I like to play a game when I meet new people who wonder what I do for a living. I let them ask a few questions, and eventually I’ll concede that I teach fifth grade, but I don’t tell them where.

I do tell them all the teaching opportunities I encounter. For example, I had to guide my students on their most recent field trip to watch an IMAX movie at the University of Southern California Science Center, I had to oversee students producing a short film using our digital camcorder, I had to contemplate whether I should start with Salvador Dali or Max Ernst in a unit on Surrealism, and when might the skies clear for our school’s Astronomy Night — set to feature three new telescopes. When the list is finished, the person I just met — by now quite impressed — supposes I must teach at an amazing school in an amazing district.

I do. Have you ever heard of Compton, an inner-city Los Angeles community notorious for violence, rap, and dysfunction?

On the May morning five years ago when I sat sweating and reflecting on my four years at Emory — years filled with Wheel deadlines, history papers and RA incident reports — I never imagined that five years later I could reflect on the experiences from teaching a room full of 10-year-olds. Honestly, who thought their Emory degree would lead them to kickball tournaments, making silly character voices while reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and suspending yourself off the school roof in order to test science contraptions that are supposed to protect eggs? I didn’t. But I’m here and, despite our community’s challenges, there is much to celebrate.

A few weeks ago, California Secretary of Education Jack O’Connell announced that this year’s recently released statewide achievement test scores continue to reflect an alarming disparity in U.S. student achievement based on race and income.

Many would say that my school, Ralph J. Bunche Elementary, has defied the odds. On paper, we resemble many typically struggling schools. Ninety-seven percent of our students receive free or reduced-price lunch.

Forty-two percent of our students speak English as a second language. Poverty and violence permeate the neighborhoods where our students live.

But our school’s test scores stand in striking contrast to other schools in the state with a similar socioeconomic profile.

As the Sacramento Bee reported last week, 79 percent of our black fourth graders were proficient or advanced in math, compared with just 30 percent in the rest of our district and 41 percent statewide. Just five years ago, only 3 percent of our fifth grade students “passed” the test in math, whereas 78 percent met or surpassed grade level this year.

Our Academic Performance Index (API) score has also exceeded the state’s eventual goal for all its schools, and in 2007 we became the first California Distinguished School in our school district, Compton Unified.

There have been persistent obstacles in the way of our success. A school like ours, one which educational think tank EdTrust West an recently cited as having made the most gains statewide for African-American and Latino students, requires an incredible, never-ending effort from students, teachers and families.

But the continued success of our school and public education in general depends on you, actually. Some graduates are about to flood careers directly related to education, and those that aren’t must always be mindful of the responsibility our society has to educate all children.

If I’ve learned anything from the struggles and victories in my classroom and school, it’s that there is a moral obligation to ensure all kids receive a chance to succeed. I also learned not to eat glue.