Reflections on the NYC public school system

Yesterday was my first day in a New York City public school. I am a teaching artist with American Place Theatre and as a way to ease me into things after being out of the loop for so long I was asked to assist another TA in a classroom in the Bronx. I was grateful for the chance to go into a classroom without being responsible for the curriculum. One hears a lot about the schools in this town so I wasn't sure what to expect.

What I found were sweet kids but kids who are nowhere even close to being ready for the world. They are 11th graders - just one year away from high school graduation - and one of them had to ask what the word "poverty" meant. I felt like saying, "it means you end up going to shitty schools, getting a lousy education and getting stuck in a vicious cycle of never being able to rise above your current circumstances." But almost worse than the poor vocabulary was the immaturity and inability to articulate. Sure, they are teenagers and we are guest teachers, and perhaps my perception is skewed because my own public high school experience was so stellar, but I felt sad for the future of this country because we have let down our children by providing them with sub-standard education. No Child Left Behind, my ass. How about spending the billions they managed to find for an unjust war on some schools? How about raising teacher salaries so that people want to become teachers so schools can afford to hire only the good applicants and not just fill in the slots vacated by those who have been burned out? I am spending a lot of time thinking about this and trying to figure out what to do about it. I know plenty of people with way more experience and knowledge are doing the same thing but I want to figure out what I can do.