Growing pains, boundaries, and those dreaded parents…

Um, it’s been a day. To say the least. My head is spinning and I need to just get it out so I can sleep well tonight. Because, whoa.

I knew it was coming, there’s been talks for MONTHS that our program was going to undergo some growing pains. We’re in the hiring process, which in higher ed takes fucking ever, and today was the first day of the quarter. So  my day was spent triaging academic emgergencies (i forgot my schedule! can you help me buy books? i want to change my major!). It’s so lovely to see all thsese students and I want to give each and every one of them this undivided in the moment attention. But it’s hard because I’m being torn in 47 other directions. Namely being charged with overhauling our current method of seeing students and going to a case management model. Thanks a lot legislature for forcing this upon us!

It’s really really going to be a good thing once we get the hang of it. 2 hours of mandatory face to face meeting with students on my caseload. I’m really excited to dig in with these students and meet their needs and see their growth. Really fucking excited. But it’s hard to explain this new program, and everyone is stressed, and students are dropping in to my office left and right like old times to simply try and get bus passes or a quick errand. With working 16-20 hours a week, being dumped with a caseload of 26 students, who I need to see for 2 hours each (resulting in 52 hours of face time, in roughly 60-80 hours of work time), it doesn’t leave much wiggle room for meeting the new state requirements.

And then, since it was the first day of class, I got to go down to the classroom (I normally only teach Tues/Thurs) to meet the students. They’re awkward and precious and totally the same as they alwayas are, despite always being a fresh batch. I love it. They don’t know when to laugh at my jokes. They appear frightened of the syllabus. They’re bored to tears with the discussion of classroom guidelines.

And then there was this mom, who stood in my doorway asking me questions, and as I began the process of clarifying what she needed me to do, she just kept saying “stop acting like I’m an idiot, I’m the customer here.” I just go so bewildered because I was asking clarifying questions so I didn’t give her the runaround. I was actively trying to access her information online so that I COULD help her, even though I don’t normally have those tech permissions, and after she said “I’m the customer!” for the third time I wanted to scream “NO YOU AREN’T, YOUR DAUGHTER IS GETTING $10,000 OF FREE EDUCATION AND BOOKS EVERY YEAR, YOU AREN’T A FUCKING CUSTOMER, YOU ARE A CHARITY CASE!” But I refrained, because yes she’s a customer, but if you go to a restaurant and start yelling at a server because they ask what you are there to order, that’s pretty shitty behavior. Also, it’s fucking college, why is this student’s mommy coming to ask a question? ANNOYING.

Overall I am super super excited about this quarter. I’m nervous, though, because I know I need to set strong boundaries with myself over what I will expect of myself in my advising days vs. teaching days, and I might end up being less experimental in my class when I know that certain assignments work, because all my office attention is focused on getting these students seen. But if I can project myself out 6 months I’m going to be in a very happy place!

A little less Hillary Swank, and a little more Khloe Kardashian

notice the pearls…

I teach a community college class for 16-20 year old students who have dropped out of high school. This quarter my students comprised of:

A 17 year old recovering heroin addict.
A 19 year old who checked themself into the psych hospital for three days mid-quarter for suicidal thoughts that they hadn’t had since they were young and their dad hanged himself.
A 16 year old celebrating the year of life anniversary after recovering from an Oxy overdose in a suicide attempt.
A married girl who’s pregnant with her first child.
A few homeless students.
A student who was drugged and date raped at a party midquarter.
A student who narrowly escaped a juvy-life (until they are 21…so 4 years from now) sentence for a crime.

The list goes on, and on, and on. Each student with their own story. Their own life. Their own path to success and happiness.

And I got to witness it all.

In this line of work I come across people who have the mistaken impression that I am somehow saintly for doing “that kind of work,” with “those kind of students.” I’m no saint, believe me. And I think they have it wrong. Because, I don’t really teach these students. My goal, as an educator, is to provide a safe place where community and authenticity can happen. The students teach themselves. They inspire each other. They say, on our final presentation day, things like “before this I didn’t talk to peers, because highschool drama was just so intense, but you guys…you guys have become my family.”

