I’ve been thinking a lot about Sean’s position there in Chicago, and the way he kind of does double duty with his urban students. He has to provide the instructional piece, of course, but also seems (from his comments here) to be very aware of the struggles (he mentioned the word depression in a recent comment) that his students experience on a daily basis in his city where homicide is a way of life and is becoming nationally recognized as such.
Let’s not shy away from that word depression in our students. Let’s not pretend it doesn’t exist. We live and teach in a society and in school systems that bring pain to students because of the way the classes are taught, as they are so tied to grades and performance and so devoid of the human element and the heart quality. We tell them to learn Spanish and they can’t tell us their daddy is in jail. They can’t figure out why we get after them so much about test scores and paying attention when they have so many other more pressing matters on them.
For our students our classes are just somewhere they have to be for awhile. It’s compulsory. We look at them at the beginning of the year filled with our love of our subject and we just naturally assume that they will also come to love our subject and want to learn it if we just do a good enough job. That’s not fair to them nor is it fair to us. We don’t sit where they do and they don’t stand where we stand.
Sean wrote about his inner city student Jazmine a few days ago. It means so much to me. Sean’s patience in the video he posted here recently, his clear desire to calmly connect with his kids in Spanish, contrast sharply with the many slightly insane teachers who, we must admit, often look upon their students as either stumbling blocks or pathways to advancement or economic stability or recognition in the profession for themselves. (Don’t most teachers do that or do they really teach just because they “love kids”?)
When the students’ real needs to seen as people by their teacher are rejected, and when their more basic life needs aren’t being met (hunger is a real issue in my school), I know that there is at least one teacher who is teaching for reasons that are not purely selfish, and that’s our Sean.