Teaching English: The Keepers

last friday, i substitute taught in a special ed classroom in ypsilanti that only had 6 kids in 4th or 5th grade. from my limited interaction with them, it seemed that these kids did not seem to have any trouble learning so much as they all had major behavioral issues and so was sadly reminded that there are such “dumping grounds” for students that are continuously given up on.

at one point, after one of the girls in my class gave me attitude all throughout the day, i pulled her aside. “listen,” i told her, “one of the most important things you can do this year is learn how to be respectful of others. and this isn’t something that will just help you when you’re in 4th grade, but it will help you in life. and i believe that you are capable of this. i believe that you are smart enough to know what behaviors are not acceptable.” when saying the words “capable” and “smart”, i saw a distinctive flinch, a flicker in her eye of surprise or disbelief. that broke my heart. then, she rolled her eyes at me. i sighed.

in the classroom, it is glaringly apparent that love is discipline. it would be so much easier when your students misbehave to ignore them, give them an A, and graduate them to become the next teacher’s problem. love is letting imperfect people fail you when you’re giving it all you got.

word

(Source: poan)

n. the state or condition of unnoticed excellence—the hidden talents of friends and coworkers, the fleeting solos of subway buskers, the slapdash eloquence of anonymous users, the unseen portfolios of aspiring artists—which would be renowned as masterpieces if only they’d been appraised by the cartel of popular taste, who assume that brilliance is a rare and precious quality, accidentally overlooking buried jewels that may not be flawless but are still somehow perfect.

(Source: dictionaryofobscuresorrows)

“Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept the fact that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliché or a smoothing-down that will soften their real look.”

— Flannery O’Connor, “Introduction to A Memoir of Mary Ann,” Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (selected and edited by Sally and Robert Fitzgerald) (via habitofbeing)

(via hours)

“Teenagers are the most unloved group in our nation. Teenagers are often feared precisely because they are often exposing the hypocrisy of parents and of the world around them. And no group of teenagers is more feared than a pack of teenage boys. Emotionally abandoned by parents and by society as a whole, many boys are angry, but no one really cares about this anger unless it leads to violent behavior. If boys take their rage and sit in front of a computer all day, never speaking, never relating, no one cares. If boys take their rage to the mall, no one cares, as long as it is contained. In Lost Boys therapist James Garbarino testifies that when it comes to boys, ‘neglect is more common than abuse: more kids are emotionally abandoned than are directly attacked, physically or emotionally.’ Emotional neglect lays the groundwork for the emotional numbing that helps boys feel better about being cut off. Eruptions of rage in boys are most often deemed normal, explained by the age-old justification for adolescent patriarchal misbehavior, ‘Boys will be boys.’ Patriarchy both creates the rage in boys and then contains it for later use, making it a resource to exploit later on as boys become men. As a national product, this rage can be garnered to further imperialism, hatred, and oppression of women and men globally. This rage is needed if boys are to become men willing to travel around the world to fight wars without ever demanding that other ways of solving conflict be found.”

— bell hooks, “Being a Boy,” The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

(Source: hours)