FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH CARE

One of Mami's Little Treasures

By Ms. Dinorah

People teach us the way they like to be treated. They put us in our place. I once had a high school student who clarified to me, “Lady, you ain’t my momma. You don’t pay my rent. You don’t pay my bills. You ain’t gonna tell me what to do. I don’t owe you respect just because you are a teacher. You’re nobody.” Well, I had asked him to do something that he didn’t want to do. I took him to the principal’s office. I myself didn’t know what to do. I had yelled and screamed, which I shouldn’t have done. He was right. Although I didn’t like the way it sounded, what he said was true.

Sometimes, we teachers judge our students’ reactions toward us inaccurately. Matthew Lipman says, “Seeing children as irrational rather than as resolute in protecting their own integrity is a misinterpretation of childhood experience.” The same happens with high school students and people, in general. It is so easy to judge others because they don’t engage. Maybe we are not engaging. Or, maybe they have engaged in more meaningful and rewarding activities. We are not perfect. There were occasions when I didn’t even want to go to this school. I know it sounds terrible. It is the truth. I never missed a work day. I had the confidence that working in that place would translate into something positive in the long run, like patient endurance, besides my standard certificate, but I wasn’t joyful there, and it showed. “You hate this job,” another student had told me earlier in the year. My heart whispered, “Yes, I do…” I didn’t admit it. I wanted so much to make a difference by becoming a classroom teacher. It didn’t work out.

I may be called to teach, but I am not a superhero. That’s what classroom teachers are. They are superheroes, having to deal not only with teaching, discipline, procedures but also with an avalanche of paperwork and external pressure. I have strengths and weaknesses. I enjoy crafting creative learning instances where students are invited to explore, to discover, but I dislike enforcing them upon those who choose to do otherwise. And I love teamwork. Teamwork enhances the quality of any experience in addition to providing opportunities for people to learn from one another. Each person brings his/her own strengths to the table and helps the other become stronger. Most of my former high school students were extremely generous with me. They saw me as a happy person and accepted me, despite my ineffectiveness as a standard classroom teacher and frequent screaming. Some produced wonderful work and, with their resilient attitudes, inspired me to never lose faith in the goodness of people. These, the Doctors of Creativity, were mostly from my junior class, along with a few bright committed sophomores. Others, like a freshman I will call Mr. Unreachable, and to whom nothing I did or said was worth his full presence in the classroom, were given the chance to practice at least for a little while how to put up with someone who hadn’t been called to be their typical teacher.

Interestingly, after the student from paragraph 1 made it clear to me that I wasn’t his mother, he began working even harder than he previously had had. He was always among the first ones in turning in assignments and following directions that often I didn’t even have to give. Not that the whole situation became ideal because we suddenly started to behave impeccably either as a classroom teacher or a student. My best memories still come from the moments when we worked as a team, in peace and harmony, respecting each other’s views, differences, and experiences. I made many more mistakes, and they forgave me. And they also made mistakes, and I forgave them. From time to time, I still use my student’s words to rebuke negative, faultfinding voices screaming in my head. After all, these voices ain’t my momma. They don’t pay my rent (my little brother does). They don’t pay my bills. And they definitely ain’t no teacher.