Inner-city students need teachers who believe in them

"Miss, come on, why are you really here? No one actually wants to teach people like us."

It was about a year ago when I accepted my teaching position at Western High School, a turnaround school in the Clark County School District, the fifth-largest system in the country.

I moved from Boston to Las Vegas to start my year as a high school English teacher. Having grown up in Massachusetts public schools and received my degree from Westfield State University, which has a long-held reputation of molding fine educators, I have always had a deep reverence for education and the pathways it can open for society. I was hoping to simultaneously impart this reverence for knowledge and a hunger for self-improvement in my students.

That is still the goal. It's a bold one, of course, and those of you who work in schools like mine may laugh or call it stupid or uninformed. I don't care.

I meet numerous students who fit into many categories, but some stick out more than others.

The thug. The teen mom. The girl working 40-plus hours a week to pay rent for her family. The gang-banger. The first in his family to make it to high school. The fresh-out-of-behavioral-school kid just trying to keep it together. The bookworm who just wants to be quiet and disappear.

I honestly could not tell you which of these students will make it to college, let alone graduation. I would be impressed if only one did.

It is important to note that my fears do not speak to their individual capabilities to pursue these goals. Having been in numerous classrooms in Massachusetts, the No. 1 state in the country for education, I can confidently say that the abilities of Las Vegas students are equal to or greater than those with a more nationally revered education. Our students are capable of setting, reaching and surpassing their career and education goals. This could happen if students, starting very early on in their academic careers, were encouraged to be passionate about learning and pushing through adversity to achieve goals, regardless of race or socioeconomic class.

Teachers in Clark County are doing this already. I just wish people outside of school saw this potential the same way my colleagues and I do, and not just as links in a chain that weighs them down.

Some days, I leave school feeling no sense of accomplishment. Every single one of those students who fit the stereotype of an inner-city high school kid is more than capable of advancing to higher education. But how do you convince someone to make an investment in higher education when his or her world is filled with people making a good living without degrees or certifications, and sometimes without recognition of legality or legitimacy? This is the ultimate challenge that guides my lessons and direction with students. It is an opportunity to build a community of lifelong learners who strive for excellence and distinction.

In Boston, my goal was to provide a top-notch English education, with a focus on advancing writing skills. In Clark County, I maintain that goal, but each day has the scaffold of a mentality to prove to students that they can achieve that level of excellence.

Clark County desperately needs people who believe in these kids. Teachers who are not turned off by the idea of 40 teenagers in a classroom, instead configuring desks to create the most inclusive classroom setting to ensure that all 40 voices are heard. These teachers have to embrace diversity and adversity with near reckless abandon if we ever hope to bring up our state's educational reputation and catapult it toward national recognition.

Simply put, our students deserve it.

Simply put, they aren't getting it.

Despite the negativity, there are brief and wondrous segments of my weeks that spark passion in my career and keep me coming back every day into the battlezone that is, was and probably always will be my classroom. Accomplishments such as reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" from cover to cover, doing multimedia dissections of "Romeo and Juliet" and teaching research projects on topics such as Arizona's immigration laws and the controversies surrounding FIFA and the NFL. Or weaving social justice conversations into teaching the importance of a five-paragraph essay structure to students who began the term years behind grade-level reading.

Yes, even the gang-bangers and behavioral school kids.

I have had students seek me out to tell me they passed all of their proficiency tests for graduation, or that they are taking AP English in the future, or that they never liked English class before because it was not made relatable to them, and now they feel as if they are getting concrete and real-world applicable skills. They know I am trying to create a classroom that not only demands academic excellence, but has an emphasis on personal growth, as well.

And what I find more important is that each of these triumphs has been accomplished with each of the types of students mentioned above. It is not lofty or foolish or too ambitious to hold these rigorous standards. It has been accomplished, and during this school year, I plan to surpass those objectives.

It seems as if people are quick to blame students for the situations at turnaround schools. They blame the kids for low graduation rates and test scores, saying the students have no ambition and would never survive in a college setting anyway. These people fill me with a need to prove them wrong, because our students deserve to have someone believe in them enough that they can believe in themselves.

— Sarah Mascioli is an English teacher at Western High School.