As a Kenyon senior, George Williams applied to Teach for America not because he envisioned a career in education or social activism, but because he took seriously the ideal of civic service.
"I wanted to serve my country," said Williams, who became intrigued by the teaching corps during a summer internship with the National Conference on Citizenship. "I felt that as a student who had received a good education, I could give back through teaching. Teach for America was the only place I applied."
The program, aimed at eliminating educational inequity in the United States, has its roots in the senior thesis of a Princeton University student who went on to make her concept a reality. Launched in 1990, the increasingly selective program gives new college graduates five weeks of intensive summer training before placing them as teachers, for two-year stints, in troubled rural and urban schools.
Williams grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, but regularly visited family in southern Virginia and South Carolina. "Before coming to Kenyon," he said, "I had never been further north than Pennsylvania, other than on a college visit to Maine."
He continued to look southward at the College, where he majored in history, concentrating on the American South. When it came time to list his preferences for where Teach for America might post him, all of his top choices were in the South--and southern Louisiana had a particular allure because Williams was an avid duck hunter.
Nevertheless, the move thrust him across a cultural chasm: from a privileged upbringing in mostly white environs to East Feliciana Parish, an economically struggling area where the population, including Williams' first-graders, was overwhelmingly black.
He was able to thrive because he didn't have unrealistic illusions about himself or his ability to change the world. "I wasn't expecting anything," he said. "I told myself, 'I have a job to do, I'll do the best I can.'" He also provided some balance in his life by getting involved in a church in neighboring West Feliciana Parish, a more prosperous area where he was living. And he found some hunting companions.
"The greatest reward was watching these children grow and learn," said Williams. "There were bad times, when I wanted to strangle them, and good times, when we all couldn't wipe the grins off our faces. But I formed a deep, deep bond with the kids. I loved teaching and had a great time. I was torn up crying when I left."
He started writing his journal from the very start, describing kids unlike any he'd ever known, recounting experiences that he couldn't quite believe he was having. The writing allowed him to sort through his feelings. "I realized that there was no way for me to be an effective teacher, friend, and role model for my students and their parents--who were often my age--if I judged them. I did form judgments about them, but I expressed those in my writing."
Williams shared his journal with a small circle of family members and Kenyon friends, including several professors and Delta Kappa Epsilon connections. The circle eventually widened, to include some former high school teachers along with family friends to whom his parents forwarded the e-mail entries.
A number of his journal readers pitched in when Williams, during his second year, set out to raise money for a school trip to Washington, D.C. Ultimately, he and a fellow Teach for America teacher raised $35,000, most of it from local Louisiana sources. With seven other chaperones, he took twenty-nine fourth- and fifth-graders to the nation's capital for four days. The group flew, a first for all but one of the children, some of whom hadn't even been to Baton Rouge, forty miles away. A family friend was able to arrange a private tour of the White House.
Williams himself is back in Washington, D.C., now, fulfilling a long-held ambition to pursue a career in investment management. He works with the firm Farr, Miller, and Washington LLC.
But part of him remains in Louisiana. "I fell in love with those kids," he said. "It hurts me not to be there, a part of their lives."
-Dan Laskin