How quickly things can change.
Jermaine has been good for so many weeks now. We’re in week 10, and I would say he was a disturbance for the first 4 weeks. Then he was good for 3 weeks, and he’s been off the last couple weeks. Today was one of those days that he was still off. Hope was a hard girl to get over to my side. She was in my class first semester, and I was not looking forward to having her again this semester. I think just being patient with her has been helpful. She’s taught me a lot about classroom management. Don’t let things blow up, things often blow over over time, and your patience will pay off. We had an off day yesterday. She was upset that I was calling on others, even though she was so sure that she was the first person to raise her hand. I would sometimes call on other students, and when they say the right answer, she would say it right after that and say, “I deserve a point, too, I also said the right answer.” I think students know that I’ve been patient with her, and it seems to be paying off with them, and I’m getting more and more of them on my side now. Today, she asked for a backpack. I gave her a free, crappy looking backpack I picked up for free from Classroom Central. Instead of the bright blue one she chose the gray one and started sporting that right away. She immediately wrote her name on it, and stood with pride at her new backpack, and with the biggest smile on her face started sporting it around as though she was modeling it. I looked at her with sadness. How poor do you have to be to be so happy about a poorly constructed backpack that everyone knows you got for free? I suppose she saw how down I got and wondered if she did something wrong and sat down immediately. I asked her to stay after class, and she said she needed to catch the bus. I told her it’s not anything bad, I just wanted to give her something, and just needed 30 seconds. Maybe she was paranoid that I was going to give her a lecture or something, for something that she may have done something wrong for. I doubt that she was asked to stay after class very often for anything good. Instead, after everyone had cleared the room, I said to her, “I know this isn’t much, but I want you to get yourself something nice.” I dug in for a $20, but found myself digging in for a $40 instead. She looked at me with the bright smile she has when she is truly happy, and said, “Mr. Kim, I know you don’t like getting hugs, but I want to hug you.” So she gave me a hug and we said our good byes. This from a student who constantly gets suspended for getting into physical fights, receives straight Fs in all her other classes in 1st and 2nd semester, but is managing to pull in a B or a C in my class. Days like today I remember now why I chose this profession. I love these kids and I don’t have to say it; they already know.
Ahkayla, Nayely, and Allison have been coming in to say hi for a few days now. Allison in fact sang in my classroom after school the other day. Her pitch was off but she still had a good voice. I analyzed her signature, and she was surprised that I gleaned so much about her just from a signature. What’s sad is that Allison and Ahkayla are now fighting, and they have been doing it vocally in class now. Ahkayla used the F word and the N word on Allison today, even though Ahkayla is black and Allison is hispanic. It’s wonderful to see students work beyond the racial boundaries, and perhaps not even see the racial boundaries at all. But some days, I realize just how delicate those relationships are. They can turn on a dime.
It’s weird, now, because most of the students in my 4th block especially work so hard to protect me. It’s as if they value me as a person and as a teacher, and they’ll do anything to protect me from harm. My TFA supervisor says that last semester, she noticed more students were doing things to please me. This semester, she says that more students do things not only because they want to please me, but also because they believe in themselves. I think the little anecdotal things I say to my students have been really paying off.
Justina told me that she wants to talk to me in private in the beginning of the class. So we went outside the door for a little bit, and she showed me a report she got from her guidance counselor. It was her GPA report from 1st semester. She was ranked 3rd out of 600 freshmen in Garinger. And she just wanted to show it to me because she knew I was going to be so happy for her. I would say I don’t have a ton of students that like me, but I am convinced that the few relationships that I do have are deeper than any other teacher’s. If they heard me verbalize out loud that I would die for them, I know that most of them will believe me.
The other day, I was talking to my students about my upbringing. Diamond asked, “Mr. Kim, is it hard to get into Harvard? I want to go to Harvard.” And I said, “Yes, it’s hard to get in, but I think you can get in. So let’s go to Harvard.” Diamond responds, “But I heard it’s hard.” I responded, “Yes, it’s hard, but you can get in. Why freaken not? Are you not smart enough?” And during the brief pause, she reflected for a moment. And I think that was the first time she may have told herself that she is smart enough to go to any school in the world, including Harvard. I continued, “I think you’re smart enough. In fact, I know you’re smart enough. So let’s go!” She’s known for a while that I believe in her. And I hope she starts to believe in herself.
I think I had an epiphany the other day. I believe that I am called to be the light in darkness, and the classroom setting can bring about much darkness. It’s in that sense that I see that I cannot succumb do their level of argumentation. I need to, no matter how hard it is, stay within the light. No matter how hard it gets, no matter how tempting it may be, I cannot stoop down to their level and curse them out or ridicule them like they ridicule me, or disrespect them like they disrespect me. That is the way of the darkness. It is so hard for me to resist the temptation to give them the same medicine that they are giving me. I want them to see their hypocrisy, but I find that they don’t see hypocrisy, they only see what is right in front of them. When I treat them with disrespect in the same way they treat me, with the same mannerisms and wordings, they can’t get past how I treat them and dwell on that evil act that I am only using for illustrative purposes. They won’t realize that I am treating them a certain way only to show them the evil of their ways. Instead, they’ll think that I myself am an evil person.