Help Me Tell Your Story

A few years ago, a team of principals and school board members visited my classroom.  During their visit, my students cut paper skeletons while I distributed their weekly stack of parent flyers and assignments. It was madness—messy, loud. I called kids up for their papers over the rest of the ruckus. It didn’t look much like learning. It was real.

My principal was concerned that I didn’t teach a lesson during their visit, but I stood by my decision. I knew I could back it all up—either with standards or suggestions.  I wanted to let them see my real classroom. Routine procedural stuff really takes time in an elementary class.

Lately, I have been the observer. All over Washington State, expert teachers have welcomed me to their urban, suburban, and rural classrooms. I’ve visited different grade levels, content areas, and specialized programs. These travels have filled me with pride and hope. I’m honored to be a part of the teaching and learning in our state.  We have so much to celebrate! However, I know I’m getting only one side of the story.

I watched spring learning exhibitions in Highline. A seventh grader spoke openly about her insecurities in learning. She stood in front of her classmates, parents, and teachers. They asked her hard questions and gave her honest, critical advice. Together they created an action plan for the next term. Amazing.

Mt. Vernon uses the English Language Proficiency Assessment to help identify English learners for Highly Capable Programs.  They taught me that the rate of language mastery can predict cognitive potential. Yep, so doing this in Quincy next year.

In Odessa and Toppenish, third grade feels like family. Both teachers happened to invite me during lessons on fractions, normally one of the most painstaking units of the year. But not in these classrooms. I could feel the trust in the air.

What I've been less privy to are stories like this one from my school. Last fall, our counselor quit the week before school started. We were unable to find any qualified applicants to replace him. Nearly all my students come at-risk, marginalized, low-income families. The school counselor provides critical supports for them, especially now. Teachers attempt to fill the void. We stop teaching and tend to their basic needs. We know kids can’t learn when they’re anxious, heartbroken, or angry. But we feel guilty anyway. We’re still failing them, only differently.

This is real, problematic, and important. I can tell this story. But my task is to speak for all of Washington. Tales of struggle cannot come only from my experience. I need to understand your real stories, too. So, educators. This challenge is for you. Show me your leaky roofs. Invite me to your struggling schools. Share your failing moments. Let me see your real. Help me tell your story.

Million Dollar Scholars, Part 2: Mr. G's Story [Guest Post]

In Part one You heard Jessa's story. Now, her teacher's Version. I'm proud to introduce my friend, 2017 Northern Mariana Is. Teacher of the Year.

Mr. G, Take it away.

---

“Could this dead-end coral road lead somewhere?” I asked myself on August 4th, 2015. Dusk was settling in over a recently destroyed island and I was driving water jugs up, up, and higher up, into the hills of Saipan.

Two days previous, Saipan was devastated by Typhoon Soudelor. Saipan is the heart of typhoon alley, where nature eats tin; Jessa lived in tin. My home is concrete because I am rich - I’m a teacher. In Saipan a bachelor’s degree buys you a concrete house, bold in the face of a typhoon and resolute in a debris field.

But Jessa’s house, at the dead-end of that coral rock road, was a barracks with 17 people living in plywood and tin. This type of home is temporary shelter for guest workers on Saipan, workers like Jessa’s parents who have been temporarily living there for all of Jessa’s life.

Jessa is dainty, clever, and dances to music nobody else can hear. She was my student at our small island high school. She was one of the founding members of our Million Dollar Scholars Club, designed to support young scholars as they leave the island and go to college.

Just two weeks before Jessa’s senior year, Soudelor took her school clothes and threw them into the jungle along with the rest of her house. Jessa was inside as her home was destroyed, she was nearly killed. A few days later, sitting under a bent piece of tin at dusk, I found Jessa in her typhoon demolished house, and she was thirsty.

After I left water and food to help her family through the next days, Jessa’s mother asked how she could repay me for my help. I told Jessa’s mom that if she wanted to repay me, all she had to do was let Jessa study with me in her senior year: let me help her go to college off-island. Her mother looked toward my silhouette, dark against her homelessness, and she said, “No. Jessa cannot leave Saipan for college. We have no home, no money, and no way of helping her. We could never do it.”

I asked Jessa’s mom to please consider saying “maybe” instead of “no”. I told her that I would send her to college, I promised her, and that it would cost them nothing. It was a hollow promise, I had no idea how I would follow through with it, but Jessa’s mom said, “OK, maybe” and that was enough.

Over the next year Jessa’s parents re-built a home around her as she studied and wrote scholarship essays like the one you likely just read. Jessa went months without electricity or running water as she studied for advanced placement exams and applied to universities. One day a letter came from Central Washington University: an offer of a 4-year full-ride scholarship. We paid for Jessa’s flight with donations and Jessa moved into her first strong home: a college dorm.

For each of my students to leave Saipan, it costs $1500. The price of the flight, passport, application fees, dorm room deposits, and more, must all be paid before a Pell Grant is awarded or a scholarship is given. This $1500, in many cases, accounts for two months of wages for our families who are surviving poverty in the farthest away arm of the United States of America.

