Why We Teach

     In the middle of a school year, 'round about February 15th, after winter break, but before spring break, about the time when all energy and creative thought has been mangled by exhaustion, I question why I teach.
     At the end of summer, this is never a question. Oh! It is like a miracle in spiritually highly motivated communion with students, ideas, and comrades. By the end of summer, I've let go of missing my last set of students (who I always think are brilliant; seriously) and am ready to meet some new young people, who I hope by the end will consider themselves brilliant and maybe even friends. At the end of summer, I am committed to potential exhaustion, potential martyrdom, for the sake of perpetuating the idea of perpetuating ideas. I am ready. But by mid-February, I am ready to quit: just about done with bureaucrats, and budgets, and "no"s, and test scores. Then, I must recall what I remember someone saying, "Just do what you love to do and do it with passion, and you will feel full and purposeful." I always remind myself of the why during these times. That why counters the fact that I have forgotten what drove me into high school classrooms in the first place. I remember to keep it moving, the "it" being me, because this is what I was taught to do. Every second, minute, hour, day, month, etc. of my upbringing I was taught to work, and work tirelessly, for something better.
     I was taught to always try to do what I can to help someone--especially my brothers and sisters: often penniless, often hungry, often undereducated, often without a path out of the prisons erected so long ago-- prisons that still work to bar so many of us from the explosive and elevating bliss of genuine freedom.
My mother taught me this. My grandmother taught me this. My father taught me this. So did my uncles and aunts and great-aunts and great uncles and so did my teachers. I recall this idea with some effort in February--it keeps me keeping on. This past winter, these ideas came to me much more readily, having experienced during the previous August, the kind of catastrophe which demands absolute recognition of a power greater than onesself--which delivers us, in spite of our own failures of spirit.
     It happened like this: my 15 year old, who I still consider my baby, because she is my baby, wanted to stop at the gas station to get a cold drink after her ballet class. The class was held in a hot box studio on the edge of South Hayward, California. Now Hayward is a very working class city; that keeps it from becoming completely suburban. The city struggles with this identity, because it is so close to Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco, that one would expect it to be a semi-sophisticated city. Of which it is--semi-sophisticated. The city has its share of gang and drug activity. Property crime is not unusual. But one does not necessarily expect it.
     As soon as my daughter and I left the studio, we pulled over at the closest gas station and I gave my my little one, who was still in her ballet attire, my credit card. I parked right in front of the front door. It was an unusual August night because as the partially cloudy skies began to dim the heat of the day, they released tiny sprinkles into the settling evening. It never rains in the Bay in August.
     I realized at some point that my daughter was taking too long in the store, so I opened my car door and walked in to help her. She had apparently thought my credit card was my ATM card and tried to enter a PIN number. It didn't work and the clerk, a slender cigarette orange, middle-aged white man, smiled and said it didn't work.
"Here, just use this," and handed him my ATM card.
"Oh, that outta do it." And that was it.
"Thank you," smiled, and we both walked out the door. I got in the driver's seat. She got in the passenger's seat.
     As soon as she closed the door I looked at her and told her to put on her seat belt. As I looked at her, from over her shoulder, I saw two young men. I assumed they were young because of their slender frames and purposeful gait. They wore black hoodies as they scrambled toward my car. They both had their hoods tightened around their heads and wore sunglasses. They also had on black gloves, which I noticed because they were cinched around their wrists. I saw this and thought, "Oh those are cute gloves." I thought the hoods made sense because it was sprinkling. Then the pace and aggression of their gaits registered with me, and in a voice that hearkened all the way back to the Arkansas of my birth I said aloud, "These _______ look like they about to rob somebody." As I said that, my daughter responed, because simultaneously, the young man in the front pulled out from his waistband the most menacing huge steel-plated handgun I had ever seen, "They are."
     They sharply turned the corner away from us and rushed into the store. The evening was absolutely silent. I said, "Oh my God," as I turned the ignition key. We heard a--Bang! and a man sprinted for his life out of the store and jumped into his car. I drove away and kept repeating, "Oh my God!" I said to my daughter, "Let's pray that nobody got hurt." I pulled over at a gas station a couple blocks away and called the police. My daughter said, "Momma, let's get out of here." And I drove home, rattled.
I made a report with the police and immediately thought--and the thought has repeated itself--that it is very likely that both of those young men who robbed that store, risking their lives, and the lives of everyone around, could have very easily have been one of my students.
     I was in the neighborhood around the school where I teach. So I easlily thought about specific faces of those who tried to hide in the corners of my room, anonymously. How they tried to not be noticed, and when it was time to read or write, often struggled, not for lack of something to say, but for lack of the skills needed to say it. I think about the boys I loved having in class, who always saw straight into the heart of whatever lesson we examined. They thought critically about where they stood, and had ideas about the world which reflected my own. I immediately thought--and that thought has repeated itself--about how many of those boys had dropped out; I would see them on the street, holler at them, smile and wave. They always waved back and smiled. Then I thought about the kids, like my daughter: kids who read and write with efficacy, and will not rob gas stations. They will not scare to death little girls who look like their little sisters. Nor will they risk their own lives for short, quick pennies. They do not act hopelessly. They go to ballet class instead.
     Those young men I met that awful August evening keep me teaching in February, when the novelty has worn away and natural fatigue has set in. When I have no patience for those students who refuse to take what I think is their own pass to freedom and choice. They are the boys my grandmother first, then my mother second always tried to make us understand and feel connected to and compassion for. And it is hard at times.
     When your become their victim, from where do you summon the compassion? When they threaten your children--how do you keep believing in the idea of education as freedom? Well, I recall that August night with realism, fear and gratitude. My child is safe today. My child is educated today, but my child is also threatened by the presence of that child who knows not the freedom of efficacious literacy. I need not only feel compassion anymore. I need to be aware and keep teaching.