Humility

For one of my on-campus classes, we had to write a "This I Believe" essay. National Public Radio (NPR) does a segment on these essays where people submit "This I Believe" essays and some are given the chance to read them on-air. I wrote one my senior year of high school in AP Language, so I was familiar with the concept, but for my class we had to write one about teaching. In it, I wrote that I thought teaching should be a "humble adventure" where teachers realize that students don't always act out because they dislike you, their failure to not complete their homework isn't because your class is stupid- sometimes there is far more going on in their lives than you can even fathom, and this week taught me that my assumption was correct. 

Allisa had students write "This I Believe" essays, and man...did they struggle with it! I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that at 15, many of these students aren't asked to discuss what they believe in. Many of these students go day-to-day being told what to do. I mean, the whole concept of school is institutionalized. Students are like Pavlov's dog- when the bell rings, they know it's time to get up and go to another class, go to lunch, leave lunch, or go home for the day. (Not that this is bad, I personally can't think of another way to do it.) Anyway, they really struggled with writing about concrete ideas rather than abstract ideas. Could they have written about how they believe in love? Yes. But did they understand how to write examples of this? No. We are also doing a huge unit on Moral Courage, so students had to write what they believed in, how it ties into moral courage, use an example from stories that we've looked at in class, and tie in some internet research, and use APA citation to do so. We reached the point where now that students have turned in their final drafts, we are just going to put this assignment "away" and revisit it at the end of the year when students get more used to the fact that their ideas are welcome in our classroom. 

Back to the humility thing...
I brought a stack of papers home with me to grade, and I am humbled. One student wrote about how she believes in standing up to bullies because she was bullied. At 15 she has already struggled with anorexia, cutting, and has been hospitalized for suicide 3 times. Yes, that's right, she's 15! Were her conventions of spelling and grammar accurate? Not really. But how on earth do I grade someone's life that like? Another student wrote about her experience in 7th grade (when she was 12), where she got to be friends with a young girl in a group home. One day my student asked her why she wore the same pair of tennis shoes with every outfit, and the girl said they were the only shoes she had. So, my student went home, asked her sister, who was the girl's size, if she had shoes she didn't wear much anymore, and my student brought shoes to the young girl so she could have more than one pair. At 12! No one asked her to do that, no one told her she had to, she had that idea and did it on her own. I just...I get teary eyed thinking about it. 

And then there's the student who wrote about how he believed in Christianity. Yes, that's an abstract idea, but he wrote so eloquently and about how people misjudge Christians and how Christians misjudge people. He wrote about his desire to lead a Christian life. 

I am humbled. These kids...they go through so much more than we give them credit for. We say things like "What could a 15 year old possibly know?" Well, these kids know a lot more about life than some adults I've encountered. I was talking to someone about teaching in Conyers and they said that it must be an interesting experience since I probably don't have a lot of white students. They said it unassumingly and, growing up in Cobb County, although it was about 50% minority students by the time I graduated, I still went to school with mostly white kids. Honestly, I hadn't noticed it. I was raised, not to be "color blind," but not to treat anyone differently because of their skin color. In one of my multicultural classes I explained it like this: I see race the same way I see that the sky is blue and the grass is green- I don't notice it, really. I know the sky and grass are that color, and people have different colors of skin, so I don't pay much attention. But, after that was brought to my attention, I took a look at my classes, and out of about 170 students, I probably have about 15 white students. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I love my kids just the same, but it does bring up some interesting things...
I can't relate to my kids on that level. I've never been put down because of the color of my skin. Try as you might to tell me that it doesn't happen, but oh, it still does. Sometimes I wonder, what credibility do I have as a white woman standing in front of these kids? I am fortunate that about 90% of RCA graduates will go onto college. What about when I teach at a school where only 10% of students go on to college? I'm just a white girl, what do I know about some of the things they're going through? Add to that fact that we have 3 out of 23 people in my cohort that are of minority races, meaning that we are headed out into the world of education still mostly white. Some of my cohort members are teaching in schools where there is a low graduation rate and there are 2 white kids in their classes. And the school board wants them to teach The Great Gatsby. Now, considering my fish is named Gatsby, you know I love that book. But what do these minority students have to relate to in a book about rich white people? This adds another dimension to my job- I have to think about and introduce books differently. If I were to teach Fitzgerald's book, I'd have to preface it by asking students if they'd ever been in a situation where they liked a girl (or boy) so much, but that girl/boy wouldn't date them because they didn't have money. Then I'd have to bring in the gangster aspect of it. 

I'm ranting, I know, but I wonder how many teachers who have been teaching for many years still think about these things. I am lucky that Allisa uses authors of various races in her classes. She doesn't point it out like it's some big "whoop-dee-do," but it's just another part of our class. I like that.

Bottom line: I love my kids. They are special. And I pray every day that I can be a light to them and that I can let them know how special they are. 

Smile, God loves you!