Nearly all of my students come from poverty, many families do not even have a bank account, but each of them can have access to higher education because we prepare them, raise the money for flights, and send them to colleges where scholarships await. My 23 scholars, from the most disadvantaged high school in the region, claimed more than 2.5 million dollars in scholarships last year. But beyond the numbers, Jessa will never again live in a home of tin and plywood. Her dead-end coral road led somewhere, it led to college.  

In recognition of my work with Jessa and her peers, I was honored as the 2017 Teacher of the Year for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. When I travelled to the continental U.S. for a conference in February, I met Washington State Teacher of the Year, Camille Jones. I told Camille about Jessa, and Camille immediately said she wanted to help. A mere couple of weeks later, Camille was buying Jessa dinner, lending encouragement and mentorship to an island girl very far from home.

Now in year two, our work continues. With 26 more scholars preparing to leave Saipan for college this August, I am once again raising funds. Because if Jessa can escape poverty and pursue a college education, so can Kloe, Andrea, Cory, Jose, Brittany, Erica, Shania, Tiyani, and the rest. This is the work that we teachers do, the best job in the world.

To join the cause of the Million Dollar Scholars please visit:

gofundme.com/the-million-dollar-scholars-yr-2.

---

Gerard Van Gils teaches College Preparation at Kagman High School where he created the Million Dollar Scholars Program.  He lives on the island of Saipan (Northern Mariana Islands) with his wife and two daughters. He doesn’t own socks.

Million Dollar Scholars, Part 1: Jessa's Story [Guest Post]

Recently I met an extraordinary teacher, who introduced me to an extraordinary student, who graciously agreed to share her story here.

Jessa, take it away.

---

I've been sitting here for over an hour trying to think of a metaphor to describe the sound of my tin roof tearing in half. While I cannot forget the sound of Typhoon Soudelor turning me into a refugee, I cannot describe it either.

The problem with tin roofs is that they only hold water out if they aren't pierced. To nail the sheets of roofing down you have to pierce them. Then the rust attacks, the holes get bigger, and soon the typhoon throws it into the jungle. In our case, the tin tore off, but also took pieces of the roof beams with it.

When the typhoon hit, my home transformed from shelter to assailant. Glass shattered and looked for our eyes, wood splintered and scraped our naked feet, and the tin tried to cut us in half. The people in our barracks, a large multi-family home, ran in different directions but many of us still ended up in the bathroom. We didn't dare to sit down because if the roof came off the bathroom next, we all had to be ready to run. That long night, August 2, I calmed my fear by focusing on how I someday would leave this island. 

They call us survivors but we are just getting by. The mosquitoes are survivors, with vigor, making us their buffet. Most of the island, including our re-built tin palace, has no power or running water two months later. There's no internet within five miles of my home and the car is always on empty. I haven't slept on a bed since mine flew out of the house; we sleep on the floor of a hotel ballroom because they allow us to stay for free as long as we leave by 7am.

Since the typhoon, we have to line up for everything. We waited four hours to fill up the car. We waited at five in the morning to get a bag of ice because we are just desperate for a cold drink. We wait still for a new shipment of roofing tin to arrive. We wait for some sort of financial assistance from anyone but we get none because FEMA is for citizens and my parents are from the Philippines.

Day one of school, the teacher hands me a school supply list, as though my parents would choose to buy me paper notebooks instead of roofing nails. Kids in concrete houses showed up in new school clothes, I came to school wearing the only clothes that didn't fly away in the storm. School starts in the dark, with no internet, and I'm expected to turn in scholarship applications and write essays as though I have the same advantages of kids my age attending prep schools in the United States. My teacher tells me to write something true, show how smart I am, and convince you that I am college ready. I can do that.

Something true: I never again want to be inside a house as it is being demolished.

Something smart: Education and money are twin sisters. The poor will never have an equal starting point as the rich and my intelligence is not in question.

I am college ready: I've lived through the calm, disease, of the eye of a typhoon. Living in a dorm doesn't scare me.

I learned English at a young age because my parents couldn't communicate except through me. I stayed after school to be tutored, not because I needed the help but because I dread every day going home to my tin house in the sun; the typhoon didn't make it awful, it just made it worse. We barely have passable internet, we have no museums, and any book taken out of a library turns to mold and termite fuel. I've always felt less capable than my mainland counterparts…until last summer when I met them. 

Last summer I visited Washington D.C., Gettysburg, and New York City, on a paid trip called Close Up. On that trip, intimidated as I was, I met kids whose parents went to college, whose houses were made of bricks, who slept in air conditioning, and I came to realize they are no better than me. I haven't had the same experiences, the same opportunities, but I know who I am and what I'll become. My circumstances have forced me from apathy, pushed me from ambivalence, at a young age. I will not suffer as a minimum wage worker like my parents. I will be better, stronger, smarter, and I will lift those who have raised me. 

More on Jessa's path to college & the teacher who helped her get there:

Continue to Part Two...

---

Jessa Camacho is a member of the founding class of Million Dollar Scholars from Kagman High School on the island of Saipan (Northern Mariana Islands). She wrote this essay for college scholarship applications. She received a four-year, full ride scholarship, and now attends Central Washington University, where she is studying Information Technology. Her favorite food is lumpia.