Teaching is a calling.
The teachers that I work with at Coney Island Prep in Brooklyn work 10-, 12-, even 14-hour days to make sure their kids succeed. And it’s not just long hours in the classroom. We manage after-school tutoring and extra-curricular activities. We make calls and visit homes to make sure parents are active partners in our work in school.
This isn’t a job — it’s a mission.
For most of us, this mission has been focused squarely on the kids in our classrooms. But as teachers, we need to be more than just great educators. We need to be messengers for educational change.
That’s why today, more than a thousand teachers from across New York City will take a stand against an education inequality crisis that’s trapping hundreds of thousands of our most vulnerable students in failing schools.
Right now, more than 478,000 kids are stuck in a vast, interconnected network of failing schools, where less than a third of kids can read or do math on grade level. When a child of color in one of New York City’s poorer neighborhoods enters a failing elementary school, he or she has almost no chance of moving on to a high-quality middle or high school.
We’re allowing these kids to be condemned to an inadequate education from the moment they walk into their first classroom, instead of giving them the educational freedom and parental choice they need to succeed.
That’s hard for me to accept as an educator and as someone who was born and raised on Coney Island. I grew up in the O’Dwyer Gardens Housing Project, and began my education in a failing zone elementary school. It was only because my parents sacrificed a lot to save money for private-school tuition that I was able to get out of my failing local school and into one that made sure I went to college.
I was lucky. But far too many children aren’t. For these kids, getting out of their failing school is next to impossible — especially when our leaders continue to stand by and do nothing to end this crisis.
When I graduated college, I decided there was only one career choice for me: I was going to teach. Because while some things in our neighborhood have changed, kids from Coney Island still have to work way too hard to get the education they deserve. I’m determined to change that.
I teach because I believe I was called to make a difference. I teach for the kids I grew up with, who didn’t have the opportunity to go to college because their schools failed them. I teach for my parents, who sacrificed so much to keep me on a path to college. I teach for the kids I see every day in Coney Island — who remind me so much of myself and the kids I grew up with back in the day.
More than anything, I want my students to know that kids from the projects in Coney Island can achieve anything they set their mind to — and far more than what society expects of them.
Fundamentally, that’s why we’re rallying today. Because unless things change, our children will continue to be denied the education that more privileged children take for granted.
It’s time for teachers to hold adults accountable. We’re rallying to let Mayor Bill de Blasio know that New York City’s teachers are tired of a school system divided by race and privilege. We’re tired of a status quo that tells poor, black and Latino children they’re valued less than their wealthy, white peers. We’re tired of empty promises, half-measures and the outsized influence of special interests on the mayor’s education agenda.
As teachers, our voices matter in the debate over the state of education in our city, and our leaders need to hear from more than just the teachers who represent the status quo.
It’s time to put the needs of the city’s students first. It’s time to stop telling parents that there’s no alternative to the school that’s failing their children and dooming them to play catch-up for the rest of their lives. It’s time to prove that we can do what’s best for this city.
It’s time to end New York’s tale of two school systems.
Amanda Figueroa is a teacher at Coney Island Prep.