Every quarter there are students who say they wish I could teach their classes forever. And I say that I don’t get funnier or better looking the next 10 weeks, and that they will be glad to move on. And I will be glad, in the first few weeks of the next quarter, to have them visit my class to let me know how they’re doing. They will fly on their own wings toward their own definition of success.

So what does this have to do with Hillary Swank? Or, if we want to go even more old-school, Michelle Pfieffer? These movies were ones I watched in school and thought, “I’m glad there are people who do that kind of work, but what are uppitty white women doing going into that kind of environment thinking they’re going to save the world?” I had ambitions to be an AP English teacher at a high school level. Graduate to the community college level. Then on to a prestigious university, perhaps, immersed in academia.

Maybe I left my pearl necklace at home on the first day of class JUST BECAUSE of watching Freedom Writers in college. Or maybe, somewhere along the way I got in touch with myself and that’s what my students can see. Maybe they notice the confused teenager longing for connection and understanding and a path toward success that lived inside me and informs my everyday actions with them. Maybe they notice that I don’t have to have it all figured out.

I have so far to go. But today one of my students, in her shoutout slide in her final presentation, said “Monk-Monk, I just want to let you know…I think you’re just like Khloe Kardashian.”

She meant it as a high compliment. And in reference to me saying that as an introvert I often come home and drink a glass of wine and watch The Kardashians on TV. I am their teacher, and Khloe Kardashian would play me in a movie. I kinda dig it.

I wish you could all meet my students. Maybe someday you will. When they reach their goals of tattoo artist, trauma nurse, civil rights lawyer, software engineer, animal trainer, makeup artist. Their future shines so bright I’m gonna need shades to watch them soar into the sun.

Teacher Discouragement: How Being a Yoga Student is Helping Me See My Student’s Differently

Yesterday’s class sucked.

I don’t think I went into the afternoon session with a foul attitude, though the one repeat student did ask me before class “um, are you okay, you look upset?” At any rate, we got started and the whole vibe was just off and this is repeatedly wearing me down, despite the good heart-to-heart conversation I had with them a few weeks ago. It just feels the same, and I want to focus on the 10 students who are paying attention, but I get distracted by the remaining students who are screwing around, or sleeping, or just generally spaced out not paying attention.

And so, when I let my class out early, I posted about my chronic discouragement on Facebook, with a somewhat plea for ideas…and the things that I was given back only futhered my frustration with the whole day. It feels like the people who responded, also teachers themselves, just didn’t understand what I already do in my classroom. Calls for using humor, more youtube clips, asking them about their interests, are all well and good…and things I do already…but at the end of the day, I also have to present to them material from the course and expect that the soft-skills of being able to FUCKING SIT IN YOUR SEAT FOR A GODDAMN 20 MINUTES AT A TIME isn’t too much to ask for. How are they ever going to get a job, if that’s what they indeed want, with their milling-around slacker attitudes?

In my almost-ragey attitude, I headed home and off to yoga. Where I proceeded to feel just as angry and this time, not only at my day and my students, but myself. The poses seemed more challenging than before, my mind wouldn’t shut up, I became hyper critical and noticed all the others around me. It didn’t matter that my instructor was positive, gave compliments liberally, and believed we could all do our best. It. Did. Not. Matter. I sat there on my mat, grumpy, almost determined to have a shitty class, and fumed. My day had been shit. My class was going to shit. And my best friend practicing next to me looked like a yoga goddess and it didn’t matter that I knew she cried at work and had as shitty of a day as me. I was in a place of glump.

But even though my brow was furrowed and I didn’t want to be there anymore (but you can’t very well just huff out after only 4 poses), I could tell that I was my student. For whatever reason they can’t get outside their heads, their past experiences, and no matter amount of coaxing, sweet-talking, gentle chiding, sarcasm, humor, or exasperation is going to motivate them to get off their butts and onto their mat and try Trikonasana if they don’t want to. Because anything short of that instructor marching over to me and physically manipulating my limbs into a contorted pose I was NOT going to do it.

I’d like to think it helped me have clarity about my own circus-monkey act in front of my class. But I was still angry and resentful and discouraged when I left, though this blog post was milling about in my mind, so there was probably some movement at least. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I teach them tomorrow. How I’m going to react. If I’ll use more humor, or You Tube clips, or whatnot. But I can’t do the work for them, and I saw that pretty clearly in yoga. She provided the space, and it was up to me to bring my game. And it was my deal when it didn’t go as planned.

