Pursuing Educational Equity

A few weeks ago, I heard about an event organized at my alma mater by Student Labor Action Movement—a group that has advocated for immigrants' and workers’ rights, and one that meant a lot to me during my time at Harvard. Now, SLAM was calling for our administration to cut ties with Teach For America. As an alum of both Harvard and Teach For America, and as a Chicana proud of having grown up in East Los Angeles, the child of two Mexican immigrant parents, I feel it is my responsibility to share my thoughts.

While the root causes of poverty are complex, for my family, education was the path out of it. My mother was the first in our family to attend college. One of ten children, she graduated from Roosevelt High in East Los Angeles, attended her local Cal State University, and became an educator—a role she has served in for 30 years. As a teacher, my mom had the know-how to set her own children up for success in school. Because she’d advocated to have us tested for gifted programs early on, for example, we were tracked into honors classes through middle school, and AP classes thereafter. In this way, my mom was my first great teacher. But she would not be my last.

As a student, I was lucky enough to have many terrific teachers—individuals who believed in my abilities, despite what society said about the unlikelihood of my academic success due to the color of my skin. They were teachers who challenged me with rigorous material, worked diligently to provide the supports that would enable me to meet their high expectations, and always dreamed bigger for me than I did for myself. With their support, I graduated at the top of my class and was admitted to Harvard.

Though a top performer at my school, I arrived on campus underprepared. But through the same grit and perseverance my educators had nurtured in me, I rose to the new challenge. And I thrived. As graduation approached, I made my own decision to join Teach For America because I knew that I wanted to be an advocate for kids who faced similar challenges to my own; what better way to do it than become a teacher myself?

All of this brings me back to the puzzling logic laid out by a group I once rallied alongside in pursuit of justice. According to SLAM, TFA undermines public education. They argue that attracting more teachers to the profession hurts it. They argue that if colleges like Harvard eliminate TFA as an option for its graduates, students in those communities are better off. They throw out terms like “neoliberal” and “privatization” without attending to the very real, very damaging impacts their demands would have if met.

Every day, our country defaults on the promise of equal educational opportunity, chronically under-serving communities like the one where I grew up. To change this, we should be asking how to create more path-changing learning opportunities like the ones I had. We should be thinking about how to attract the very best into teaching, supporting all teachers to fulfill their potential so students can fulfill theirs. We should be celebrating every effort to get more minds thinking about how to address educational injustice. Outstanding teachers come from all backgrounds, and I am grateful to the opportunity Teach For America provided me to serve my own community as an educator—and now as an educator coach. TFA allowed me to work alongside a diverse, inspiring force of teachers and advocates fighting to end educational inequity. Through it, I’ve had the great privilege of leading a classroom of my own, one full of passionate, talented, low-income students of color whose potential runs deep, yearning to be unleashed.

I deeply respect SLAM’s efforts to fight for economic justice by seeking better working conditions for workers, wage increases, health-care benefits, and unionization—this is why I supported the group’s efforts in my years as an undergrad. After all, the workers they advocate for are often the parents, guardians, and relatives of our students. And so I wonder why SLAM would advocate against a program doing so much to serve the children of these families: children who will most likely become low-income wage workers unless we disrupt an education system perpetuating the systemic oppression of such marginalized communities.

Every day, I give thanks for my teachers, for the veteran educators and visionary school leaders I lock arms with, for the parents, neighbors, and community allies who work tirelessly to ensure that our students and families have the supports they need, and for each and every teacher committed to serving children with backgrounds like mine across the country.

To have any shot at making their work count, we must stop these attacks and refocus on what it will take to support and learn from each other as we all work to give students the opportunities they need. Just as we demand and hope for the best from our kids, let’s demand the best from each other: an open, honest, and productive dialogue on how we can collectively deliver on that unfulfilled promised of educational excellence for all. Together—and only together—we can give our students the futures they deserve.

Beatrice Viramontes ’08 is Director of Alumni and Community Organizing for Teach for America in San Francisco.