C2C: What we wish we'd said the first night

We had our first session of Classroom to Community last week. It was great to meet all the new pairs and to see them start to connect with each other. Audra gave me a big hug as we put everything in my car after the session: “Back in the saddle again. Feels great.” I couldn’t have agreed more. For me, C2C is the uncontested highlight of my spring semester.

As usual for the first night of class, Audra and I probably talked too much. It’s the requisite information dump of here’s what you need to do and when and why and how. What I wanted to tell my Emory students was instead this:

Being in the classroom with these kids will change you forever. You will feel your heart warm with each smile, each high five, each time you help a child learn even the smallest thing. You will walk taller because you made an eight-year-old’s face light up by walking into the room. You will take these kids home with you in your heart and wonder about them when you go to sleep at night. You will wonder if they had a warm breakfast like you or if they got a hug when they left the house. You will wonder if they spent the night taking care of a sick little brother and if they had time to do homework. You will wonder if they took their medication or if they ran out and couldn’t afford more. You will hope that someone said, “I love you.”

In these first few weeks especially, you will spend a lot of time being outraged at the injustice and inequality. You will feel a lump in your throat when you actually see firsthand the health disparities you’ve mostly only read about. You will often feel helpless. You may be temped to cut your own classes and spend more time in the classroom. Some of you will want to quit health altogether and go teach.

For each of you, let the lump in your throat remind you of how much your health expertise is desperately needed in the communities in which “your kids” live. Remember that though each child is unique, there are thousands across the country living in the same conditions. Think about the leadership role you will play in making a difference because you actually get it.

For our Teach For America partners – Audra and I have been there too, seeing our kids struggle with physical and mental health issues, yet feeling powerless and inept to deal with them. Engage your Emory partner in these conversations – have him help you find community health resources for your kids and parents. Work with her on creating the health lessons your kids need on topics you know little about. Please come to see all of us at Emory as your go-to health resource. We are here for you, but we're also here with you. Audra and I certainly wish we’d had the same.

Tonight’s lesson is about mindset and its role in teaching and learning. We’ll conclude with an exciting improv workshop to help learn how to “wear your teacher pants” and also to build community in our group. Both are an experiment and we look forward to seeing how it turns out. I am always appreciative of everyone’s willingness to play along and try new things. 

-- Ariela

(Photos: Ms. Bryson's fabulous 6th graders)

Classroom to Community through your eyes!

Familiar with Wordle? This is one of my favorite things on the Internet and can be incorporated into all kinds of classroom activities.

This is a Wordle taken from our mid-course evaluations, both from Rollins students and from Teach For America corps members. I took the text from the last part of our course evaluation in which Gaelle gave me some questions to ask that will help her design our class logo.

I will post something similar at the end of class with our final evaluation from the TFA perspectives and the MPH perspectives about what folks got out of the class.

So -- what do you think? Does this accurately reflect our class? What's missing? What's overemphasized? Interested in your thoughts!

PS -- Check out Classroom to Community in the Emory Report!

Jump

“The leap is so frightening between where I am and where I want to be. Because of all I may become, I will close my eyes and jump.”

I read this on a TFA blog about reflecting on the whole process of becoming a teacher. 

So much of teaching and leadership is truly that leap of faith – in yourself, that you can do it; and in others, that they may follow.

You all know how much I love teaching… but last night’s class was great because I didn’t do any teaching – I just got to sit back and watch. Honestly, I actually felt myself tear up at times watching so much greatness in our class. I felt really proud to work with such an awesome group of people.

In Audra, I can see the classroom teacher that she was and the amazing doctor that she will be. I think about how lucky Scot’s kids are to have such a focused and organized teacher… and what an amazing difference Amy will make with her ability to create such a clear and inspiring vision for her students and where that will lead her after getting an MPH. I thought about Lauren’s dedication to her corps members and their students and how much owns her role as a leader of teachers.

I thought about:

·   Alice starting to use her “teacher voice” in class (with a soft smile).

·   Sarah reconciling her previous experiences as a boarding school teacher compared to an inner-city classroom.

·   Lolly ready to change the world through PreK health ed.

·   Erin, newly introduced to backwards planning, describing several lesson objectives and methods for assessment.

