Dear Friends and Family,

This summer, I will be teaching low-income, highly motivated middle school students in Houston, Texas. I am employed by the Breakthrough Collaborative, a national non-profit with 34 locations in the United States and Hong Kong. More than 3,000 middle and high school students participate annually in tuition- free six-week summer sessions and school year supplementary courses. College and high school students serve as teachers and mentors for these students, creating lesson plans, designing elective courses, and leading after-school sports and arts activities.

The position is volunteer with benefits, including a living stipend and an AmeriCorps grant for college tuition. I have been assigned to teach 7th grade math, which is predominantly algebra and pre-algebra, and to co-lead an elective course on slam poetry. The opportunity to teach fell together in a way that I (and the Houston director) can only describe as serendipitous. Though it seemingly has little to do with my career goals thus far, I am convinced that it will have an unforgettable impact on my life goals and priorities. It will also, undoubtedly, be the most challenging two months of my life- I hope to learn patience in the classroom, build meaningful relationships with my students, and better understand how socioeconomic and racial disparities define educational opportunities.

I leave on May 24 to fly from Richmond to Dulles to Bush Intercontinental in Houston. I will return home on July 20 with roughly three weeks to rest, enjoy family vacation, and pack to return to William and Mary.

For those of you who followed my blogging from Morocco last summer, I hope that you will find this to be as exciting, if less exotic. For those of you new to my blogs, I hope that you will watch for my updates and attempt to make sense of my stream-of-consciousness writing style. I am also including a list of related websites in the right-hand column, to which I will add as I find interesting material. Be sure to browse the Breakthrough national and Houston websites- the statistics regarding public education are amazing and often appalling.

"The most exciting breakthroughs of the 21st century will not occur because of technology, but because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human.” John Naisbitt

Love, Bailey