So it’s weird. I’m home alone. I can’t even think of when I’ve been at home and not had pressing work to do. Don’t get me wrong. I collected 40 reaction journals on an essay today in class and need revise my prep for last week and grade some assignments for the independent student I’m teaching at Regis…but none of that is pressing.
Mark is making his way back to San Antonio as I write, and Emma is at daycare still since I have an acupuncture appointment this afternoon. I had a few hours to myself, and I even went to get my nails done for the first time in forever.
I have had many thoughts on my mind today. My students are reading about poverty, and I think I am going to add another week to it since I found some great pieces by Mev Puleo and a few other authors. I’m really excited for this class. Today, my students read an article in their textbook entitled The Way to Reduce Black Poverty in America” by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. I tried but failed to find a PDF. Essentially, the author addresses many of the issues that plague African Americans and that I saw firsthand in my two years living at Claver House in North St. Louis.
His article sparked a number of conversations in my classrooms today: one being–how do we help the children in our impoverished inner cities so we can break the cycle of poverty and second being that the public education system is broken for these students and needs to desperately be fixed.
I wholeheartedly believe that the Nativity and Cristo Rey models are amazing and are one step we can take in helping a handful of these youth. (If you aren’t familiar with them, google them. I can’t believe there isn’t one in San Antonio.) The model is amazing and innovative but they only can help a tiny portion of the problem.
I heart still hurts for some of my students. I can’t get over what an injustice they have received in their education. I was talking with a former Seton student last night, and what I told her was true. I was doing lessons with my honors high school freshmen that my college freshmen would have really struggled with. My girls had mastered technology. They became awesome writers and understood the structure for literary writing, introducing quotes, creating and writing a thesis. Unfortunately, that magic didn’t happen for some of my students last semester, and for some, it wasn’t because they weren’t trying. It was because they had been part of a broken education system for 12 years, and for many, they received “modifications” for years in their writing classes because of their bilingual status. As I told my Regis education students last semester, letting a student write a word in Spanish isn’t a good “modification” on a lesson plan. It doesn’t help the student learn English. It’s an injustice and sets a precedent that will severely hurt that student in his or her future.
I have a feeling this semester my students and I are going to be thinking a lot about how to solve injustices in the United States (and world). My biggest hope is that they leave my class hoping that they can do something instead of feeling overwhelmed and thinking that trying to make the world better is impossible or too big of a problem for them to fix.
I was pretty impressed with the conversations we had today. I’m finding great resources for my semester on social justice and writing. I sure hope that I can use these ideas and material again! Today was one of those days where I was reminded how much I love teaching and how thankful I am of the many experiences God has given that have helped shape me and allowed me to share amazing lessons with my students.
