P.S. I'm Not Talking About You Ms. Wegner

Have you ever read, “An Indian Father's Plea”? I highly recommend it—it’s a heart-wrenching, highly erudite letter in which a father explains to his son’s kindergarten teacher that he’s not a slow learner, just from a different culture. My third block read it today because it’s currently Native American Heritage month, and also because it’s a terrifically composed letter. We talked about cultural difference and I asked them how many of them I'd pronounced names wrong for when they first entered our class. We laughed as five or six kids raised their hands and I went through and made sure I'm saying them right, now. Then I asked them to think. To consider themselves. Are there situations in which they’re misread by their teachers? Do their cultures or identities create gaps between their internal lives and school expectations? Students thought, intently, and for a ridiculous, beautiful 20 minutes utter silence reigned in my classroom as they wrote out their feelings.

The things that they wrote! They talked about being laughed at for their English, about language barriers and not learning about their own heritage. They spoke of their loud families and how teachers think they’re rude when they’re just being real. They hate being ignored. They hate being made to talk. They hate when the whole class is punished for one group’s misbehavior. They are Honduran and Mexican and Vietnamese and religious and atheist and angry and lazy. They want to play video games. They want to learn cursive instead of history. They want to sleep on their desks.

Some of them wrote directly to other teachers, and I feel myself trapped, wanting to give them a hint. But I have to respect student-teacher confidentiality. Passing on the honesty they decided to share would be a betrayal. Only one of them wrote to me specifically, and I added it here-- it makes me laugh even as I think he's right, we should build more stuff in class.

The best bit? Writing back to my students, thanking them for their honesty and bravery and affirming how deeply lucky I am to have them in our class.

Oh how I want to do this every day… I want to teach English! English!

Some of the more innocuous samples:

Precious: P.S. I'm not talking about you Ms. Wegner

Teach us cursive, dammit!

He wants to build stuff. Next up, Industrial Revolution! Lucky guy.

He spends every day angry. Feels angry that the black students in the school look at him because he's Hispanic, and mock his English, and make him an outsider. He never speaks much, just whispers the answer under his breath and then half grins as he peeks up at me to see if he got it right. My whole heart contracted when I read his honesty here. "I should of be a good kid but yall do me like I am... They think they smart but they aren't." My advice: to speak up and prove you are, man. That's the only way to change it.