Started at [TFA], Now I'm [Here]

Baltimore, MD—I came to Baltimore as a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed 20-year-old college graduate. I’d grown up in the Chicago suburbs, surrounded by people who looked like me and were raised like me. I’d attended a private college in Wisconsin, courtesy of a scholarship, financial aid, and, of course, my parents. And I’d applied to TFA (Teach for America) out of a desire to “give back to the community,” a desire no doubt fueled by the culmination of my “white and Asian guilt.”

I’ve always believed that every child can succeed. As a lifelong homeschooler, I have always held that success comes in different hues. And as a liberal arts graduate, I promoted the notion that success is what you make it, that success is in the eye of the beholder.

Baltimore City would challenge everything I believed.

In 2015, I entered the classroom with approximately one month of teaching under my belt, no exposure to IEPs (Individualized Education Programs), and about as much training in classroom management as a babysitter. I was tired from a long summer of repetitive and redundant TFA trainings, long days, and weekend drives back and forth from Philly to Rockville, MD, to visit my boyfriend. In short, I was exhausted after what I’d come to refer to as “the hardest days of my life.”

I entered the school with plans. I was going to be the “cool” teacher, but the cool teacher who also created results. None of my students were going to drop out. No one would get pregnant. Every single one would graduate high school, and most would go to college. I would fill my classroom with inspirational posters, artwork, and exciting books. At the end of the year, my students would come up to me and say, “Wow, Ms. Furukawa, you totally changed how I feel about English!”

Instead, I walked into professional development week to disorganization. The school would be on an A-day/B-day schedule — no, scratch that, it would be on a standard daily schedule — no, never mind, it would be A-day/B-day after all. We would have hour-and-a-half class periods, four class periods per day, and every teacher would get one class period per day for planning. Two days before the end of professional development week, the lead teacher at my school finally managed to squeeze my class schedule out of administration — six class periods, yes, but each one different. My schedule held English I, English II, English III, English IV, Strategic Reading, and SAT Prep. I stared at the crumpled list in front of me and held my tongue. The IEP office had also assigned me 20 students to case manage.

The next day, I opened the door to my classroom and yelped. A mouse skittered across the floor. The room was dark — no windows — and bare except for a bookshelf which would collapse five months later in the middle of English I. There was a desk pushed into the far left corner, covered in dust and mouse poop, with the desk surface peeling off. I turned the fluorescent lights off and cried.

A year later, I entered a different classroom in a different building, working for the same school. My school would temporarily share space with this other school while our building underwent a full renovation. I opened the door to my classroom and watched quietly as a mouse skittered across the room. This room had windows, though one appeared to slightly protrude, allowing air in through the gap. I dropped my messenger bag on the floor and began arranging my classroom.

I have made it through a winter of broken heating.

With a year under my belt, I felt more confident. Mice no longer fazed me, and every morning I would casually flick the droppings off of my desk. When a student threw a chair across the room at another student, I calmly escorted both to an administrator. And when a student asked me if I would go out with him, I simply shut the door and said, “No.” I have survived the 100-degree classrooms of the A/C-free summer, and I have made it through a winter of broken heating.

To top it off, we had returned to a daily schedule, and I only taught English I, II, and III. I was elated. I would kill it this year. I had spent the summer planning modules and lesson plans, and making calls to theater companies to find out if they provided bus or ticket funding for Title I schools.

I was ready. The first day of school, I sent two field trip proposals to my administrators and followed up by knocking on their doors. I spent one day on the getting-to-know you hullabaloo, instead of the week TFA had proposed I utilize in summer training a year ago. I pulled my students straight into the curriculum, straight into A Raisin in the Sun, essay formatting, and pre-assessments. And I got results.

My first year, my students made an average of approximately one year of growth, across classes. My second, my students made between 1 and 3.5 years’ worth of growth. Test scores increased. Writing skills grew more polished. I made explicit connections between students’ lives and their classroom texts and assignments. I posted data spreadsheets and student work in my classroom and in the hallways, and I sent quarterly data updates to my administrators. My students were achieving. My students were affirmed.

I dragged my classroom through advocacy projects. Sometimes, it was self-advocacy: how do you advocate for yourself in the IEP office? How do you advocate for your siblings? How do you sell yourself to colleges? And sometimes, it was text-related advocacy: how does Mama fight for her family in Raisin in the Sun? How does Atticus advocate for civil rights and, specifically, for Tom Robinson? My students were able to put their feelings into words and their words onto paper. I thought, Wow, I’m really doing it this year. I’m really teaching. I am single-handedly interrupting the school-to-prison pipeline.

And then I lost my first freshman. Not to death, but still to gun violence. I had lost students in my first year — one pregnancy, one law runaway, one simply disappeared. Other teachers had brushed it off, had joked that my students were at the bottom of the inner harbor or buried in a park known for gang murders. I’d thought, I’m too soft for this. But I’d made it through to my second year, and I’d made it most of my second year without losing any students, other than the transfers and year-round no-shows. This year was different.

But it wasn’t, not really. A student on my caseload — a repeat freshman who I’d had on my caseload the previous year as a first-time freshman — brought a gun to school. There is no evidence that he’d planned to use it in school; he told authorities that he’d brought it to protect himself on his way to and from school. But still, he’d brought a weapon to school and so he was expelled. In a school where students deal drugs and are simply suspended for beating up hall monitors, my freshman was expelled.

A week later, I received a late transfer. She came to her first day in my class and announced proudly that she was 18-year-old sophomore and she was three months pregnant. I took a deep breath, thanked her for her openness, and promised that her progress in class would still depend upon her performance. That was four months ago, and I’ve seen her only a handful of times since.

So here I am at the end of my TFA commitment. I’m leaving Baltimore City Public Schools to work in a private school for students with learning differences. I’m leaving to work in a school where my administrators follow through on reprimands and hold students accountable. I’m leaving to work where mice will not be commonplace, and where students attend class daily. Put simply, I’m leaving to work in a space where I can maintain my sanity.

I have taught them...[a]nd I have loved them.

When my boyfriend’s mother asked me last week if I would do it again, I said yes. Yes, I would teach in Baltimore City over again. I can say with certainty that I have served my students to the best of my ability. I have been present and I have been proactive. I have taught them to communicate. I have instilled in a handful of students a love for learning. I have increased reading levels, raised test scores, and taught students why all of it matters in the real world. And I have loved them.

But I would also still leave. Because in a situation where I have very little agency, where I’m barely supported by my administrators, where I spend more time babysitting than I do teaching, it is hard. It’s hard to watch students fall through the cracks, cracks forced into the ground by an unfair and inequitable education system. It’s hard to teach a class while simultaneously trying to provide students with the attention they do not receive at home, and trying to mitigate situations and explain symbolism simultaneously. In these situations, I have served my students to the best of my ability. But I believe that that same ability would be higher in more optimal circumstances. 

I have striven to be a leader. But I can actually be one next year.