Dan Moore, thank you for this article. It’s really fitting I read this now: I’m going to be a first year teacher teaching high school in Baltimore City. It’s a challenging environment and it’s one with a whole lot of hope, but it’s so encouraging to hear that you have felt the same feelings of discouragement and disillusionment that I went through in summer school and will throughout the year. This is a city that has had a history of segregation and underfunding for as long as the city has existed — some have no AC, class sizes are often 40 students, and kids can’t even take books home most times here.

I’ll be coming back to this during the moments I think I failed my kids in a terrible lesson. I’ll be coming back after the 2 a.m. late nights spent lesson planning. I’ll be coming back when the same student who loved me the day before curses me out and is completely disengaged in the lesson, and something terrible happened the day before that led to them acting out.

Thank you, Dan.

Ryan