MI Love: Detroit (also known as "how I'm Jonah")

It's been far too long since my last MI love post. I'm hoping to get out a few more of these in coming weeks. This post contains an extended allusion to the Book of Jonah in the Christian Old Testament. Feel free to check out. It's weird but pretty convicting.


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I am Jonah. I have been called to Detroit, as he was called to Ninevah, and I have run, only to be swallowed up and re-sent. I completed summer fellowships there twice, once in 2007 and once in 2009, and I felt drawn to Detroit Public Schools (DPS), to bilingual education, to finding a way to cut back on the number of toner shaking dance prayers (Dear God, Please let this toner cartridge be sufficient to finish my copy job so that my students can meet their learning objectives. Amen.), to get more DPS students into college, to see them fed nutritious meals, and so much more. I started my student teaching at an elementary school in Detroit a bright-eyed idealist, thinking that the district emergency financial manager, Robert Bobb, would figure something out. I believed that the round of school closures would stem the hemorrhagic tide of funds and stabilize the remaining schools.

I suffered panic attacks, crying spells, exhaustion, and depression that fall, partially due to an underlying health issue, but very much exacerbated by the daily reality with my children. I had to leave. I thought I was leaving forever, destined to stay in the safe, comfortable suburbs (Tarshish, in the Jonah metaphor). I applied to teach for Kaplan Test Prep, imagining small classes, resources, motivated families.

And then the great fish got me the first time. Upon arriving to the informational interview, I discovered that Kaplan was running a contract in Detroit Public Schools, and they were looking for ACT instructors. I remember thinking, "Well played, God. In a recession, You knew I didn't have other options." And I taught at Western International High three days a week for four months, until it was time to move for grad school. It was still staggering, but I worked with educators who showed me why they stayed. Some of my students cared. (Some didn't.) And I loved the joy of the classroom, though I think I started realizing by then that my role would not be as a full time classroom teacher.

I moved for grad school - by this time, Rebecca and I were together and she was in med school. My MA is more preparation to teach at a university language center than for a K-12 public education setting. In fact, I've never finished my teaching certificate, though I think about it sometimes. My initial plan in my MA was to either teach abroad or at a university, with the thought of working at a refugee development center in the back of my head.

But I graduated into the same recession, again/still. Together, we had chosen Henry Ford Wyandotte for Rebecca's base hospital, with the thought that I would work at Wayne State or U of M. Neither panned out.

I spent that summer as an Americorps volunteer in southwest Detroit (again). This time, I ended up working with an organization affiliated with the Education Achievement Authority (EAA) as the EAA took over a DPS building that had been identified as failing. I also applied, at that point, to start doing test prep again, this time for GRE, and I began preparing an application for Ph.D. programs in higher education administration.

I was running to Tarshish again. After the recession, the Ph.D. I'd chosen was hedging my bets. I had the perfect essay, but the truth is that I wanted insurance against unemployment, possibly a chance to gain power and prestige (with mostly good intentions), a formal process to follow. I missed East Lansing and academia. Wyandotte was hard on us, for many reasons (those of you who read regularly may have started sequencing this timeline).

So I was accepted, and we left, really without great indication that it was right for me. I wasn't funded until shortly before school started, and even then, not fully. We loved being back at our church in Lansing, but my work wasn't right for me, and Rebecca missed the Henry Ford system. As I took my classes and met people in my program who were amazing, dedicated, brilliant, and with so much experience, more experience than I had, more passion for their research, I was glad that I knew them, but I knew I didn't belong, at least not yet.

It was devastating. I had seen myself as an academic and craved the legitimacy and stability I thought my degree would confer. For financial and insurance reasons, I ended up staying in my program, needing to keep up my GPA, after we had concluded that we'd be relocating to the Detroit area so that Rebecca could do her residency at Ford.

I feel like that semester was bathed in tears of uncertainty, fear, questions, but also knowledge that I was moving closer to what I'm meant to. I spent the summer teaching partnerships at universities as much as possible, including one with pre-public health students who, make no mistake, are going to change the world once they finish grad school. I'm a little bit in awe of their commitment and ambition, and of the fact that the help I offered in test prep strategies will someday be a tiny period in one little chapter of their amazing life stories.

I spent a good chunk of this past school year in a United Way partnership while Rebecca works out of Henry Ford in Harbortown and the New Center. We're still figuring out what we'll do long term, but I'm beginning to accept that my call might not be what I thought and that my five year plan might not be as useful as I thought.

And while we refer fondly to a dream of moving to Montreal, where our family would be legally recognized, Rebecca could be faculty at McGill,  our children could go on walking field trips throughout the city, and I could be educational staff at the biodome (hey, it's a dream, it doesn't actually have to be feasible), we can see that's too far off to plan for. It might be Tarshish, or it might be the next place after Ninevah.

Detroit is not an easy place. But there's a sense of belonging there, that we are all neighbors, that we're in it together to have a blessed day, we hope more blessed because we're all making do and making better. That's not a place to run from. I don't know how I fit in. I don't know how I bless people who in most cases have been a bigger blessing to so many than I can fathom. But I'm called to something, and I'm done marking time, saying I'll do it when I have my life together or Rebecca's residency is over or when I'm finally sure I'm never going back to grad school. I want my hands and feet to be dirty, like Jesus' must have been. I'm done running from my calling and ready to run into Jesus' arms.

Will you join me?