My Speech Before the Movie Remember the Titans

I sat cross legged on the desk in front of the room. It was a minute passed the start of class and I was silent. Some students had just come in and were getting settled. I waited. My silence had an effect on the room. Conversations in the back of the class slowly stopped. The students in the front of the class looked at me wide-eyed. When I had 99% of their attention I said:

Before this job I was a crisis counselor. And one day, when I was on-call, I went to a house and the student they expected me to counsel was 350lbs. And she was stark naked. I stood in the doorway of her apartment building, and she was naked, developmentally delayed and didn’t speak English because she wasn’t from this country originally. And I thought to myself, “what the fuck do I do?” Because nothing in my schooling prepared me for this. (class erupted into giggles).

And I’m sitting here in a similar situation. Because this is the first class I’ve taught where, on an individual level, I really like everyone. I came to be a mental health counselor because of a belief in unconditional positive regard, and that means that no matter how many times you fail your English class, or keep having anxiety, I will not judge because I see the essence of each one of you and it is amazingly awesome. And yet, I work for an insititution that systematically oppresses young people, and expects conformity over individuality. And so I’m torn. Because on an individual basis I think that most of you will be ready to progress, but for some reason the classroom dynamic isn’t there, and so I really don’t know what to do. But I’m sitting here wanting you to know this, because I have a tendency to hide behind anger and annoyance and if you were all just dicks to me I could write you off and not be upset if you failed. But that’s not the case, and so I don’t know what to do. But I do know that yeserday a teacher called one of our students (not in this class) pathetic, and worthless, and I am extremely protective of you because I want you to achieve your goals…and be successful…no matter how you define that for yourself. But my job is to make an assessment on whether you are ready to advance to the next classes, and we aren’t there yet as a class. And I needed to be vulnerable and share rather than blindside you at midterm evaluations. Because I have enjoyed getting to know each of you, and I enjoy joking and our discussions, and your writings…and yet it still seems like there’s something missing. And so we can discuss it as a class, or we can just take some time to think about it, but I’ve never been in this place before, and I feel stuck and don’t know how to move forward.

I could have heard a pin drop the room was so quiet.

And then when I was done, a student spoke, and he said:

“yeah, it seems we still sorta have a highschool vibe in here.”

And another asked if it meant they needed to just be quiet and listen more, and I said that wasn’t it entirely. And another said that she felt I was a different type of teacher, that I cared, and that the other professors won’t care and could just fail them. And another said she really liked how comfortable people were sharing and that it felt good to her.

I told them they weren’t getting in trouble, and that this wasn’t a bad or shaming lecture, but that it was something I was feeling and wanted to share. And the body language was at least 85% engaged and seemed to be in agreement, even though some of their honest verbal feedback had a slight edge of defensiveness (which is understandable).

And so, not to beat a dead horse, I left them sitting in that place of vulnerable sharing and without a resolution to get started on our lesson for the day (as I’m still subbing for my co-teacher) and we watched Remember the Titans, which was supposed to go along with our lessons on diversity, but also, in a strangely coincidental way, went along with this idea of rising to a challenge, and changing, and becoming a team and people that we can be.

Results are pending on whether this worked. Or if they even heard me. Or if the students I wanted to hear me heard me. But I did something different today, leading from a place of honest vulnerability, rather than my typical sarcastic bravado and flippance. I hope they noticed. I hope they heard the message at the heart of it…that they are worthy.

It all changes in a blink of an eye

Last week my afternoon students were immature and disrespectful to put it mildly. It’s a challenge with any group of ‘at-risk-youth,’ (aka high school dropouts ranging from students who were homeschooled since the womb and former felons) to create a community and break old habits. It’s even more of a challenge when five of your students all attended the same previous alternative school AFTER all attending the same high school (and getting kicked out).

Recipe for disaster.

Or, like today: recipe for amazingness.

