Yesterday, I was presented with an opportunity to truly see life from my students’ perspective. As I am thinking about it more and more, the idea is extremely scary and intimidating, but I did not hesitate to accept my principal’s proposal.
Let me backtrack to explain recent events at school. Over the past couple of weeks, I have become increasingly frustrated with teaching. No, I am not frustrated with my kids (though many times I tend to channel my frustrations into SWIP signings and referrals). I am frustrated with the fear that I cannot adequately provide for my students. No matter how much I try to change my methods, alter my materials, and adapt to the culture, at the end of the day I still feel like it’s not enough.
Fortunately, I had an opportunity to talk to my wonderfully supportive principal on the matter yesterday (note to teachers: I have heard and witnessed the fact that available and sympathetic principals are extremely rare. If you have one, take advantage of it!). I presented to her all of my perplexing contemplations – How can I provide for children that aren’t adequately provided for outside of school? How can I make my classroom something that is truly meaningful for my students? How can I relate to my students (or at least prove my empathy to them) when I have never lived the kind of lives they lead? That was when she suggested something that had never crossed my mind: if I want to understand my students better, why not take a first-hand look at their lives outside of school? Our school has recently gained a truancy officer to filter through the students who are consistently late or absent. Those who are officially “truant” get a visit from the officer. By special request of my principal, the officer has agreed to take me with him on several upcoming visits.
On one hand, this proposition is extremely daunting for me. The neighborhoods my children live in are so poverty-stricken, and the people the truancy officer has to visit are likely some of the most impoverished. It would be difficult enough to enter these environments and feel a sense of empathy, sorrow, and guilt. But to go into homes where my own students live – the children I teach, the children I see every day, the children I love – is going to be exponentially more emotional. I’m expecting to come home that day crying and feeling like I want to give every one of my kids my life savings. Every time I start to think about it again, I get more and more scared.
However, like I mentioned at the beginning of this article, I did not hesitate taking my principal up on this offer, no matter how intimidating the scenario. I have been stressing over not being able to connect with my students, and what better way to understand where they come from than to see their world first-hand? Traveling into the belly of the beast will hopefully help me realize why my students come to me every day in the manner that they do.
After talking with my principal, she actually opened the same suggestion to all the teachers during our staff meeting later in the day. I noticed many of the teachers having a very different reaction than I did – squirming in their chairs, avoiding gazes, and looking like they already ruled out the idea before they even considered it. It is a completely understandable reaction, as this kind of endeavor scares me just as much as the next suburban-bred young teacher. But how can I expect to change things if I don’t know the root of the challenges in the first place? Instead of just going in circles and constantly complaining about not getting anything accomplished in the classroom, I want to actually DO something to combat the obstacles I have been facing. Rome was not built in a day, but it also wasn’t built because people were sitting around whining about the scenery not changing.
My “Rome” won’t be built in a day either, but hopefully this excursion will help construction run a little faster.
