Name: Josh Guerrieri ’01
Position: Social Studies Teacher, Teach for America
Location: Booker T. Washington High School, Atlanta, Ga.
Majors: History and Economics

Phi Beta Kappa. Editor of the Wittenberg History Journal. Intercollegiate track star. Teach for America recruit for an inner-city school in Atlanta?

With a double major in history and economics, Josh had never really considered teaching until he heard about Teach for America, a national corps of outstanding recent college graduates, of all academic majors, who commit two years to teach in public schools in low-income communities.

Teach for America, which has placed 8,000 corps members in 16 urban and rural areas in the last 12 years, appealed to Josh in part because it provided an opportunity to be trained in a five-week summer institute and then to step into the classroom the following fall.

The summer institute in Houston, Texas, which Josh refers to as “boot camp,” was intense, but it didn’t come close to preparing him for the challenges he would encounter at Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta, the site of his placement.

In one episode, I pulled a boy out in the hall for igniting a lighter in the back of the classroom,” Josh recalls. “After reprimanding him for his behavior, I tried to re-enter my classroom only to find that the door was being held shut by another boy. The class went crazy as the window in the door revealed the anguished look on my face as I struggled to get the door open.”

While teaching a class on citizenship, Josh discovered other problems. “On paper, the class was loaded — 32 students all fresh out of junior high school. This was quite large considering I had only 31 and a half desks (one had a seat but only three legs),” Josh says.

“ In action, the class proved to be much more than I had anticipated. First of all, on a modified block schedule, fifth period meets everyday for one hour. Secondly, this fifth period occurs in the middle of the lunch periods. This turned out to be a deadly combination as the lunchtime, hormonal, sugar-fed atmosphere spilled over into my classroom every day,” Josh adds.

“ Every day I could probably have managed if these were the only two factors that were causing me some stress. However, this was not the case. Somehow in the scheduling process, I had been given a number of students who should have never, ever come in contact with each other. It was like mixing two highly explosive chemicals — times six. I couldn’t seat Aquardis next to Marquis who couldn’t be anywhere within five miles of Jonathon who wanted Laquanda to ‘make his babies’ whose best friend Dorothy couldn’t survive without her and who couldn’t stand Dontavious who had a beef with Keocha who didn’t seem to like anybody, and they all had a problem with me.”

With 150 students to see on a daily basis, Josh had to acclimate himself quickly to the new environment and immerse himself in a culture far different from his personal experience. He learned that although his official workday ended at 3:30 p.m., he needed to work many more hours in the evenings and on weekends if he really wanted to be the catalyst for positive change in his students’ lives. He had to cope with the fact that he was not going to be the best teacher in three weeks and that he wouldn’t be able to command instant respect from his peers or his students.

Despite the problems, Josh has grown tremendously in just a year. He has also discovered much about himself, so much in fact that he has signed on again to teach history, government, economics and geography at Booker T. Washington High School for a few more years. He says he feels good about where his teaching is going.

“ Throughout this process, I have accepted my shortcomings, acknowledging that, on some level, I will fail every single day,” he says. “My goal has been to strive for the larger goals of long-term student achievement. This has allowed me to disregard some of my minor daily letdowns.”