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Amazingly it’s now been a year since I decided to move to Seattle. And while I’ve enjoyed doing something for myself—making new friends, living in a city on my own, I do still think about what I left behind in Oakland, my students most of all.
I have to remind myself constantly that what I wanted—and what wasn’t possible in Oakland, as a teacher—was not an unreasonable demand, but the absolute baseline of modest living: an apartment for myself.
I think about my students all the time, and miss them, and wonder how they are doing. And it makes me think, What if I had just stayed? Put off a little longer what I wanted?
20% of OUSD teachers leave every year. The average new teacher lasts just three years, like I did. To be a teacher in Oakland is to sacrifice, one way or another. Even so, it was an incredible honor and joy to be a part of my students and their families’ lives.
I wish I could have remained. But forces larger than all of us didn’t allow it. I’ve fought a daily guilt about this, waking from another teaching dream. I know that my leaving is only a small blip in their lives, but in an already chaotic world, I wish it didn’t have to be.
We can pay teachers and we can control rent, but most of all, we have to do away with capitalism’s fervent pursuit of profit over people that tears communities apart—including reopening in the fall just to serve this pursuit.
I want so badly to be back in the classroom, but I also don’t want to think about my students or their families getting sick. I already think about them every day. I suppose I always will.
