Radical by Michelle Rhee Read Free Book Online

became one of my best friends.
    We were in TFA’s third cohort, and the program was still evolving. It was neither efficient nor particularly effective. We woke up every day at 5 a.m., boarded buses, and rode for hours through traffic to Pasadena. We did practice teaching for a half day and then returned to Northridge for more training and seminars. I’m not sure I learned much that summer, and I didn’t feel prepared for what was to come. If you put five hundred recent college graduates back in dorms for the summer, what you get is indeed summer camp. It was a scene. Sure, it was grueling, and we did get exposed to the classroom, but we mostly had a lot of fun.
    At the end of the institute, we started to get our teaching assignments. Liz, Rose, Deepa, and I were all detailed to Baltimore, so we headed east and found a house together. One by one each TFA corps member was offered a position in a school and prepared for beginning the school year with their class. I waited. And waited. Baltimore was not a city where I especially wanted to wind up. Still, I was a bit disappointed and worried when everyone got a job but me. Even two days before school started, I had yet to be hired. I figured it was mostly because I was Korean. Korean-black dynamics have always been a bit strained. If you are the African American principal in hard-core Baltimore, you are not thinking, “Yeah, that Korean girl is the one I want to hire. Let me take her!”
    The day before orientation for the school year, a woman from the central office called and said, “Well, you still haven’t been placed as a teacher. But you have to go someplace, since we are paying you. So go to this address: 1401 West Lafayette Avenue. The school is Harlem Park. They will be waiting for you.”
    They weren’t.
    I WILL NEVER FORGET pulling up in front of Harlem Park. The school was in the middle of a very downtrodden, dangerous neighborhood. It looked large and impenetrable from the outside. Bars on dingy windows. Trash blowing up against chain-link fences. I was terrified. I found my way to the office and told them I was reporting there until I was assigned to a teaching position. They had no idea who I was or why I was there, so I sat for an hour in the ninety-degree heat in the waiting area. I must have looked pretty pathetic and bedraggled when a teacher walked in the office and took pity on me.
    â€œWell hello there,” she said. “What brings you to Harlem Park?”
    It was Everlyn Strother, a Harlem Park veteran and one of the school’s best teachers. I said I was waiting to be assigned to a school and that the central office had sent me here.
    â€œC’mon, c’mon, come with me to my room. Follow me, baby,” she said.
    Her room was a model of organization and preparation. She sat me down and started moving around books, setting up workstations, and making sure posters were secured to the walls. As she did her thing, she asked me about my training and what I hoped to accomplish. And why I was so scared.
    â€œLook, baby, you gotta know what you’re getting into here,” she said. “You can’t look as scared as you do now. You have to be confident. I remember being in your shoes when I first started teaching. I was just as scared. Be patient. Hang in there. Remember, they’re children. And come to me if you need help.”
    Hmmm. Just like my grandmother said, “Little kids. How hard can that be?”
    The principal finally swept through and motioned me to her office. I tried explaining the situation to her, that I wouldn’t be there long—only until the central office found a school for me. After my long-winded speech she looked a little exasperated.
    â€œSecond or fifth?” she asked.
    â€œExcuse me?” I responded.
    â€œI have two openings. Second grade or fifth grade. Which one do you want?”
    I quickly had to switch gears.
    â€œThis summer I student-taught