I’m not sure if I passed their hazing test, but they all seemed surprised when I let them out early. They stood outside the door and talked about ‘ballin” and I was able to heckle one young man who clearly wasn’t dressed to play a game of pickup basketball. It’s about connecting, and somehow my GIANT white-girl-former-basektball-playerness was enough to hang with them for a minute. And one dude even said that he learned something about himself today, which is a miracle all around.

Sure they’re chatty, and sometimes off topic, and I wanted to poke my eyeballs out last week, but it can all change in a minute.

Like, how, at 12:50 today, my friend’s mom died.

Yesterday she was alive. And today she died. And my friend went from having a sick mom, ciorrosis of the liver, given 5 months to live (which was changed to 5 days in the span of less than a week), to not having a mom…planning a funeral…all the emotions attached to the death of a parent.

Two extremes. In the blink of an eye.

Discrimination at the college level

I am so angry I could spit, or fight. In fact, my eyebrow was raised practically the whole afternoon class and the smile on my face was really because my teeth were clenched and I was trying to keep from punching the librarian in the face. And then kicking her in the face when she was down on the ground. Because her treatment of my students was so overly-the-top rude that I cannot let it go and will be speaking to my supervisor about it on Monday.

My students were working on a collaborative assignment facilitated in a computer lab at the college library. When the librarian came in, she was tense already, which is something I’m unacustomed to. Normally all of the staff I’ve met on campus are quite friendly and don’t openly seem to treat my students with disdain. I have to remind myself that the stigma of being a “high school dropout,” or an “at risk youth,” is something these students fight daily. While often annoyed, I am fiercely protective of my students. They are beautiful individuals and should not be shamed or bullied because of some arbitrary rules.

So, the students had been broken up into their groups and were beginning to work on their assignments. One of my students got a phone call, and stood up, saying “hey dad I’m in class, I’m going to have to call you back.” We’ve all been there, right? The awkward phone call where you just have to get off real quick but if you don’t answer you know you’ll be in trouble, or the person will be worried, etc. The librarian FREAKED THE FUCK OUT though. Now, keep in mind, we were not in the middle of the library. We were in a private computer lab. Nor was she presenting. They were working independently. And she didn’t acknowledge that he had turned away from the group (in order to keep it quiet) and had said “dad I need to call you back.” She raised her voice and got in his face saying, “you need to get off the phone. NOW.” and then she repeated herself when he said, “it’s my dad. he’s dying of cancer and he’s in the hospital. I’m telling him I’ll call him back.” She clearly did not listen (or thought he was spinning a story?) and said again, almost shouting, “I SAID GET OFF THE PHONE.”

Incredibly rude.

What’s worse, is this student is on the Autism Spectrum. He has many accommodations, is freaking brilliant and works SO HARD to fit in socially and do “the right thing.” He is super polite and I know that he would never take a call if it weren’t an emergency. By this point (which all happened within 30 seconds), I was up and standing next to him. And she said to me, “they are not allowed cell phones in the library.” And I replied, since he had left the classroom after she directed him to, “he has autism. his dad is dying of cancer. I am aware of the cell phone rule, but he has accommodations that are allowed to him.”

I wanted to punch her. I’m surprised I kept my cool enough, because I was livid. I don’t care if there’s a cell phone rule or not, shouting at someone is NOT the way to handle it. Correcting a student’s behavior has a time and place, and I just know that if he wasn’t seen as an “at risk” student, he would NOT have been yelled at like that. No way. If he was 50, or 25, and talking quietly on his phone? Nope, nobody would yell at him.

And I also wonder.

Was it because he was black? Or because he’s 6’4?

Because I can’t imagine her yelling, in the same fashion, at one of my less intimidating physically white students. Or maybe she would, but even if my student wasn’t black, or on the autism spectrum, or have a dad dying from cancer. But it was rude. And I think it needs to be addressed.

As we walked out of the library, after the presentation, I took him aside and said:

“Hey dude, I just wanted to apologize for how she talked to you. I think it was inappropriate for her to address you that way, and I informed her that you were telling the truth. I sometimes think faculty here profile CEO students and how you were treated was not okay. Just know that I was angry about the situation, and angry on your behalf, because it really wasn’t okay.”

His response? Ever so sweet he said, “thank you Ms. Monk-Monk. I appreciate that. Have a good weekend.”

