While training as teachers, we were told what a positive impact we are going to have on any child in our classroom. We were told that we would “change the world, one classroom at a time.”

Then in our classes, we learned about persistent school segregation in New York City. We learned about red-lining and how gifted programs perpetuate segregation. Then they turned around and taught us that we could change this. As preschool teachers, we would embrace every students’ culture—that through adding things such as chopsticks and cultural clothing in the dramatic play areas, symbolic gestures, we would work to end racism. But if the students’ cultural norms were not aligned with teaching standards, we would need to change their behavior.

We were taught how the chronic stress of poverty can negatively affect a student’s learning. One in four children in NYC are hungry—and undernourishment will compromise learning ability. One in nine children in NYC experienced homelessness in the last year—sleep deprivation affects brain development, including cognitive function like decision making, working memory, conflict solving, and learning in general. We were told: that’s why it is so important for teachers to show up every day. We were told that through a good education we could help the students move up the socio-economic ladder and gain a better future.

My professor told us we would spend all nighters making the perfect lesson plans, and that we would spend our personal money to deck out our classrooms. On average, each teacher spends roughly $600 a year out of pocket on their classrooms, and works 54 hours a week. Why? Because we want what’s best for our students. We want to make a difference in their lives.

I want to make a difference in every kid’s life. But working in schools taught me that being a teacher is not where I can make that difference. / Image: Alliance for Excellent Education, Flickr

I want to make a difference in my students’ lives, in every kid’s life. But working in schools taught me that being a teacher is not where I can make that difference. No matter how great of a teacher I am, no matter how hard I work, no matter how much I pour my heart and sweat into my classes—it won’t change all that much. I have one year with these kids, they go on to twelve more years of school. I can’t influence if they go to bed hungry, if they even have a bed to go to.

In my first job as a teacher’s aide, I looked around the classroom. Statistically one out of three of the black boys in my classroom might go to prison—or worse—get shot by cops before that. There is nothing I can do about it as a teacher. I can’t change things one classroom at a time. The world needs to be turned upside down.

The resources exist that no kid needs to go hungry, that everyone could have a home. The money exists to make class sizes smaller, to train more teachers, to give every child the attention they need to learn properly. The one thing that is in our way of achieving that is capitalism.

My professor is right: I will spend all nighters and pour my money into making the childrens’ lives better—I am doing that by being an active communist. I am doing that by studying Marxism, by organizing communists around me, by building the revolutionary party. The world won’t change one classroom at a time—the world will change through communist revolution.