Above All, Don't Hate Anything

For various reasons, this has been one of my most emotional weeks yet. Partially it was the high of bonding with my second block on Tuesday, playing by learning dances together, their showing me pictures of their families or talking to me about the difficulties they’re going through outside school. Partially it was the epic prank we pulled on the kids on Thursday, teaching them about the Age of Exploration by having the trailer invaded. Partially it was the heading off of and successful resolution of what could have been a bloody fight. It's not a story I can tell most of, but I will share its ending. 

I want my students to yearn for the beauty behind the next bend

Two girls were ready to go to fisticuffs. I managed to get the attacking girl out of the classroom without anyone getting hurt. I kept thinking about how we’re not supposed to touch students in these situations, but my teacher’s authority was the only thing keeping a safe zone between the two girls, so I wrapped my arm around the student's shoulders and steered her strongly from the room. As I re-entered the classroom and called security, I felt angry that our classroom culture had been so broken. Students couldn’t really concentrate on anything. 

Not half a minute later, one of the notorious troublemakers launched a paper ball at another girl. She went off on him, saying that she would cut him if that happened again. I got him out of class, and then looked at my batch of students. I looked at the students who really want to learn, the students who came here from another country and only understand half of what’s going on but try so damn hard, at students who pop in and out between class and suspensions, students with IEPs longer than my arm, students taking the class for the second or third time, and I felt my tongue beginning to unravel at their one way of dealing with it all. I took a deep breath and started.

“Your answer to your problems, my children, seems to be to fight. Your answer to someone insulting you seems to be to get yourself in trouble, put yourself in danger. Well, guess what? Life is shitty. You're angry, and you're right to be. Some of you in here are dealing with poverty or families that are far away or sickness or just bad luck that’s more than any teenager should have to deal with, and I know because I’ve talked with you. But if you can learn to cope with that, you’re going to be helluva lot stronger than most grown adults. So when someone insults you, what do you do? What is the best, the very best, the only way to get revenge? It’s not to fight them, I’ll tell you that. It’s not to end up bleeding on the ground, or worse, in jail with no college that will accept you and someone who personally hates you. What’s the best way to get back at them?”

I paused for breath, and my most loquacious student whispered, “success.” With whatever part of me wasn’t intent on my oratory, I thought, these kids are so damned smart, how come they’re so damned stupid?

I want my students to gasp at the beauty around them

“Yes! Success! Get so far above them you don’t even remember their name. Don’t end up in a jail cell with the person you hate. Become a professor, become a lawyer, become a writer, become president of the United States, and forget they even existed because let me tell you, they won’t matter once you’ve left them that far behind. Use the passion that you have, the energy that makes you all break out in stupid, stupid fights, to get yourself out of here and far away and far above.”

A talkative kid, one who makes me laugh with his teenage ways, raised his hand. “But you know, Ms. W, I’m really instinctive, and if someone hits me, I’m going to hit them back.”

“Yes! Instinct!” I almost roared it at him. “Instinct is animal. Animals have instincts. We are HUMAN. That means we listen to our instincts, and we pause, and we reflect on them. We don’t just act on them like animals. We rise above, and that’s why we’re human. Be human. Be human.”

The amount of pleading and forceful conviction in my voice had even my kids who don’t speak a word of English paying careful attention. I didn’t say “f*ing” at all in the speech, but you could hear it before almost every noun I lobbed at them. I think that may have been all they remember from that day, but I don’t care. If I can teach my kids to respond to the crap life cuts them by fighting for success instead of with fists, I will have done what I came to do.

By the way, the day after, I called the two girls over one by one to talk about what had happened. Turns out, that security guard is awesome. He got them to talk about where they’re from (California vs. the South) and then explained the cultural differences between the two places. Said that an insult to one is normal to another, and vice versa. I told both that they’re two of the smartest in the class, smart enough to actually understand the other one, and so I’m not turning in any referrals. I just wanted them to realize what the other was thinking. To understand one another. Isn't that all anyone wants? Because life's too short, and the day before there was almost a fight in my classroom, I'd turned a corner in the hall to see a girl lying on the ground, watched an adult drag her to sit slumped against the wall while others muttered into walkie talkies and cleared the hall of students who'd been cheering the fight on. 

I want my students to feel that the world lies at their feet

I want better for my kids. I want them to know how to cope. I want them to inhale the spring air with the same enthusiasm I have. To be able to pause in their day with appreciation for its beauty. To feel that the whole world awaits them. To have access to the stores of wonderment locked up in books. I want to whisper into their very blood and impress on their very bones the words of Rilke: 

You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you,  as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within you the possibility of creating and forming, as an especially blessed and pure way of living; train yourself for that but take whatever comes, with great trust, and as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, then take it upon yourself, and don't hate anything.

Above all, don't hate anything.