Be what I want to be (be what I want to be),
If I work hard at it (if I work hard at it),
I'll be where I wanna be (I'll be where I wanna be)…
Read more, learn more, change the globe."
-Nas
I have always loved the lyrics to the above song by Nas. It is one of my favorite songs to run to as it inspires me in so many ways. On a personal level, it encourages me to keep working, to keep running, and to keep putting one foot in front of the other on long runs when I feel like I can't make it any further. More importantly, on my long runs I often think about my students and about education, and I see their faces in my mind as I hear the words to the song. I think about my students who struggle in the classroom both in terms of academics and behavior and how so often those struggles are linked to the struggles they face outside of my classroom. This song inspires me to keep trekking through the marathon that teaching sometimes feels like, especially when my morale and the morale of other educators is down. This song helps me remember why we teach and who we do it for--our students.
This song has been particularly powerful for me over the past week for two main reasons. The biggest reason why this song has been on my mind (other than the fact that I am training for a marathon in November and am listening to a lot of music to keep me motivated!) is because of the amazing experience I had when I visited the Freedom School in my home county of Guilford. The Freedom School was one of the most rewarding educational opportunities I have ever had the pleasure of being a small part of. The Freedom School is a summer camp for K-8 students in Guilford County who are in transition. Many of these students struggle with having consistent places to rest their heads at night and are at risk of falling behind in school due to outside circumstances. The Freedom School, a project sponsored by Guilford County Schools and Greensboro College, gives students educational opportunities, important literacy and math review, and provides them with two delicious meals daily at the Greensboro College cafeteria. The students engage in fun lessons during the day and also take educational field trips in the county and surrounding areas. The school provides consistency to students who need to feel safe and loved, helps close the achievement gap and reduce the losses to literacy that students experience over the summer, and promotes self-improvement and self-esteem. Plus, the students love coming to Freedom School and learning!
My role at the Freedom School was to attend as a guest reader. Every morning the students at Freedom School take part in a harambee. Harambee is Swahili for "let's pull together," and during this time, students get excited for their fun-filled, educational day. After eating breakfast together, students enter a small gym, participate in a pep rally, listen to a guest reader read his/her favorite children's book, ask the guest reader questions (I got a lot of "What's your favorite ___________?" questions), cheer as the guest reader "struts his/her stuff" (some friendly girls helped me practice my strutting during breakfast, but they told me it still needed "a little work"), and then sing and dance to a motivational song. The entire harambee is a thing of beauty with enthusiasm, hope, and love filling the air. During the motivational song, the students shout out Nas's refrain "I know I can be what I want to be. If I work hard at it, I'll be where I want to be" and then hug themselves. My heart filled with joy while being a part of this. These kids shouted with such conviction and showed so much emotion in their faces that in an hour I now believe in them just as much as they believe in themselves. I also witnessed the true intention of harambee, as one very small girl became upset during the motivational song. She sat down, weighed down by a despair that I can only imagine, and an older student came over, talked to her, helped her up, and danced with her as the little girl started smiling again. At this moment, the students truly "pulled together." My words really cannot do harambee justice, but I will say this: If we all started school or our jobs with harambee, I think we would be much happier and productive people!
So, my experience at the Freedom School placed Nas's song back in the forefront of my mind, but it wasn't until the passing of the state budget that the song was most firmly planted in my thoughts. As I read through the details of the budget, I was disheartened by many of the cuts to education, but the most upsetting cut for me was the siphoning of public funds into private schools in the guise of Opportunity Scholarships. My mind immediately drifted back to the wonderful, courageous, passionate students at Freedom School who would genuinely benefit from having additional "opportunities." Yet, knowing that the ten most popular private schools in Greensboro range from $6,000-$23,000 a year, a $4,200 voucher will not provide them with a feasible opportunity when often they do not even have three full meals a day when they are not in school. Instead, with all of our students receiving just $8,433 per student in our state (48th in the nation for per pupil spending), wouldn't more opportunity be provided to all students, especially the low income students that the scholarship claims to support, if we just put that money back into public education? I am concerned that the Opportunity Scholarships will only serve a small group of students whose backgrounds predispose them to gaining access to vouchers or other means to attend private schools. We need to continue the opportunity for all students in the state of North Carolina to succeed, and not just a select few. I would hate to see the hope and positive energy that I witnessed at the harambee as children shouted "I know I can be what I want to be" melt away as opportunities seem to constantly slip through their fingers while others around them get more and more.
Finally, Nas's song resonates with me not only because it relates to our students, but because it also relates to our current state as educators. Our race to the top for the next few years will not be easy, and we will face many roadblocks along the way to achieving our goals. However, if we desert our state because we are frustrated, if we stop preserving the foundation of freedom within our constitution--a strong education for all, and if we give up without making an effort to change North Carolina back to a state of educational progress, then we only further take away the opportunities all students in our state need to improve. Educators in North Carolina are the most important factor in a student's educational growth, and I would hate to see teachers in our state go elsewhere because the opportunities are missing for them as well. Let's have our own harambee and "pull together" for our students and our state. Like Nas asserts in his song, we have to "read more" about current legislation, "learn more" about how we can make our voices heard, and we have to believe in ourselves if we want to see education in North Carolina go "where [we] want to be" and to "change" North Carolina.
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