Blessed to be a blessing
By Heidi Heater, a junior from Jackson, Ky.
WILMORE, KY—Although Caleb Swaringen ’06 graduated from Asbury College with an accounting degree, a mission trip to a children’s home in Villa Nueva, Guatemala, unlocked his love of teaching and helping students reach their full potential, spurring him to become involved with Teach for America.
Swaringen traveled to Guatemala to teach English to orphans, but during this trip, Swaringen learned some lessons himself. “I had to ask some hard questions,” he said. “Why was I so fortunate? What had I done to have so much? The answer was just as hard as the questions—nothing.”
Swaringen concluded that he had been blessed to be a blessing to others. “All these fortunate things in my life were not supposed to terminate me; but, rather, they had been given to me as gifts,” he said. “I decided at that moment that in a society that bombards us with ‘me, me, me, me,’ I wanted to go ‘you, you, you, you.’”
Despite receiving job offers from PricewaterhouseCoopers and others, Swaringen decided to teach bilingual reading to sixth graders at Kennedy Elementary School in Mercedes, Texas, with Teach for America. Now in his second year of teaching, Swaringen said that his first assignment included the 41 lowest readers, the majority of whom had never passed the reading TAKS, a state standardized test, in Spanish, let alone English.
Swaringen, however, believed in his students despite comments such as, “Those kids can’t read…They have no vocabulary.” By dramatically reading stories aloud and using chants to help students learn, among other techniques, Swaringen said he began to witness a sparkle in students’ eyes, an enthusiasm to participate and a passion to conquer the task at hand.
“Reluctant readers have become ‘cheaters,’ reading ahead in the texts and whispering the surprise outcomes to friends,” Swaringen said. “My scholars can relate the daily objective to our Enduring Understanding of the six weeks, which also enables them to make subconscious connections between lessons from weeks past. Most importantly, my scholars have both the capability and the desire to succeed. With this strong sense of ‘I can’ and ‘I want,’ I know that ‘they will.’”
According to achievement results, Swaringen’s students improved an average of more than two and a half years in reading English in just one year. Now in his second year in Teach for America, he and other teachers are committed to helping students earn an 80 percent or higher on every challenge, every district assessment, and ultimately, the Reading TAKS.
“Our war cry for this year is GANAS—a Spanish word meaning ‘desire’ and an acronym for Going Above the Norm And Soaring,” Swaringen said.
Swaringen told of a sixth grade student who struggled with words such as “goat” and “were.” Swaringen saw that the boy needed someone to believe in him, a structured literacy timeslot and after-school tutoring. Despite Swaringen’s help, the boy failed the first district-wide test.
“I could tell he was devastated,” Swaringen said. “As I encouraged him to keep the goal in mind, he became even more inspired. He worked even harder and became the first student to raise his hand in class.”
The boy’s test scores increased, and he received a commended performance on his last standardized English reading test.
Because of the changes one teacher can make in a student’s life, Swaringen challenges others to join him in the fight against illiteracy.
“Of the 13 million children growing up in poverty, about half will graduate from high school,” he said. “Those that do will perform on average at an eighth-grade level. You can change this.”
Teach For America is a national corps of outstanding recent college graduates and professionals of all academic majors and career interests who commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools and become leaders in the effort to expand educational opportunity.
Released: Feb. 29, 2008