And he tipped his hat and lumbered off into the rain, all the while lugging his gigantic over sized backpack.

Bearing Witness to Student’s Lived Experience

In the past few weeks I have realized something: my job as an instructor/adviser is just as hard as it was as a crisis counselor. Though the schedule is much easier, the fact that I am simply in a position to bear witness to lives, rather than be the person to actively help seek the resources and see immediate change, is where the exhaustion is coming in. I know that I was built for this work, but lately there are several students who have been heavy on my heart. So heavy that I downloaded Anne Lamott’s new book Stitches and am flipping through it, because she talks about the utter fuckedupness of the world and how we stand and face all the cruelty in situations that often don’t have any ‘meaning’ (she cites the Newton shooting, for example.) Her words give me comfort.

So I’m nestled in my pajamas, at 4:30 pm on a Wednesday, drinking red wine and watching Jake & The Neverland Pirates with Potamus and musing about the fate of my students. And I’m sad, and angry (at parents and schools that have failed my students) and excited and proud, but also this feeling that is deeper than all of that, something about awe and heartache mixed with immense fear and hope. It’s hard to express adequately, ya know?

This week I had a student tell me that in their photography class they were instructed to take “street shots” and so they were in a piss-filled alley taking photos of graffiti. And they struck up a conversation with a homeless man, who spilled his life story, and after an hour the photographer moved on to a different location…getting two blocks away before they heard screams. And when they turned back into the alley, the homeless man had been stabbed to death by someone on drugs. A man who had previously lost his wife and daughter in a car accident and had chosen the homeless lifestyle, donating all of his posessions to charity, in order to “start over.” If heaven exists then maybe he’s met by his daughter and wife, but only minutes before my 17 year old student had been chatting with him, taking his photo. And then he was dead, just like that. And my student witnessed it.

How do you make sense of that? How do I hold the space for that story, for the emotions that go with it, without trying to solve it or make it all magically better?

What about the student who told me they missed class last week because they were arrested and with 1 week until their 18th birthday are most likely going to be charged as an adult and sent to prison? This student who I found on the news was selling close to 300 “molly” and crystal meth pills at a local rave. My student fessed up to their actions, but still? And school is the best option for them right now, but my heart is heavy because prison is the real deal and all the hard work to get on the right track were blown in a night.

How do I hold that?

And the students who have been writing about their drug addictions and the process of getting clean. Or their experience being in lockdown psych wards for psychotic breaks. Or the 11 concussions and expulsion from high school because they didn’t pass their class but no teacher gave any accommodations for the sports related injuries. My students are struggling with SO MANY things. And they come every day, and write about SMART goals, and learn study habits, and sometimes they do it when they haven’t eaten for a day or two, or don’t know where they’re going to live.

I admire their tenacity. Their ability to rise above the challenges that no kid should have to face…homelessness, drug addictions, abuse, mental illness, physical illness, natural disasters, etc. I bear witness and have to sit with their stories and know that maybe that is enough. When I can’t do anything but smile at them, and tell them hello, and hear their lives in a way that many educators haven’t done in the past. Is it enough? I have no idea. But I hope that it makes some small difference…

Trayvon is my student…

Potamus and Russ, my best guy friend, co-worker, and teaching mentor

We were playing in the backyard last night. Boof had gotten a new weed wacker and so we were trying to get some weeds trimmed down. We were drinking beer and hanging out and lovin’ on our little guy Potamus. It was a relaxed, happy, family-lovin’ type night. And then we came inside, and Potamus had randomly changed the channel to the news, and that’s when we heard: George Zimmerman found not-guilty.

I felt a lump in my throat and in my heart. I’m sad to say that I wasn’t shocked by the verdict, it seems that all these high profile cases end up not-guilty…I wonder if being high profile makes a jury take even more caution with “reasonable doubt,” but as far as I understood the facts of the case, manslaughter should have been chosen. Boof and I started talking about it, and he brought up the legal system, talking through all of these logistics of how cases are tried in the media vs. tried in a courtroom. And, I was only half-listening.

