Epiphany

May 2005

When I took over three classes in October 2004, that meant I would be infiltrating the minds and lives of ninety individuals I had never met before.

Eight months later, I’ve found that one of the characteristics of my teaching style I pride myself upon is empathy. That doesn’t mean I don’t rub students the wrong way and engage in tugs of war with them over grades, classroom behaviors, expectations, etc. When I see some part of myself in certain students, it makes it easier to relate to them and to engage them. For instance, I’ve bonded well with my B period English class, which contains students who behave much like I did when I was a high school student. But that’s not empathy. The struggle I have is: how much can I really expect to connect with the students whose behaviors I have trouble relating to, whose races and sexes and socioeconomic statuses are different than mine? And don't forget that gap in age and maturity separating me from my students.

Nonetheless, over the course of this year, there is one particular student who I have connected to unexpectedly and it’s only recently that I realize how strongly. At the outset, this kid did not seem to care for me, her English class or school in general and yet, she has blossomed into a good student, and is a positive presence in the classroom, a person who has made the effort to give me a chance that other students have not been willing to give. Moreover, she is on the surface quite different from me. She is female, Black, seventeen years old to my thirty-three, from a poorer family than mine and although I’m not assuming anything because the Gay/Straight Alliance club at Central is filled with straight kids who are supporters, it’s even quite possible she’s gay whereas I’m heterosexual.

Still, setting aside for the moment labels and characteristics often utilized to segregate people from relating to each other, the reality is that when I took over her class in October, she was none too happy with the mentor teacher I was replacing. He had given her an F when her grade point average in the class was a borderline 59%, one point shy of passing the first marking period. The teacher asked her to do something at the end for points and she dismissed his offer; therefore, he felt no obligation to bump her grade up. Now you might think maybe she would’ve been glad to see me taking over the class but that wasn’t the case. Plus, I know I made a good impression on her when I correctly recalled her name from the first moment I took over the class, especially because it was not a common name and, according to her, people had a tendency to switch the placement of the “k” with the “s” in the middle of it. Nonetheless, her prevailing attitude in our early classes together was to put her head down on the desk and sleep on and off throughout, or space out and do other things; on one occasion, I noticed her daily English class notes consisted of a sheet of notebook paper containing only a handwritten Christmas shopping list. And she still wasn’t doing enough work in the class to pass. Sigh… At the time I had my hands full with trying to find my way through this seemingly impossible, ridiculously under-appreciated career called teaching and was immersed in the 180 Day program. I simply didn’t have the psychological or intellectual space among my overworked synapses to focus on all these individual students too closely yet.

After several weeks had passed since taking over the classes, I found myself touring the school greenhouse with another student teacher. I noticed a cluster of baby plants in tiny pots in the corner with plastic flags poking out of the moist soil with the name of this particular student scrawled upon them. The next time I was in class, I casually mentioned to her that I had seen her plants.

I can still see her face beaming, her eyes lighting up, her wide, disarming smile breaking out. It’s like a light switched on in her soul. She was damned proud of those plants. They were like her children. I’m projecting here but her reaction was so instantaneous and stirring that I know I touched a nerve when all I aimed to do was make small talk.

I didn’t notice at first but she must’ve started doing her work in our class because her second quarter grade was a C, a marked improvement over the F. She still had a tendency to be sleepy in class and it didn’t seem like she was enjoying the class terribly but not many of the kids in that particular class found it to be awe-inspiring.

However, when we began work on the research paper, she met with me for extra help to go over her thesis statement and get input on the idea she had for her paper. Another instance found her coming to class, waving her copy of Animal Farm, yelling to me across the room that she’d finished reading it that weekend, ahead of schedule for the due date I’d given. Indeed, she knew the characters back to front and commented endlessly upon the novel in our discussions. Meanwhile, her research paper, which was handed in on the due date and met all the requirements, earned a grade of A. The student hadn't appeared to be a particularly strong writer when I first took over the class and her hurdle with the thesis statement gave me some cause for worry but she put it all together when the time came and made both of us proud. Again, her quarter grade increased, from a C to a B.

Weeks later on the last class of the last day of the week before spring vacation, amidst the madness and chaos and noise of that situation, my ears caught the sound of this student bellowing at another girl in the room. Peering in the direction of the ruckus, I observed her hurling her book bag on the floor and screaming to the other girl to stand up and start something with her. A fight was about to break out for the first time in one of my classes. I darted over to that section of the room and as the other kids leapt up out of their seats and began swarming about the melee, my brain grabbed at one notion- try to convince her to exit the room with me.

I maneuvered between the two students. She was standing, while her frightened antagonist was glued to her seat. Words she was lividly shouting began to register in my mind- somehow this other girl had betrayed her and she was beyond upset- she was furious. I calmly asked her to come with me. That’s when something else registered. She was not only angry and looking right past me at the other girl but she was also taller than me, and her arms were rippling with muscles. If she wanted to get at that girl, it was perfectly conceivable that she could knock me down and still get at her. Again, I quietly but more urgently asked her to leave the room with me. And she did.

When we entered the hallway, a handful of other students joined us in the hall to observe her screaming, raging, pounding the walls with her fists. She seemed to be trying to communicate to me to me what was wrong but her explanation was engulfed by wordless outbursts marked by manic pacing. A vice principal was nearby, who came over to assist in settling things down, then escorted the student across the hall to the main office. I followed them there, observed that it looked like she already was staring to calm down, and so I returned to class.

After class was dismissed, she returned from the office to fetch her book bag. I calmly explained to her what she had missed in class, and checked to see that she was okay. Her smile had returned and the two of us, both relieved to greet the beginning of a week’s vacation, parted amicably and assured each other that this outburst was something we'd both just put behind us. She told me that she, the vice principal, and the other girl would meet to discuss matters on the Monday after vacation.

And now it seems so clear to me- everything connects back to that innocent conversation about her plants in the greenhouse. She began doing her work, doing it well, and now she heeded my soft request to stifle a strong emotion for the good of everyone involved. Had our relationship not been established as a positive one by that point, would the outcome have been different? It’s very possible. I’m not patting myself on the back here. After all, there are plenty of students I’ve failed to make connections with and it’s taken me this long to realize what a powerful thing it is to make a connection with a student, to show interest in one of their dear interests. And I give her plenty of credit for doing the right thing. It’s not like I convinced her of anything more than leaving a heated situation for a moment. But maybe there is some small component of that situation, some measure of a bond between us where a part of her recognized the empathy I have for her as a person and how I only wanted to help her help herself by not engaging in the fight. It all happened so quickly that it’s hard to analyze it with any certainty. But deep down, I just know that I have made a difference in her life, if only in helping her write a research paper and heading her off when she was about to make a potentially significant mistake. But the realization that has manifested in my consciousness and how I should approach my students from here on out is even more significant. She’s taught me, the new teacher, who has many years of teaching and connecting with students ahead of him.