Sup Teach?

Back when I was a second-year college kid, Mr. M motivated me to pursue teaching in an urban classroom right outta college. “If he can take the dive, I can too” is what I thought. The following is a recent fb post he volunteered for the site. Thanks Mr. M!

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Today my fourth graders and I went to a Dodger game at the MUCH HATED (by me) Dodger Stadium. One thing that warmed my soul, aside from the Dodgers losing 3-0 of course, was seeing my kids actually applying what they learned in my class. (a.k.a., Our lessons actually serve a purpose after all!)

Enrique corrected Sage on her grammar immediately after she told Jonathan, “I don’t have no more nachos.” Enrique looked at her and said, “ANY more nachos.” (He also threw in a finger point for authoritative purposes.) Later on, Sevastian calculated that with about 40 sections, and 1,200 fans in each section, that there were about 48,000 fans in the stadium. What a sav. Two seconds later, the scoreboard displaying the attendance for the day vindicated his reasoning. I don’t think anyone else noticed it, but an ear-to-ear smile stretched across his face–not smug, mind you, but confident–a confidence you wouldn’t expect from a kid who once repeated second grade.

If you’ve never taught before, you probably wish you had those twenty seconds of your life back after reading the aforementioned paragraph. But if you have taught or cuurently teach, you could probably feel me on that. And believe me, it felt better than good.

After the game, I took the kids to Watts Towers because they had never seen them “in person.” It was while I observed them marvel about the architecture that I was sadly coming to the realization that once I dropped them off at home, that this would be the last time they would really be “my” kids. I mean, they’ll still stop by and visit or I’ll see them run through the hall, but when that first bell rings in September, they’ll be someone else’s “kids” now. And that’s the dilemma. Now that they’re someone else’s kids, from now until the end of their academic lives, no matter what obstacles they’ll face in or out of the classroom, did I do my job to push them toward a state of success? Because to steal, uh, borrow from John Wooden, I define success as “peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.” Only time will tell if they’ll be able to internalize that feeling before it’s too late.

I remember once when a friend asked me why I didn’t quit after a rough week with my kids, I replied, “They may be little punks sometimes, but they’re still MY little punks.” I don’t know why I said that back then, but I understand what it means now.