Where Does Compassion Fit In?

Madison Jane

I am nine years old. My family has been evicted from our apartment in a neighborhood, which was considered the “projects”. We are now living in a single room hotel with two double beds and a small bathroom. There are four of us in my family, my mother, father, 5 year old brother, and myself. Because we are now living in a town outside of my school’s district, I am going to be forced to move to another school! I LOVE my 3rd grade teacher and have made many new friends this year. School is my safe and happy place. What am I going to do now?

The situation at home has been very tough for us this past year. My father has been walking/hitch-hiking 18 miles to work at a lumber mill where he makes $5.25/hour. Due to the extremely cold weather that he has to work in, the company turns its head as its employees drink on the job to stay warm. This has caused my father to become an alcoholic who has spent our money on that addiction, which is why we are now being evicted. We have one car which is currently broken down and we can not afford to fix it. My mother is taking the city bus so that she can work at Record Town. There is no way that I am going to be able to go back to my third grade classroom and I am a scared, sad, and very stressed little girl who has enough change in her life already.

My mother calls the school to tell my teacher that I am not going to be able to attend the school anymore. My third grade teacher responds that she does not believe that this move is in my best interest and that because I am currently doing so well and am so happy that it would be “bad” for me to have to go to another school at this time. She has just offered to pick me up at the hotel and bring me home everyday for the remainder of the school year so that this situation can be avoided. What a saint! She was always one to take the time to listen to my stories, was nurturing and compassionate. She was what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be a teacher to help some students like me and let them know how much I cared. I wanted to be a compassionate teacher who took the time to guide the students to see their way around a tough situation and get the courage and strength to become anything that they wanted to be just as my third grade teacher did for me.

For the remainder of my third grade year, my third grade teacher picks me up and brings me home everyday. In a world where nothing seems to be going right and where my parents are already dealing with enough, I seek her out as my role model, my savior of sorts, and my angel. She is my hope.

I knew what I wanted to do with my life ever since this incident occurred. When it was time for me to declare a major, I already knew that I was destined to be an elementary teacher. I was going to change the world for at least one student the way that my world had been changed by one teacher. Yep, no question in my mind, teaching was for me and I already had a purpose for my teaching…to be compassionate and nurturing. After all, teaching is all about the students… right?

I teach at an elementary school where more than 80% of the students receive free or reduced lunch. Our student population is filled with many families who are not only living in poverty, but have been “stuck” in generational poverty for many years. Due to the situation that the majority of my students are in, I am now looking into the eyes of children who are dealing with the same situations I faced as a child, or in some cases, much worse.

The housing situations are similar to the one that I was in around this age. We have a lot of students who live in the “projects” and crime often filters the streets around the school. There have been numerous arrests and drug busts on the very street where our school is located. My first days on the job, I walked through the school parking lot to find a spoon and a needle on the steps of the school. Sex, drugs, and violence are well known to my students and something that they are constantly dealing with.

So, here I am, exactly where I wanted to be. Now, I have a chance to help those students see their way through these situations and give them a fighting chance to create their own future. But this sadly, is not the reality. Although it is my goal, and my true reason for teaching, everyday I am faced with the sad fact that due to the external mandates and requirements of me as an educator, the emotional support that I intend to provide my students has been pushed aside. Instead of teaching the whole child, I am now concentrating on spitting facts at them and asking them to demonstrate their knowledge so that we can finish our curriculum and perform well on the district assessments. There are so many pressures to fit it all in that there are days when I feel that I have lost my spark. My smile appears less often and there is no time for me just to enjoy the students the way that I used to. My relationships with the students have almost disappeared and due to stress, my teaching practices have become unknown to me.

When I first started teaching at my current school, I was given, according to the gym teacher who traveled to all of the different elementary schools, “the toughest kids in the district.” And oh, boy, were they tough. I had many behavior problems to deal with that year as a novice teacher, I honestly did not have a clue what to do. One student in particular was constantly in trouble. He would call other children names, hitting was his favorite pastime, and he was constantly yelling in the classroom and trying his best to disturb everyone around him. Other teachers would often approach me and tell me that he had been rude, or violent, or in some cases, inappropriate towards the opposite sex. He did not care how he got my attention, he just wanted it and it was familiar for him to be yelled at and punished at home.

At first, I accepted the advice of others to dish out lots of punishment for his actions. For the whole first half of the year it was a constant struggle for me to teach because of his disruptions, not to mention about half of my class that year had similar problems. It was him against me, and I wasn’t sure that I was going to win.

