sufficient

I've come to a new point in my life. Nothing too dramatic, but it feels strange to me. One of my former students, who graduated from North Atlanta in 2007 is a Teach for America- Nashville 2011 corps member. She was on the yearbook staff her junior and senior years which meant a lot of time in class where we weren't really doing anything, so I got to know her pretty well. We kept in touch throughout her college career and had lunch every summer. At some point, she decided to major in public policy, with a real interest in education policy, and her senior year, we g-chatted about such things on at least a weekly basis.

I helped her with her TFA application and interview lesson plan and felt about as proud as I ever have of a student when she got accepted, and really excited when she was placed in Nashville. Since she came to Nashville 2 weeks ago, I've gotten an update on how things went every afternoon and we got to have breakfast last Sunday. What I expected to be an hour long meal turned into a 4-hour conversation.

And now, she's at Institute, learning to teach a classroom of 1st graders for 5 weeks in the MS Delta. And it's hard. For the last 3 week days, at about 1:30pm, I've gotten woeful, despairing texts about how hard that day has been. It's hard to be encouraging in a text, without sounding patronizing. It's hard to say "It will get better" in a thousand different ways, especially when I know that may not be true. Teaching is HARD. Teaching in a high-poverty urban environment with only 5 weeks of preparation is even harder, no matter who you are. It's doable and even possible to be successful, but it's a steep learning curve and it might get worse before it gets better.

But how do you say that to an idealistic 22 year old who has got to maintain that sense of idealism and drive to have any hope that it will get better?