A Week in the Life of... (Part III)

In this series, I will record the interesting and not-so-interesting events of the school day and post it the following morning.  This is an effort to reflect on my day and my teaching and to provide you with some of the more mundane things that happen in the classroom and influence the process of education…

Wednesday

I learned today, right before Physics, of the death of a friend and neighbor, a father and grandfather, too young to die.  At the same time the Chilean miners were being lifted to freedom from the grasp of earth’s deep gravity, my friend succumbed to that very force.  For some, the gravity of life can be overwhelming. 

I am reminded of the many challenges my students face and the fears and uncertainties that they encounter: the student who moves from foster home to foster home that has not known love, the student who loses a parent (I have seen that happen too many times), the student who is teased or bullied, the student whose identity is ostracized by society.

The strength and stoicism displayed in mere children when faced with adversity attests to the human spirit.  We are survivors (we adapt, we assimilate, we build shelter).  Yet, sometimes the gravity of life pulls too strongly.

It is in times of great tragedy that we are most human.  Unfortunately, as these events pass, we lose that human connection and we slip back into routine.  As teachers, we can too easily become embroiled in the details of our curriculum, in the results of the high-stakes tests, and lose sight of the very lives we try to touch and enrich.  Behind every set of eyes, however glistening or glossy, is an individual story. 

To reclaim the power of education we need to begin by reclaiming our humanity. The current focus in education is on learning and results, and somewhere in that equation the well-being of the student is lost.  Teachers and students deserve a climate of education where there is space for the telling of those individual stories.  The end result of education is a human life, not a statistic.

Regaining humanity is not a philosophical exercise.  It is real and concrete.  It means providing food and shelter and medical care for all our students.  It means allowing our students to discover themselves and grow in a system that is not cheapened by the lowest common denominator of test scores.

Reclaim humanity, reclaim public education!