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'All Children' Includes Those at the Top

Dear Fellow Alumni,

It was a cool October night during
my first year in the corps, and Noreen, one of the seventh graders in my homeroom, was stapling the last of her hand-drawn decorations to our class bulletin board. My students had just finished their first major writing assignment, a short memoir, and the next day would be a celebration.

When I first met Noreen, she avoided my eyes and spoke so quietly I could hardly hear her. But within weeks of her joining the staff of my after-school literary magazine, I learned that she was wickedly sarcastic, with a college-level vocabulary.

Noreen's memoir, like Noreen, stood out from the rest. She wrote about the split in her cultural heritage as a Bangladeshi American growing up in the Bronx. Her writing was almost poetic—descriptive, insightful, and possessing a natural cadence. It took some convincing, but she agreed to read it aloud to the class the next day.

That evening, Noreen's brother, in his late 20s and on his
way back from work, arrived to pick her up from school. I suggested that he take a look at his sister's outstanding work, and Noreen proudly led him over to her portfolio. I smiled and waited.

He flipped rapidly through her memoir, unimpressed. "It looks like her grammar needs work," he said curtly. "Would this be an A in a good school?" I was stunned. I glanced at the memoir filled with original, amazing ideas …and saw copyediting hieroglyphs in my own green ink sprinkled throughout. I wanted to defend the grade I had given her. She's brilliant! I felt like shouting. But I realized in that moment that it was her brother who was championing her, not me.

I was doing no favors to Noreen by rewarding great thinking and forgiving second-rate grammar. Things got a lot harder for all of us after that day. I sought out resources and learned how to differentiate my instruction to target the deficits and encourage the strengths of my students. Expectations were raised, rubrics adjusted. That meeting would serve as a sharp reminder to me over the next two years that, as a teacher, I was not only responsible for my students' academic progress in the seventh grade, but for helping them set the highest possible bar for themselves and for the quality of their education.

As I wrote in an earlier column, Noreen would later test into Brooklyn Tech, one of New York City's most competitive public high schools. She struggled her freshman year, nearly failing some classes, but worked unbelievably hard over the next four years. Last week she e-mailed that she had been accepted by two local colleges and was now waiting to hear from her top choice, Syracuse University.

We corresponded about the topic of this issue's cover story, and I asked for her candid reflections on what it was like to go from our middle school to Brooklyn Tech.

"It was like diving into the snow without a coat," she wrote back. "I was not ready. Almost every day I wished that I had gone to a better middle school that would have prepared me.
Most of my peers came from 'good' middle schools, and I always felt left behind in my classes. Freshman year was the worst. I did OK in English, but other things that I used to love, like math and science, I ended up hating. I went from being above average to below average. But I took charge and got my 'edge' back. Now that I'm a senior, I don't regret coming to Tech, though I wish my grades were higher. I feel better prepared and able to handle the workload, so in college I won't be diving into the snow without a coat. I'll be all bundled up."

Noreen's response didn't surprise me, but it was still painful to read. I think about the many other students who went on to mediocre high schools and perhaps never even realized they had been shortchanged. The impact on their life prospects is incalculable.

This issue's cover story resonates deeply with me because it's not only about precocious students like Noreen who deserved to be challenged more. It's about how we can ensure
that we are meeting the needs of all students and pushing them forward, so that proficiency becomes the foundation—not the aspiration—for what our kids will achieve.

Warm regards,

Ting Yu

N.Y.C. '03

Editor in Chief