privileged empathy

i have found that i blog much less when i am teaching. 

now usually this is where i would go into a lengthy tirade about how tiring teaching is, how hard i work, how many hours i pour into trying to give my kids a decent education, but that has gotten old.

yes this job is hard. yes i work a lot. yes its exhausting, but that’s the point. this job is hard because we are facing the difficult reality of education inequality. 

despite what some of the wonderfully good hearted folks in the education reform movement might want to suggest, education inequality is not magically being fixed by some recent college graduates working really hard in poverty stricken areas for a couple of years. (sure, we may be making a dent, but we are far from "fixing" anything)

i have been consistently reminded throughout this semester that despite my hard work, despite my hours, despite my passion and desire to work for my kids, i do not face the same realities as many of my students. 

this semester has been tough. 

teachers have quit, friends have been robbed, kids have not passed tests, practice benchmark scores have been lousy, i have been sick, and i have worked too much. but this is nothing compared to the reality that so many of my students face on a daily basis. 

we who come to teach in communities like helena, we whine about how hard it is, how difficult the kids can be, how much we have to work, but so many of us have options once we have had enough. 

we have the option to leave, to start over, to try something else. 

i have that option. 

i went to an average high school in which my parents pushed me to make the best grades i could, applied to my school of choice, made grades that were good enough to get into this "elite" cohort of new teachers, and got a job straight out of undergrad. but if any of this were to fall through, i had a safety net. 

if i decided tomorrow that i had had enough, that i was working to hard and wanted to quit, i would still have options. i would still have opportunities. 

this is not the reality of so many of my students. they face a much more difficult road. the structures, systems, and systemic barriers that my students face were not present in my upbringing. 

my road was easier than theirs. 

despite how challenging my current job is, my road is still easier than theirs. 

i spent so much of my first few years in the classroom feeling like i was really “in the trenches” with my students. while i was, while i am, the reality is that i have the opportunity to step out of those trenches. my students don’t always have that. 

i think some of us in the education reform movement need to face a reality check at times. we are not truly living our students lives. 

we enter them, we hope that we can make a positive impact, but most of us don’t face their realities. 

over this thanksgiving break i am reminded and thankful for all that i have been given. i am reminded that i have been blessed with a myriad of socio-economic advantages over so many in our world. 

i have no choice but to try to do something with this, to try to give, to try to work for those whose have not been afforded the same opportunities. 

i am reminded that this work will be hard. it is hard. but let us never confuse hard work done out of privileged empathy with the reality of living life in the margins of our society.