I just had a bunch of parent-teacher conferences tonight. The vast majority were so easy and pleasant--Im working with some truly lovely people who simply want the very best for their kids. They are doing their best, their very very best, and they are trusting me with the most precious pieces of their hearts. Its an honor (and a BIG responsibility) to recognize that other human beings are doing this. I am often struck, though, working with disadvantaged families, at how remarkably different their realities are from mine. If a teacher--a trained professional with years of experience working with children and years of experience studying child growth and development--told me my little Miss M was really, really struggling with reading/writing and/or math, and this person used phrases like: Im tremendously concerned... and produced examples of other childrens on-level work so I could compare it to what M was able to produce, and while doing so this person said things like: Can you see the big difference between what M can do and what M should or could be doing right now?? Friends, omg! Id have a fire lit under my butt--Id be in the Yellow Pages, frantically searching for tutors, child psychologists, shaman healers, etc so forth. But then...this is middle/upper middle class thinking. This is how people with resources and information and knowledge and an ability to think outside the box react when given threatening/upsetting/disappointing news: How do I fix this? Im going to fix this. Disadvantaged folks do not do this. I often find myself facing exercises of frustration, in which I have to get a parent off a fixation with one particular thing I said 10 minutes earlier, because they arent comprehending: *Your child is in trouble.* Or they are comprehending, but they immediately move into Denial and think they can talk their way out of it. Or they comprehend, but its just overwhelming. Their lives are overwhelming, and this is One More Thing. Or they just dont want to deal with it, because they dont have a clue how to. Or they have no help. Or they dont speak the countrys primary language. Or they have other priorities in Life. I think about things like that, and I wonder how much of it is just those particular people...and how much has to do with the disparity between the classes; the chasm I see growing and growing and growing, and nobody seems really all that interested in stopping it. I think this because Ive worked with the disadvantaged, immigrant population my whole 20 year career, and this is not getting better; in fact, it is getting worse. Comedian Russell Brand has a YouTube channel with videos he calls The Trews (True & News combined--clever, no?), and he recently did a segment called Is It Your Fault Youre Poor? I really felt Russell did a most excellent (and entertaining and laugh out loud funny at moments) job highlighting and underlining and bolding and bringing forth the source of our problem: one rich English guy and one rich American guy from upper class backgrounds, sitting around in their fancy suits very far removed from going to bed food insecure or worried about the rent or having to choose between electricity and winter clothes that month, kvetching about whos to blame for this situation (according to them: not the rich...of course). I am struck, in these moments, once again, with the thought: I am not a magician. Dear Arne Duncan: I AM NOT A MAGICIAN! I am a human being with no superpowers. My brain power only stretches so far. My love for these children cannot save them. When I was young and dumb, I thought it could. In many ways, I still want it to--I am a magical thinker, to my core. I get magical thinkers; Im one of their gurus. But I also have learned in 42 years here from various different experiences at work and outside of work: Love is not always enough. I need help--I either need help from their parents, or I need help from the government. Somebody needs to save us all. Education reformers want to keep believing in/waiting for Superman to do this, and they think Superman is public education. Davis Guggenheim made a very emotionally powerful (and slightly disingenuous and fairly misleading) documentary underscoring this countrys education issues. And they were blamed on the Unions. Im not a member of a teachers union, yet I still face the same problems, sooooo...just sayin. Cant be the unions, must be something else at play. But keep on with your magical thinking, if it makes you feel good. However, I do not sit in a quiet office all day having meetings and being lauded for my Big Ideas: I deal with Reality. Day in, day out, Reality visits me every day. And it is loud and messy and gives hugs and badly misspelled cards, but it also cant read or write or do math, and I am desperate to help it do that, because I know it needs to. But I also want it experience Play and The Arts and Imagination, because those matter, too. And so I embrace it, and I love it, and I try to make it a little better. And I try to work within the expectations thrown down at me from your Big Ideas born in your quiet, magical thinker office. But I am not a magician, and I am not Superwoman. I am not. I am not. I need HELP. (Our children need HELP. And teachers are only one tiny part of the answer...it takes a village.) Okay. Thats done. Rant over. The vast majority of the people I met tonight got it; they really got it! (Or told me they did.) And thats something thats true no matter what your annual income is: everybody parents differently. Everybody has a different way of helping their children. But we all love them and want the very best for them, and we all do the best we know how to do at the time were doing it. With the resources weve been given. And thats really what it all boils down to, Social Media friends: resources. And some people are hoarding them. And I agree with Russell Brand: thats not okay. (Ill post a link to his most astute observational video in the comment section below.)
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 01:22:40 +0000
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