Yellow School Buses and Freeways

6:30 AM: Five hundred corps members, dressed in business professional, board yellow school buses. Good morning. It's like high school all over again - butterflies in the stomach and more worries than excitement. I had forgotten the feeling of first day jitters in college. On my way to Jordan Starr High School in Watts the feeling returned. And we haven't even started teaching yet. That's next Monday.

People started filling into seats from the front of the bus. Once you leave ninth-grade, the long-fabled "back of the bus" is no longer where the cool kids hang out . . . I sat down in the last row. School bus seats prevent slouching. There is absolutely no manner of relaxed comfort in those upright, upholstered seats that press your knees into the seat ahead. Sitting erect in my slacks and heels, hands clutching my coffee travel mug on my lap, I feel incongruous in the back of the bus. I put on my black sunglasses and plugged my ears with my headphones, trying to be invisible as I stared at the naked city. I couldn't close my eyes. The forty-five minute bus ride from Cal State Long Beach to Jordan High School was the most interesting ride I had ever seen.

Going north on the 405, you realize that Los Angeles freeways are both the great divisor and the great equalizer. These freeways break up the city; they box in neighborhoods. The 105, 110, 10, and 710 box Watts. You can easily get to everywhere else without ever entering the area. Which is why I had never seen a place like Watts before Monday. Then again, freeways are the arteries of this city. Driving along the 405 and then the 105 you see all types of cars with all types of people - different races, different socio-economic levels. You can make all the wrong assumptions you want about who sits in which car with what kind of life. Here I was, sitting anonymous in a school bus, loving my position of voyeur. We passed the Los Angeles River. It was dry, concrete, and sad. Graffiti decorated the concrete river banks, shopping carts and trash bags littered the sides. Then we got onto the 105 overpass, and I seriously could not stop staring. This year, Los Angeles has experienced the worst drought in over two decades. The land is starving for rain. It looks thirsty. The area around Jordan High School is the most uninviting, barbed-wired desert. Why would a student want to go to school? Immediately, I recognized how much easier my job will be in the fall because my school is in a brand-new facility. Learning happens much easier when the students want to be there.

And yet, and this is a universal phenomenon I think, a school is an oasis. You enter the halls of learning and you feel safer. The paint might be peeling, the floors may be dusty. It doesn't matter. You just need to see the tables and chairs in the classroom, the lockers in the hall, and you feel comfort in the fact that all high schools have the potential to be the same. Because it doesn't really matter that resources are scarce or that the school is in the middle of Watts. All that really matters is that good teachers get into those classrooms and expect the highest standards from the students, and not so that the students will escape this place, but because they'll help to fix it one day. These students own this city - they've literally made their mark on every building and every street sign. Imagine if they could raise the income level of Watts by going to school, by graduating high school, and (can I dream it?) by going to college.

I've spent almost a week at Jordan High School now, learning about classroom management, lesson planning, and teaching literacy, all under the over-arching umbrella goal of trying to close the achievement gap. On Monday, the students arrive; I face my biggest challenge; my alter-ego appears. It has already appeared in flashes. It happened last Monday when I picked up my Teach For America bright red lunch box. The staff handed me a permanent marker to label my lunch box. With five hundred corps members with five hundred red lunch boxes, you have to distinguish your own somehow. I etched my new identity right there. Scratching on the red vinyl material, the marker spelled out assertively: Miss Goswamy.

I feel more settled now. First day jitters do eventually subside (though I expect an unhealthy bout on Monday). I'm not so wide-eyed anymore on the bus ride over to Jordan High. I understand my responsibility. I have to be the best teacher I can possibly be to the students I will have in summer school. And to be the best teacher possible, I need to recognize what will help me do that. I put on my black sunglasses, plug my ears with my headphones . . . and nap. It's forty-five minutes to Watts from Long Beach - and that's a whole lot of dreams.