I was lost. I had no idea how I was going to handle this student for the rest of the year, let alone teach him. Then I remembered my third grade teacher. I decided to practice what I preached and really get to know this student and invest myself in showing him how much I cared. I spent lunch with him eating and talking. I would meet him on the playground and talk to him and joke around with him just to make him smile. Instead of constantly reprimanding him and punishing him for his outburst, I tried to understand why he was doing these things and help him come up with some more appropriate choices for next time. In our many visits I learned that this particular child was dealing with a lot of verbal abuse and was unsupervised all day, leaving him to hang around older students who were teaching him these inappropriate behaviors and introducing him to violence and who knows what else. This student was truly in survival mode, and he was really crying out for help. He needed to have someone care, someone to listen, someone who believed in him. I took the time that year to talk with him and really get to know him as a whole person. I invested myself and cared about him the way that my third grade teacher did for me.

Although I will not pretend that all of his behaviors and problems disappeared, our relationship grew, and over the remainder of the year, there was a dramatic difference in his attitude toward school and his behavior in my classroom was remarkably better. He still struggled with controlling himself in unstructured times, but even this improved. I grew very close with this student and the following year, when I was moving to the third grade, I was given the choice to pass him on to the other third grade teacher, or to keep him for another year. I didn’t have to even think about it, I pled to keep him in my classroom. We grew together over those two years, and I finally felt that I was going to be able to help a student the way that I had wanted to from the day I met my third grade teacher. At the end of his third grade year, on the very last day of school, I found this student in the back of the room with his head down. The other students had gathered around him and were asking him what was wrong. As I walked over, I was filled with emotion, when I finally got him to pick up his face, I saw that he had been crying. When I asked him what was wrong, he looked me in the eyes and told me that he did not want to leave me. My tough, can’t be bothered by anything boy, had been touched and I truly feel that I had done a good job that year. As we cried together and hugged, I knew that I had finally obtained my goal.

I believe that this was one example of how important relationships are and how a little caring and nurturing may be the most powerful part of teaching for our students. If I had not taken the time to care about this student, I do not believe that he would have learned as much from me that year as he did.

I feel that over the years I have lost this precious time. The time to really understand my students as a whole and take the time to not only care about them, because I do, but to show them that I care, seems to be a distant past for me. I am not sure how to get it back or how to balance out the two, but I know in my heart that I have had to sacrifice the most important aspect of my job. Without relationships, I feel that learning is lost. Just how much learning is lost, I don’t know.

Every day I have a student come up to me who wants to tell me a story, or give me a hug, or just sit next to me. Every day I have to tell these students that I am not able to listen to them because, “We must get on with the learning.” Instead of truly listening to my students, I merely smile politely and utter things like, “Really?”, “Wow!”, or “That’s nice”. What exactly am I teaching them? To be compassionate and take the time for others is also an important lesson, isn’t it? Where exactly does that fit into my curriculum and performance standards? All I have been told is that I must address all of the content and performance standards and finish the curriculum that is put in front of me by the end of the year.

So that is what I focus on. I push the students through and every day we rush to meet all of the goals that the state and government have mandated. If a child is dealing with all of these issues, which will he or she remember more, my teaching them fractions, or the time that I just listened and was there to support them and show them how much I care. Because my students are dealing with so many personal and family issues, it is unfair of me to ask them to push all that aside and just “learn.” How can a student who is dealing with so much emotionally pay attention and learn if he or she does not feel that emotional needs are being met? I am yet another adult figure in their lives who tells them what to do. How is that democratic?

I feel like I am doing my students an injustice. Sure, I am teaching them the knowledge and skills that are required of them in the second grade, but I am not addressing the values or emotions of each child.

William Ayers summed it up for me when he said,

“Most city teachers struggle mightily to do a good job in spite of inadequate resources and difficult circumstances-indeed, the structure of most city schools (the strict schedule, the division of knowledge, the press of time, the pretense of rational efficiency, and the huge number of students - all leading to a factory like operation characterized by hierarchy, control, and anonymity) works to turn teachers into clerks, and students into objects to fear and coerce. Clerks (and clear-teachers) are not expected to think too deeply or care too much. Thoughtlessness and carelessness undermine education - they also damage democracy, justice, and an ethic of caring. Engagement, thoughtfulness, connectedness, valuing youngsters as three-dimensional beings with their own hopes, dreams, and capacities to build upon - these are the basics in teaching toward democracy and justice and care.” (Teaching the Personal and the Political; Essays on hope and justice, William Ayers, 2004),

I often leave my classroom at the end of the day tired, frustrated, and sad. I need to find a way to live out my hopes and dreams as a teacher while still meeting the expectations of my profession. Is it possible? I am not sure. Will I “burn out” as so many teachers before me have? I hope not. Will my students remember me the way I remember my third grade teacher? It is my dream and hope that they will.

Discussion Questions:

Think about your reason(s) for going into this profession. How have they impacted your teaching and has your ideals/beliefs been impacted positively or negatively by the mandates?
What do you believe is the true purpose of education? What do you expect your students to know and be able to do when they finish school?
How do we best prepare our students to be positive additions to our democratic society?
Think back to your own years of school, was there one teacher who truly made an impact on your life? If so, what was it that he/she did? How has that impacted your own practices?
What are your opinions about how compassion and nurturing fit into our school systems? How do you see this impacting our students?

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