This I Believe

Tomorrow is the last day of school. (woah.) On the verge of endings and beginnings, I think we’re all feeling a little vulnerable.  A little excited. A little unsure. Not too different from how we felt 2 years ago when we began this journey.

A few weeks ago, my program director had us write a “This I Believe” essay to reflect on our two years in the classroom, and it seems an appropriate ending to my school year and this blog.  There are so many stories I want to tell about my students, but I almost  feel that I might rob them in some way by doing so.  They are unique brilliant people, with their own lives and interpretations of what they have experienced. Instead, I’ll just tell my own, less inspiring story, and hope that they will one day each be able to tell their own.

I believe in the innate value and worth of all people.  Two years ago I would have told you that I believed this too.  I would have talked about service trips, working with disabled children, my belief that everyone is capable of, and deserving of, incredible goodness. 

However such sentiments would not fully be true, for I have been a part of the way that our society, subversively but pervasively, values the affluent and the educated over the poor and uneducated.  We see things that we want to see and casually avert our eyes from the things we don’t.  We even judge our own worth and value against these standards, equating more self worth with our appearance and ivy league degrees and our ability to attain a high-paying, prestigious job. It’s an easy culture to become a part of, but also a dangerous one, for when we fall short, we begin to doubt sense of self, and when we judge the poor according to our standards, we negate and devalue entire communities of people.

I entered this movement wanting to teach underprivileged kids to love language, but in reality, my students have taught me much more about courage and perseverance and the reality of poverty in America. 

My students’ parents are hotel maids and factory hands and kitchen crews.  They live in the dodgy neighborhoods that most kids in South Charlotte don’t even know exist. Sometimes their hair is dirty, their clothes are unwashed, and they come to school without pencil or paper.  Some days they are crazy and frustrating and immature. Some seem hopelessly behind in reading, writing, and spelling, so much so that I want to throw my hands up in defeat and move on to an easier, neater problem to solve.

Yet on other days, I am blown away by the brilliance and beauty of my kids, of their writing, and their stories, their humor, their personalities and the dark things they have overcome to arrive most days at my door, with a smile.

 I am frightened by the way society perceives our kids.   Take my student Eduardo, whose mom works the early shift at Food Lion, and whose dad works in construction.  Do other know people know how he created an entire model of the setting from our novel? Or that he wrote a witty poem about a tangerine? If we don’t help him to show others his spark, who will? Will he end up in a menial job like his mom and dad?  Is he any less valuable of a person if he does? Who failed to help his parents discover their own spark, or reach for their own dreams? What social and economic obligations kept them from doing so?

 Maybe this is a strange revelation, but I have learned that the importance and urgency of our work cannot be understated, even though others (including, painfully, some of my closest friends) have devalued it. I have most definitely failed in many ways as a teacher, but I will never forget the stories of my students and how very much of their futures, and ours, are at stake in the work that we do.

The brightest moments in teaching are sometimes few and far between, but are always unparalleled in joy.  I’ve been amazed by the deepness of my students’ poetry, inspired by their enduring work ethic, and brought to tears by their kindness. I find it’s always the ones you least suspect that can puncture your heart the deepest. The troublesome, rambunctious, endlessly frustrating boy who, in his final free write before spring break, after writing about going to Carowinds and eating lots of ice cream, wrote “I will miss you, Ms. Ryan.”  Or the helplessly unorganized, messy, unfocused low reader who NEVER has her pencil or notebook out, who one day scribbled a note on a white board that said “Ms. Ryan, I love you from the very bottom and top of my heart.”

I think too often I’ve let others delude me into a certain kind of nobility about my job. “Oh those poor kids NEED you.” Well, maybe they do. Most of the time I think they need and deserve a teacher who is much better and more qualified than me, but I lately I’ve been pondering the extent to which I, and we, need them.  I need them to show me how to forgive, how to be humble, how to love unconditionally, how to make paper airplanes, how to persevere through challenges, and how to believe in myself. You would think I’d spend most of my time teaching my students the character traits that they need to posses, but in reality they’ve been teaching me the traits that I value and aspire to. (theirs)

I am maybe probably teaching a third year at my placement school next year. I am probably maybe going to law school after that. I am most definitely marrying my best friend in a little over a month.

To all of my friends and family who have supported me in the classroom over the past two years, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.