Lift Off!

Everyday, I look in the back of my classroom at Oakland Tech - back and center to be exact - and watch as a long, brown arm launches like a rocket into the air.

After doing the math in his head, sketching out the equation on his handout and meticulously typing each number into his calculator to verify the answer, Oscar's long, brown arm confidently shoots up. Before I call on Oscar, I run through a series of possible responses in my head: "The total Cost of Goods Sold is $3.27, Miss Garner." "Are you going to pass out BUILD Bucks, Miss Garner?" "Can my team present our answers first, Miss Garner?"

Each potential answer shows Oscar's progress toward our end-of-semester goal - mastery of advanced business concepts - and shows with such clarity both the development of his own personal awareness and his investment in being a 15-year-old entrepreneur.

This was not always the case.

Three weeks into the first semester, in fact, it appeared as though Oscar's future career as BUILD's newest chief executive officer was in direct alignment with NASA's Atlantis - a failed attempt. He dropped BUILD, added PE, and decided that the only launching he would be doing would be from behind the three-point arc.

As his teacher, this decision brought many questions to my mind: Did the PE teacher recruit Oscar? Does he have some incredible athletics abilities and need PE to improve his performance? Is teaching gym class Oscar's career ambition? Is there anything I can do to change his mind?

Knowing how quickly the drop/add time frame was closing, I capitalized on the only question I could control: changing his mind. After a series of phone conversations, the most convincing sales pitch I have ever created, and a visit to his second-period class, my investigation yielded the following discovery: Oscar dropped BUILD becuse he was afraid.

He was afraid of Microsoft Power Point, afraid of public speaking, afraid that his still-progressing English language abilities would not be articulate enough, afraid that he, Oscar Hernandez Lopez, would fail to launch.

I am still unsure of what changed changed Oscar's mind. Was it that he knew everyone else was afraid, too? Was it my promise of support? Was it that intrinsic voice pushing him to accept the challenge? Was it just our good fortune?

Whatever it was, I am grateful. I am grateful when I am greeted with a firm handshake and a "Good morning, Miss Garner." I am grateful when I announce that "Oscar Her-dot Lop-dot has mastered another round of objectives." I am grateful when I watch him meticulously type in each digit on his calculator and proceed to explain COGS to a struggling classmate. I am grateful when he stands up in front of his 25 classmates and articulately explains his team's marketing plan. I am grateful when I look in the back of my classroom at Oakland Tech - back and center to be exact - and watch as a long, brown arm launches like a rocket into the air. I am grateful that BUILD has the privilege of helping Oscar build his dream, whatever it may be.

He is still on the launching pad, working diligently everyday, but on May 19th, 2007, in front of hundreds of smiling, supportive faces, perhaps even with a 3-2-1 countdown, Oscar Hernandez Lopez will lift off.

The End of the Story

Since I last wrote, my BUILD students have learned many new business concepts. From the 4Ps of marketing to market research and competitive advantage, I have seen their engagement levels rise and fall and the challenge of teaching them do the same - the concepts and the children.

In the past month I have also begun to realize how important the work that I do is, especially in regard to my belief in the power and abilities of the close-to-50 students I teach. When I have rough days (and boy do I have them), and my belief falters ever so slightly, my mind wanders back to Tomieka Mack's very first ice skating experience.

Last December, Teach For America treated its corps members and some of their students to a morning and early afternoon at Forest Park's skating rink in St. Louis. In general fashion I brought as many students as I could. One, of course, was Tomieka. She was so nervous about falling. I don't think it was the injury risk that made her anxious. Rather, it was the risk of looking like a clumsy, inexperienced skater in front of the other students, particularly to high school boys. Taking her pride into consideration, we started off verrrryyyy sllloooooowwwwwwlllly.

Her left hand was gripping mine, and her right was holding tight to the rail. After a few minutes, Tomieka realized how "unfun" this was and ventured away from the side. We skated the circumference for awhile, linking on with some of my other students, until, finally, Tomieka was confident enough in her ability to remain upright that she ditched me and went off on her own. By day's end, not only was she participating in some speed skating races but she had also given her phone number to more than one of those high school boys she secretly hoped to impress. (Thankfully, she obliged me with one more handholding skate to make me feel useful.)

Recalling this day with Tomieka always gives me warm fuzzies inside because in such a short period of time, she blossomed from a cocoon to a skating butterfly! Though the classroom environment and goals are much different than that day, the feeling I have is much the same. With patience, with some hand holding, and eventually with some independence, students - all of use, really - grow, gain confidence, and fly.

That's what belief is really all about - having the passion to think big, the courage and faith to get through, and the persistence to understand that someday, your dream will take off and fly. As a story in Good To Great tells, we must believe in the end of the story.

Thanks to the folks I have in my life - past, present, and future- I believe that I will be an agent of tremendous change in the lives of others. Thanks to BUILD, students like Tomieka and Oscar and the other students I have referenced in this blog will be the recipients.

I think very much about what the lives of these students would be like without support programs like BUILD, and even more about what our world would be like without visionaries like Wendy Kopp and Suzanne McKechnie Klahr and the countless others who have commited their lives to the improvement of others.

Instantly after I have that thought, though, I give thanks that I do not have to, and I give even more that I have been invited to play a part in changing the world. Even after a long day of hard work, maybe even because of a day of hard work, I find even more faith in the end of the story, of the day the book of Revelation boasts about: the day that all is as it was planned to be, the one where everything is in place and when God's smile shines brighter than the brightest rays of the sun.

Until that time comes, I will look back to Tomieka's story,I will watch Oscar stretch and grow, and I will listen proudly as Cynthia explains to her mother "Este es mi maestra." I'll hope, too, that my wonder of their amazing abilities and infinite potential makes my smile's shine an adequate stand-in.