Sharon Rauck has fought wildfires in the forests of Oregon, dug through dirt searching for archeological shards of the past in Mexico, and battled for a marriage that she knew was crumbling but was unable to let go of.
She has survived the daily grind of paying the rent and having little left over, and she has known of love and the hidden costs involved when you choose to work for it rather than run away. It is safe to say she has learned many lessons in life.
Yet three years ago, when she was 27, Rauck sought out another opportunity to be taught and to teach in return. She signed up for Teach for America, a program designed to place college graduates as educators in economically disadvantaged areas of the United States.
It was a windy day on The Navajo Nation Reservation when I walked into Rauck's trailer. I had come to Navajo, N.M. to find comfort with a long-time friend. My life had somehow slipped the tracks, and the sharp gusts of wind bouncing off the red rocks and kicking up stinging gravel reflected my mood perfectly. Struggling to pull the somewhat flimsy door shut behind me, I realized that Rauck did not have a proper classroom. Indeed, the entire middle school was pieced together of dilapidated mobile units linked by wooden walkways that had seen many feet and better days.
Rauck stood in front of a motley crew of eighth graders, many bigger than her petite five foot two frame and spoke of the solar system. The sun, the moon and the stars; such far-away places for a group of Navajo children who rarely get as far as Albuquerque. It was eerie to watch as some of her pupils were enraptured by the thought of something so mystical, yet entirely visible, while others lolled about in their desks already resigned to never leaving this patch of land and maybe not even making it to the ninth grade.
I would come to learn over the course of my week there that Rauck's journey to the confident instructor I witnessed that day was one driven by a tenacious determination that only an adult with some hard days under her belt could muster. It began with interminable days of TFA training down in Houston, Texas where she was lucky to get five hours sleep while partaking in crash-course tactics in educating youth.
Once on 'The Rez,' as the inhabitants affectionately call it, she learned that it would take her own hard-earned funds to provide her classroom with additional supplies and that supervision, much less true support, would be practically non-existent. She slept on strangers' floors and couches while the tract house designated for her and her roommate was vandalized and had to be made livable all over again.
Not to mention that outside of the 50-hour work weeks, she traveled an hour each way to attend graduate classes so she could become qualified to do what she was already accomplishing on a daily basis.
It becomes heartbreaking when you add in the immense cultural gaps, abject poverty and unmistakable evidence of child neglect. Perhaps most troubling of all is the insidious hopelessness I sensed around 'The Rez' along with the trash and packs of half-feral dogs.
It is safe to say that Rauck was once again getting schooled in human existence. According to her, those two years with TFA were some of the toughest, and most rewarding, days she has yet encountered. When you stack that up against the day her divorce became final and the day her dad had open-heart surgery, that is saying something.
Even though Rauck was assigned to eighth grade science, what she was really teaching was life. She was unconsciously using herself as an example of all the good and bad choices that we make along the way. That is not a qualification you can pick up on your local college campus, it is something you simply have to live through to learn from.
So, when the TFA representatives visit this week to recruit, I urge you to follow Rauck's path and learn a bit more of life before you presume to teach it. Your students will thank you for it.
