome, and valued. As a Christian, I believed God had put me in the school to help the kids unlock their potential, yet by any objective measure, I was failing miserably. I failed to create an environment in which kids could discover, develop, and apply their unique gifts and abilities.
Shortly before Thanksgiving, I was thrown a lifeline. Administration hired a new 4th grade teacher, Ms. Strong. Ms. Strong would be taking over my class and I’d be moved to focus on small group reading and math intervention. Those who thought I was selling myself short describing my incompetencies finally believed me when they realized that despite 10 teachers having already quit and several vacancies, getting me removed was a priority for administration. That night, my TFA advisor called me thinking I’d be disheartened. I told her it was an answer to prayer.
Three weeks later, Ms. Strong quit.
By year-end, morale was at rock-bottom. Academic results were terrible. Behavior was terrible. Everyone was looking for new jobs. Administration knew this trajectory wasn’t sustainable and things would need to be different the following year. Thankfully, after visiting a high-performing, innovative school in Atlanta, they had the solution. A week before the last day of school, they called an all-staff meeting where they would share their vision. That day, we weren’t allowed to enter the cafeteria, the principals were hard at work on something.
At the end of the day, we were summoned into the cafeteria and took our seats.
“Thanks for coming, everyone. We know it’s been a challenging year, but next year is going to be entirely different. Like we are going to be CHANGING LIVES. How so, you ask? Well. We’re going to have a house system like Harry Potter and everyone’s going to be a part of it. Plus, kids are going to learn public speaking. We are literally going to be changing the world, starting right here. Plus, the building is getting a facelift. It’s going to be hard work, but changing the world isn’t easy.”
I hadn’t considered that a lack of public speaking opportunities was why middle schoolers were eating weed. But clearly my knowledge was limited.
“Here’s the exciting part.” What now? “4th grade is going on a field trip to Southern Ohio. 5th grade is going to explore the underground railroad!” This sounded a little risky given that I couldn’t get the class to and from the bathroom without a Royal Rumble, but then again, I was pretty incompetent. Maybe someone else could handle this.
“6th grade is going to Washington DC. 7th grade is going to either Canada or Mexico, we haven’t decided yet.” Was it really only two months ago that a teacher asked for new lights in their classroom and was told “the thing about lightbulbs is they cost money… and we don’t have any”?
“And 8th grade…”
The five-second pause felt like an eternity.
“Is going to AFRICA!”
As I turned to my left to see if anyone else was wondering the same thing the room went pitch black.
As my eyes adjusted, I could see the glow-in-the-dark paint on the wall: WORLD CHANGERS. Lil John’s Turn Down for What blasted through the speakers, glow sticks were passed out, and we were commanded to hop on the tables and start dancing. As I broke it down in between two large ladies, I looked around to see if anyone else thought we were getting punked. It was too dark to see faces, I could only see another glow in-the-dark-painted wall: Imagine Rocks.
The song ended. The lights came back on and we were dismissed. One week later, year one was in the books.
As summer wound down, I found myself getting reenergized for year two. Yes, year one was a cluster, but things could be different. I would be teaching kindergarten. I was surprised to find I thoroughly enjoyed working with that age group during small-group support and was optimistic about the opportunity.
To kick off the year, leadership told us to prepare a three minute “about me” presentation for our professional development week leading up to the first day of school. After a couple people presented, the principal stepped to the front of the room. I whispered to my colleague, “this will be destiny… or disaster. Nothing in between.”
The principal faced us and started her presentation. “Alright,” she began, “to the buses.” As we boarded, I realized we were already past the three-minute limit.
An hour and a half later, the buses stopped on a small side street in Wooster, Ohio. Our principal explained this was where she grew up and she had lots of memories from there. She then made us get in line to give her grandmother a hug, because I suppose she wanted us to experience that warm feeling she got from hugging her grandma.
It hit me like a 2x4. This year was going to be no different than the last.
Kindergarten had four classes. The day before the first day of school there were only three teachers. In other words, 25 kids would be showing up in less than 24 hours and there was no adult lined up to be in the room. At 2:00, our school’s Title 1 coordinator and a paraprofessional were told they would be kindergarten teachers, at least until someone else was hired. They had 17 hours' notice.
Here we go.
It turned out a “house system” didn’t translate into well-behaved, engaged students (or teachers) nor did morning all-staff meetings where we recited a pledge around “the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element and make the weather in my class.” In fact, teachers quickly realized their “weather” would be a whole lot better elsewhere.
Three weeks into the new school year, four teachers quit.
On a personal level, year two went remarkably well. Teaching kindergarten was an opportunity to foster an initial educational experience in which kids knew they were safe, welcomed, and valued. It was also an opportunity to act as a male role model, and for many students I was the first white person they had interacted with. Having learned from the previous year’s battle scars, things were different.
