Being an educator is one of the toughest jobs in the world, but this adorable day-in-the-life film of Lulu Meraz, a kindergarten teacher at Aspire Titan Academy in Huntington Park, may make you want to quit your day job.
Meraz was one of eight teachers across the globe that was sponsored by a partnership between the search engine Bing and the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) Foundation. In this announcement of the sponsorshop from 2010, Bing writes, "These teachers are on the front lines of education reform and are critical to the development of the nation’s youth. REDU and the CAA Foundation are behind their efforts to positively impact the lives of young people in America and around the world."
Bing invited supporters to "get a true sense of the struggles and successes new teachers around the world face" by following the teachers throughout the year on letsredu.com. The site ended in July of 2011, but not before winning a Webby in the Activism category.
According to a school profile on the Los Angeles Times, 97.5% of the almost 300 students at Aspire Titan qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch, and the school is 99.6% latino. And while the school missed four out of 17 federal goals last year, the charter school met all of them this year and earned an API score of 849 (out of a possible 1,000). It's all very impressive, especially considering the fact that the median teacher experience is listed as "0 years"!