What do red cars and teaching have in common?

I never have been in despair about the world. I've been enraged by it… I can't afford despair. You can't tell the children that there is no hope...James Baldwin

Today, I had the privilege of running into a former student at the store. I asked what she was up to, and she told me that she was a teacher...! A newly-minted special educator, in fact, working at a school not far from my own. It was such a breath of fresh air...a not-so-tiny miracle that opened for me right there, in the parking lot of Target.

In my part of the world, the school year is just shy of three months old. This early on, however, I'm struggling to remember a year where I've heard more negative stories about teachers and teaching than this one. There are some very good reasons for that. The rights of my colleagues and other world citizens in the LGBTQIA+ community have been eroded alongside those of people of color who, like so many American ancestors, came here searching for a better life. The funny thing is, the marginalized, (like openly gay African American author James Baldwin, who lived through racial segregation alongside other spoken and untold indignities in 20th Century America), often seem to be the most likely to show up courageously amid the current upheaval in our world.

My first teaching assignment was a long-term sub position at a middle school in an economically-depressed area near Baltimore. The year was 1989. I was teaching sixth grade general music and had given a single drum stick to each the 41 students crammed into desks in my tiny classroom that day. I got to the end of the last row and was carrying my empty box back to the front of the room when I discovered that a boy wearing a cast on his foot was crying. I asked if his foot was hurting. He told me that the boy next to him and used his drumstick to whack his injured foot. When I looked at the other boy, he just smiled.

A year later, I had landed my first teaching position, teaching music three days a week in a parochial school. I'll never forget my first year's salary: $7887.00 (I had a robust private music studio and my first big boy cooking job on the side) . On Tuesdays, I taught a fifth grade boy who I assumed simply didn't enjoy music class. We'd begin singing and playing percussion instruments and he would run into the hallway and pull his tie so tightly that his face turned purple. Thirty-five years later, I realize that he probably had sensory needs that weren't being met, but the best I could do at that point was threaten him with consequences if he didn't come into the classrooom and participate approprately.

The end of the school year came, and the staff ended the year with a luncheon...the highlight of which was the obligatory telling of teacher war stories! The stories got wilder and funnier until one was told about a girl who was caught eating a black licorice candy a particular colleague referred to as a "N-word baby" (I was the only black teacher and one of only two males working there at that time) and she had to spend the rest of the day wearing it on her nose. I think it was my failure to laugh like everyone else was and horrified look over what I had discovered about my coworkers that day that led to my need to do damage control to salve their feelings while quashing my own.

In lighter news, one of my eighth grade students that year is now my school district's Chief Technology Officer, and one of my second graders is our Director of Instruction...!

I don't share these stories to say that I know anything that anyone other than me is or has gone through, or to suggest that any teachers' struggles aren't significant, perhaps to the point of overwhelm. I appreciate that some of you have likely dealt with more challenging behaviors than these, up to and including physical attacks from students. I have also noticed that more and more kiddos arrive at our doors with unmet needs. I share because I had to dig deep for the bad in my 37-year teaching career (that doesn't count 3 years as a substitute teacher). The reality is, I experience deep joy in my classroom every single day.

My guess is that many of you do, as well.

The answer to the riddle I posed in the title is...when you buy a red car, you begin to notice other red cars out on the road. Whatever your mindset is, that's where your thinking goes. If your thoughts swirl around how much worse things can get...guess what you will notice.

Our job is HARD, and, of course I have had way WAAAAAYYYY more opportunities to ask my colleagues/read blogs and books/trial and error my way through challenges than my friend with fewer years on the job. But, our attitudes really do matter most. Especially on our hardest days. Please keep showing up. For some of our kids, you're the only person showing them what that looks like.

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I wish you only the bestest!

Chef Charles

Head Chef

www.teacherssnacks.com