Journey For Change

One educators opinion...

I'm teaching what the book says teach them but it seems its not enough....
It's OK taking prayer out of the schools but our money still reads in "God we trust."
over 50% of the school is deemed low income when parents are just lying on forms to get free lunch...
if they only new that getting free lunch pretty much deems your kid a dunce...
I would give everything in my classroom to have parents of failing kids actually come to parent teacher conferences JUST ONCE....

somedays I sit in my classroom shaking my head thinking...this profession is just TOO MUCH...
do the number of kids I fail outweigh the ones I positively touch?
the Asian kids are always serious, the Hispanics kids play too much,
the White kids try to get over when they can and the Black kids have no trust....
the community sits by watching while the dog chases it's tail....
the dog spends round and round thinking he's getting closer....
no one will stop the cycle to point out where it keeps starting over...

I believe being a teacher is the vision you see during meditation becoming a future physical manifestation....
using your patience to try to control someone else's concentration...
doing better is all some think about, but just doing, is what causes others to live in self doubt...
this calling is a constant uphill battle with standards and testing as boulders...
I just keep trying...I don't want their blood on my shoulders....
bad parenting is blinding, but I must keep climbing...
the passion for change is contractually binding....
this classroom is not a physical place but more like an abstract space..
I carry it in my heart, my dedication cannot be measured in charts...
If I could I would herd all the children together like shopping carts
and push them into inspiration...
then down the aisle of life and fill them with motivation...

don't heal the world, teach the world to teach themselves to heal...
we must realize that if education is the great equalizer then maybe we can attack
racism from the top of the prism, from outside the prison system, into the homes we live in....
we can relieve our own friction if we just stop rubbing up against sin calling it our friend...

but the kicker is...from my experiences...most African American parents are systematically lost at where to begin this....

Journey for Change...

 

Copyright 2009 Shelly Bell