With the start of a new semester, I have a new group of students and I’m teaching seniors for the first time in what feels like a decade, but is probably closer to five years. I’m struck by a few things that I’ve been turning around in my mind since meeting them:
- Students who write amazing poetry, for whom I scrawl a question on the top of their paper: Have you ever considered submitting your writing to the Lit Mag? Can I hold on to this as a student exemplar? They respond: “No one’s ever told me I should do that” or “You think my work is that good?” [full disclosure, our literary magazine is only a couple of years old, but I think you know what I mean when I’m asking if they’ve ever thought of sharing their work with a broader audience]
- Students who are from all different African countries, who look at me with disbelief when I insist that yes, there are authors from Ethiopia (in this particular case), and she only believes me when I pull out a few books from different Ethiopian authors
- Students who have bought into the belief that they need to attend a four-year college, yet their skills are so low that they are going to have to take developmental classes in college, which will count for nothing, and thereby increase the odds that they will not complete any sort of degree, yet they assume the fault for this is all their own (maybe I was only half-kidding when I said they should ask for a return on their investment of education given these probabilities)
- Students who are nice, congenial kids, who I’m sure that, in our tracked classes, have been the ones who dutifully complete their assignments without question, who were most likely never recommended to take an upper level class, where I suspect they would have done just fine
I am trying to be hopeful and trying to work as hard as I can in our time that remains, but I find myself with so many more questions than answers, and so much anger about a system that has simply set these kids up for what? When we gather every day, and they are hopeful, and they are reading, and they are owning their part of everything (for not completing all of their work, or not understanding something, or not writing something down when I’m sure that, in my haste to get to the next thing I’ve probably not explained it as best as I could), I silently panic that we are going to run out of time. Seriously, it’s like we are at the mile 2 of a 26.2 marathon that they have to run tomorrow.
Thus, my lessons are all about practical knowledge: learning how to read for understanding with dense texts, how to structure an argument, awareness of audience, how to write a business letter, a thank you note, a resume, and envelope, even and sprinkling that with literature of various types. They are not all going to a two- or four-year college; it’s best that I make sure all have skills that they will need.
With about three months remaining, I’m going to throw everything I have at this situation in hopes of at least giving them a chance to make their way in the world. I won’t tell them that I can work miracles, because I cannot, but I will tell them, as I told them yesterday, if they give me a good faith effort, they will be better when they finish than when they started.
Dr. Kimberly N. Parker 