First field experience ends (at last) . . .

I finished up my first internship today, and it's been quite an education in the minutiae of the achievement gap. It's Hannah Arendt's banality of evil, a Hydra of millions of tiny daily decisions that I'm sure are being made in some form in tens of thousands of schools all over the country: an assistant principal who gives a 3-day suspension for being caught in the hallway without a pass but gives just an hour's in-school detention for cussing out a teacher; the placement of a long-term English substitute in 9th grade Algebra for a semester; an administration that schedules off-site meetings for the faculty with barely 48 hours' notice; a secretary who doesn't know if there's any more copier paper in the office and who won't get out of her chair to check . . . Yes, these students are being failed by their teachers, but not ONLY by their teachers, and the teachers are being failed by absolutely everyone else.

God save me from a job in a school like that.