Because I kept thinking about my students. My lovely, beautiful, funny, intelligent, “at-risk-youth” who could, at some point, end up like Trayvon. They’ve smoked pot and stolen things and some have ended up in jail for weeks, months, or years. But they are beautiful people who do not deserve to be gunned down for walking home or ‘being in the wrong place at the wrong time’ like so many have suggested. My students, mostly those of color, are amazing people and deserve all the chances in the world to live and love and flourish. They don’t deserve to get stink-eye when entering a store, or to be followed, or to be assumed by dress or mannerisms or their past to be lesser than my white, home-schooled, middle-class students. I love each one of them as if they were my own rascally teenage son, and the thought that this could happen to them is maddening.

Over on Blacked. Bunched. Mass. Mom, she writes a beautifully powerful entry entitled Open Season on My Sons, in which she explores and explains the conversations that she will have to have with her sons about this case and their own safety going forward. And it got me thinking about my own son, who is white as milk, and will grow up with everything it means to be a privileged white middle-class male. Will I be pro-active enough to have these conversations with him, about guns, and safety, and not stereotyping someone based off fear and style of clothing and color of skin? I know I’ve thought long and hard about having conversations with him about sexuality, but I hadn’t rehearsed these race conversations in my mind, yet. I’ve been thinking the fact that my son goes to a diverse daycare, which will end up in a diverse school, and our friends are diverse, that he would just know that black boys/men are just as worthy as he is. But I don’t think that passivity is good enough anymore. I will have conversations where he will hear, directly from my mouth. Maybe I’ll start with introducing him to my students, who are lovely, intelligent, hilarious, beautiful, individuals, despite the other labels that society has given them.

How are you reacting to the verdict? What conversations about race do you have with your children?

State of the Union. State of my Mind.

I snapped this picture on MLK Day 2013 in downtown Seattle.

There’s a film of weariness hanging over me that I cannot seem to scrub off. I’m not sure if it’s the long nights with a teething toddler, or the daily reminder that my students are on the wrong side of the education tracks. Always working to gain ground. Never really getting ahead. Never really breaking through the walls. Sure that’s an overstatement, as I just learned of a sweet girl in my Fall quarter who made honor roll, but I also take her privileged homeschool life into account, and think: can all of my students make it? Can 50% of them make it? And what does making it really look like?

I flicked through the radio stations last night and heard snippets of breaking-news-gunfire from the cop-killer standoff and our president’s State of the Union address. I marvelled at how my student’s existence is more like that gunfight scene than the flowery words spouting from the president’s mouth. Perhaps I’m becoming cynical, now that I’m 30 and a mom and have been working with youth and families at-risk for a few years now, but I couldn’t help but feel a sense of defeatedness after listening to the brief ideas the president said. Something about a college scorecard and something about making the world a better place, which sounds nice, but doesn’t really cut it, in my opinion.

This idea of a college scorecard, so that parents can know the “bang for their buck” is good, in theory, but what does it really mean in practicality? What does it mean for my first generation students whose parents are looking for a “bang for their buck,” they’re looking for their student to get a job and move out because there are more mouths to feed. These students are on their own, 16, 17, 18, high school dropouts trying to reach the moon and stars and their dreamed-for AA degree. Most won’t make it. Not because we don’t do everything we can to advocate for them, to teach them how to navigate college, and pick majors, but because this-present-moment-life gets in their way, from jobs and babies and losing babies and breaking up and losing jobs, and LIFE gets in their way. But also, their past gets in their way. Choices they’ve made. Choices that have been made on their behalf. Choices that others have made that have affected them.

Mostly I am sad at how these student’s previous educational experience did not prepare them to be here at college. My public school kids were shuffled through like cattle, focusing on standardized tests and not really learning much about themselves, and my homeschooled kids lack an ability to socially interact with people who aren’t exactly like them, and haven’t been exposed to things that they might not agree with, they shut down when even the slightest ‘offensive’ material is presented (like, perhaps, having to decide whether they agree/disagree with innocuous statements like ‘be the change you wish to see in the world,’ or ‘love at first sight.’)

Boof and I go round and round about my own educational experience, having graduated debt-free from college and then having to take out thousands of dollars in loans for my Master’s. I go round and round with my friend Russ about his Sociology class and their lack of preparedness or ability to critically think. I feel like my students are stuck in a votex of propoganda where the message they get is “go to college, it will help you get a good job,” but many lack the ability to succeed in college and who’s to say that a college degree, at least a non-specific one like a general AA or a liberal arts BA will really get you a job. Because the liberal arts BA seems to be the equivilant of the old highschool diploma. Educational inflation.