Academically, our growth was significant, with several students successfully mastering 3rd grade concepts of multiplication and division, showing themselves to be quicker with math facts than middle schoolers. My students demonstrated that they were every bit as brilliant as kids from anywhere else. Even with the systemic inequities that were up against them, they consistently showed themselves to be more than capable.
The classroom environment was night and day from the previous year. The students treated each other as a family, showing constant kindness, care, and forgiveness. We had a singular mission — to be the most awesome class in the city — and we were successful.
One girl, Jacqueline, was an absolute sweetheart. She had a challenging home situation — mom and dad were out of the picture and she was being raised by her grandma, an incredibly kind, firm, elderly lady. The three of us would go out to McDonalds, and I was constantly amazed by Jacqueline’s perpetual joy and her grandmother's sacrificial love. Jacqueline was one of those people who had to articulate every thought that entered her head. She had a lot to say.
While things went well in the class, it wasn’t always perfect. One day, I was getting frustrated with what I thought was excessive chatter, thanks in no small part to Jaqueline and some of her friends. When she saw me let out a frustrated sigh, she raised her hand and said “Mr. Colas, isn’t it just so sad that you’re here trying to teach us and everyone is just talking and interrupting!” without at all recognizing the irony.
Ben Colas is a 2013 Teach for America alum. He spent five years teaching in Cleveland and during that time founded KinderKits, which helped equip over 6,000 parents with resources to prepare their child for school. Ben works in EdTech and lives in Cleveland with his wife and daughters.
The vice principal asked as she stormed into my classroom.
“Ummmm. We were on a bathroom break, but she and a couple others refused to come, so probably in the hall outside of our classroom. Why?”
“Well,” the vice principal whispered, “she called 911 and told the cops, You better get these teachers, they’re killing kids.” My jaw dropped. “At least her phone didn’t have GPS,” she went on, “so the police showed up at Grandma’s house instead of the school.” The vice principal pulled out her phone, saw there was another problem to deal with in a different classroom, and was gone as quickly as she came.
Fifteen 4th graders stared at me trying to grasp what was going on. Another ten were eagerly watching Tyrone to see how he would respond to Jerome calling him “fart boy” again. Tyrone had already kicked a hole in the wall, so it stood to reason that something memorable could happen any moment.
“Alright, let’s get back together. We’re going to be working on multiplication…”
“Shut up Eminem! Ya’ll, who else hates white people?” Marshawn yelled to the class.
Only one hundred thirty-three more minutes and today would be done.
“Where was Tanisha at 1:06p.m.?”
Each parent who chose to enroll their kid at Imagine Harvard had dreams for their child. They heard the stories of the high-performing charters and knew the status quo of the district wasn't good enough. They thought they were doing the right thing to set their child up for success. They were promised rigor. Instead, their kid was often taught by a teacher like me.
While the lessons learned from a disastrous first year set me up for success in my second year and beyond, those lessons still came at the cost of a miserable 4th grade experience for my initial students.
While I wanted to blame the unions for everything, Imagine Harvard showed that a charter school can be as dysfunctional as any unionized district. While the non-unionized structure gave the flexibility to get rid of teachers, it also resulted in a salary for teachers 30% lower than in the district, meaning that the school was unlikely to attract the best and brightest talent.
Additionally, as I discovered teaching kindergarten, if a student enters school months behind––even with a year’s worth of growth––at the end of the school year they’re still months behind. And this doesn’t even begin to consider the impacts of other factors––racism, poverty, crime, lack of healthcare, broken families––the list goes on.
Even for those who have stable home situations and start school on-track, the system is still suboptimal as it has the same expectations for each child with no regard towards aptitudes, background knowledge, life experience, goals, or interests. Suggesting that calculus, physics, and college counseling may be a waste of time for a kid who is loving his HVAC apprenticeship and desiring to enter the trades gets dismissed as “the bigotry of low-expectations.”
While some children do thrive in our system, they are the minority. A Gallup survey found student engagement drops at each grade-level with two of three high school students disengaged from school. Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.
And yet, as broken as the system may be, there is still an opportunity to make a difference with individual students. Thankfully, countless teachers are committed to that despite this dysfunction.
Teachers don’t enter the field for the money. The joy and pride they feel as students learn and grow is a reward in itself, as is a career focused on relationships and investing in the next generation. Ask any teacher, particularly if they teach in a high-poverty school, why they are still there in the midst of so many obstacles and brokenness and what keeps them and the answer will always be the same: my students are worth it.
While few careers offer as great an opportunity for impact on the lives of others as teaching, the flip-side is that those same relationships can result in grief and heartbreak.
Two years later, I was teaching at a different school and saw a missed call. During lunch, I listened to the voicemail. It was Jacqueline’s aunt. “Mr. Colas, Jacqueline’s grandma passed away this morning. Checking if you could be there when she gets off the bus to meet her.”
My heartbreak was never so great as when I heard “MR. COLAS! What are you doing here?!” as Jacqueline got off the bus, followed by “Where’s Grandma?”
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