·   The way many of you have started to refer to the TFA students as “my kids.”

In short, I see leaders: smart and passionate people who are outraged by inequality and are motivated to do something to change it. As we talked about last night, transformational leadership starts with a vision and an in-depth understanding of context: where are we now and where do we want to be?

And then there are the strategies to get from here to there. Those skills can be learned. But what really makes the difference is the willingness to take that leap – to decide to grow into the person you can become if you are willing to take a huge risk.

At some point in my life I realized that there were people behind me who believed I could do things I didn’t think I could do.  That gave me the confidence to take some risks I probably would not have taken otherwise. I would not be where I am now without those people in my life who encouraged me to close my eyes and take that leap.

In short, Classroom to Community would not be happening without that influence in my life because I would have been too scared to try something with so much potential to be great (or to fail, depending on how you look at it).

The best part of this class is that I get to be one of those people that can see all that potential in each of you. I get to see you realize that in yourselves and learn how to foster that in others – a spark into a flame into a torch to guide a greater vision.

Teach like you’re on fire. Lead like that’s the only place you gotta go.

Close your eyes and jump.

… And that’s why I Teach For America.


- Ariela Freedman

Health Education in Action: A vision for school health transformation

TFA 2002 - Proud of my City Champion Debaters, Aida and Hilda

A little background: I was a Teach for America (TFA) corps member 12 years ago. I taught high school English, Drama, and Debate at Benito Juarez Community Academy in Chicago. Aside from being a mom, it was the best experience of my life.

I learned about public health about a year after I finished TFA. My husband was starting medical school, and while I was interested in adolescents and health, I don't deal well with bodily fluids, needles, or sick people. For me, the prevention focus in public health was perfect: a mix of theory and practice, with a focus on action. I had become a very passionate health educator.

So an MPH, a PhD, and several years of work experience later, I was still looking for ways to reconnect with the classroom, now through public health. It surprised me that in 21 years of existence, TFA had not had any large scale partnerships with any school of public health – especially since the second part of TFA’s mission is to have alumni working in sectors that directly impact education. At the same time I was seeking the connection from my work at Rollins, a group of health-focused corps members in Atlanta were seeking the same type of connection.

Enter ConnectEd4Health... We found each other and got to work right away! ConnectEd 4 Health is the first big partnership of TFA with public health, starting here in Atlanta. Here's what we do:

1. Develop health resources for TFA corps members’ classrooms and schools. 
2. Develop health education and intervention opportunities for Rollins students, staff, and faculty. 
3. Create health-related professional development opportunities for TFA corps members. 
4. Create public health career development opportunities for students of TFA corps members. 
5. Develop health and education advocacy initiatives and skill-building opportunities for TFA corps members and Rollins students.

To date, Classroom to Community is the largest initiative of our nascent collaboration. We've raised approximately $13,000 to support the program and look forward to using it to leverage additional funding in the future.

So what is Classroom to Community? This class is designed to:

1. Equip public health students with the knowledge and skills needed to become effective health educators and school health partners.
2. Inspire a passion for teaching and a drive towards public health leadership.

It's a mix of scholarship, observation, hands-on practice, and lots of reflection and discussion. We're basically teaching Rollins students how to teach using the same framework (Teaching as Leadership) as TFA, then putting them in the classroom to observe, teach, and be mentored by TFA teachers.

It's going to be a great semester. We had 37 students apply for this program, including students from across Rollins (Behavioral Sciences and Health Education, Global Health, Environmental Health, and others), a few alumni, and even students from the Candler School of Theology! In the end, we selected our top 15 students, then matched them with an all-star group of TFA teachers who also went through an application process. Throughout the semester, the students and their TFA partners will be posting on our class blog. We invite your thoughtful questions and comments to their posts.

Tonight is our kick off event, and our first class session is next week. I'm really looking forward to the semester and the exciting things that will come from our new partnership!

Many thanks to Rollins Career Services,  Kristin Unzicker, and the Emory Office of University-Community Partnerships for making this class financially possible (not to mention the hard work and immense support of many others at Emory and TFA).

Ariela Freedman, Course Instructor

Assistant Research Professor

Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education

Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University