I chose English because in high school I took classes like English, History, Math and PE. I knew I didn’t like Math, Science was hard, and English seemed interesting. I went to college and figured, “well, I guess I could be a writer, if a miracle happened, or I could teach English.” I mean, I thought I had thought a lot about it, but I really hadn’t. I figured that teaching was at least a job that was connected to a major. I couldn’t fathom all my friends who were Religous Studies majors and then ended up working as admin assistants, not doing anything remotely similar to their degree. What would it have looked like, though, if career and tech classes had been mandatory in HS? What would I have chosen to do if I had been forced into on-the-job training as a dental assistant or dabbled in culinary arts or radiology tech? Instead of the message ‘everyone needs to go to college,’ what if the message was, from a young-age, here are jobs or careers, try them, explore, learn about yourself, do what you’re good at, know that a job won’t bring all the fulfillment that you want so you’ll need hobbies, and go to college if you need to for the career you want, but don’t just go to college because you don’t know what to do and people are telling you to.

I don’t know if the post-secondary system can ever be fixed. I feel like I get my students too late to make a lot of difference. I wish that the upbringing in the K-12 system would equip them for higher education, and I wish that education was affordable and relevant to today’s market. I wish businesses really looked at whether someone would be a good fit for a job, regardless of whether they have a BA or an AA degree. I wish I had more hope than I currently do that it will all settle out and make my student’s lives shiny and good. These people I teach are delightful, with lovely and hard stories, and they deserve to not be failed by an archaic system.

I have a son. He will graduate from high school in 2029. What will the state of the union be then? The state of education?

Student Problem

And we’re not talking about Potamus. No, he remains completely “lovey” free (save his mama’s boobies). Seriously, that kid still won’t take a bottle/sippy cup/paci or hold a lovey. Whatevs. It’s working for him.

No, I’m talking about in my class.

My high-school-dropouts-getting-an-AA-though-my-program-class.

Yeah.

This student is probably 16 or 17, artsy, and has been “unschooled” their whole life. Whatever that means (because when I look it up online it seems to mean a GAZILLION things, much like homeschool, but…more…unstructured?). At any rate, this individual hasn’t gone to school and seems to have been allowed to follow whatever whim and fancy they so desired. As in: no math past 4th grade and never written an essay. That was their self-disclosure in their opening “getting to know me” essay, which is SUPER good information, but leaves me scratching my head like “fo realz? no math? at all? past 4th grade? wasn’t that like…um…10 years ago?”

At any rate, said individual is very knowledgeable and speaks up and often in class, provides good (although sometimes tangential) responses and has a good attitude toward the assignments. They seem like they want to be here to learn. And last week they asked if they could do some sketching in their sketchbook while I lectured. Sure, no prob, I like doodling when I listen to lecture, too.

But, we’re talking full on technicolor sketching with tin of colored pencils and the shebang. Might get distracting, but so far they kept it in check.

Twice today during our activities, which, I’ll admit, did get heated and boisterous, I looked over and sorta made eye contact with this individual…sucking their thumb.

The first time I thought it was surely an accident, or my eyes playing tricks on me, like maybe there was carmel stuck to the roof of their mouth and they were trying to get it off. Or maybe they were biting their nails. Or…I ran out of any good options after that.

The second time it happened it was clear, and they then shyly played with their hair afterward, when they were “caught,” which is exactly like what my son does when he’s about to fall asleep (a little hair twirl by his ear).

While clearly I have to address this somehow, I’m going to talk with my co-teacher, because it’s such a sensitive topic. I’m sure this student knows that it’s socially considered…different…and while we’re a tolerant and open class, perhaps a different coping skill might help them be perceieved differently. But man, I don’t know what to do, really. I mean, they don’t talk about this in grad school. Sure, my elementary school friends have had the awkward 3rd grade conversation about stopping the habit (at least in public), but…17? In college? For reals?

So…advice is welcome on how to broach this subject sensitively…