FORTNIGHT JOURNAL :: Documenting the Promise of the Millennial Generation

I RESIGN

MODEL SCHOOLS BOAST ACHIEVEMENTS IN PANTOMIME. HITTING "SEND," TEACHER BRIANA TRADES TENACITY FOR HONESTY.

When I began grad school, I was asked by my professors to write out a philosophy of education. We were supposed to revisit and revise this philosophy over the course of next two years, informed by new experiences and, ideally, a greater subtlety of understanding. I now look back on that statement of belief and see how limited it was.

My only insight is a greater knowledge of what I fundamentally do not understand.

There is no way I was even remotely able to dissect the complexities of urban public education at that time. This is not to say that I possess great insight now. On the contrary, my only insight is a greater knowledge of what I fundamentally do not understand.

In all of this confusion, and in the hell of the past two months, while I struggled with what has been the most difficult decision of my life to-date, all that resonates with me are the concepts of equity, respect and clarity of vision.

These are the reasons I teach: One, to ensure that all students have equity in access to opportunity, equity in capacity to question and equity in voice.

Two, because I fundamentally respect the process of learning, of teaching—and, at the risk of being too broad, the process of being a human growing in a world that constantly challenges one’s reality, especially at 12 and 13 years old. Lastly, I teach because it allows me to envision a community where lack of a genuine education is not the determinant of individual possibility.

Yet, all this being said, I am leaving education. Not forever, but I am leaving now, and for the foreseeable future. This decision is a blow to my identity, everything I find meaning in and my world vision. Still, this decision also constitutes the greatest showing of my own personal strength to-date.

What I have done, am doing, is effectively unheard of for educators, whose worlds, at least until the recent advent of year-round schooling, revolved almost exclusively around a nine-month cycle. Our year has always started in September and ended in June, when we would be laid off for the summer, only to be rehired again the next September. Those months, from September through June, are sacred. Despite the technical ability to do so, you will rarely find a dedicated teacher who uses sick or personal days; finding the idea of leaving their students with a substitute, even for one day, utterly abhorrent.

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Yet here I am, leaving the students I have grown to love not just for a day, or a week, but for the rest of the year.

I, despite being an educator who lives and breathes teaching, tender my resignation.

Continued in "I Resign: II"

Briana Nichols was working as a teacher at an inner-city school in Chicago, Illinois. As a result of her work on Fortnight, Briana was asked to meet with the Chancellor of the DC Public School System and invited to speak on a panel at Roosevelt University in Chicago, Illinois.

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FORTNIGHT IS

A MULTIMEDIA DOCUMENTARY PROJECT ON THE MILLENNIAL GENERATION: THE LAST GENERATION TO REMEMBER A TIME WITHOUT THE INTERNET.