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Something changed for me when I became a parent. I now know the capacity of the human heart to love. I’ve been known to tell folks that parents don’t give us their children, they don’t give us their students— they give us their babies. I’ve witnessed enough tears on the first day of kindergarten and at graduation to know those tears are the same. There is a sacred trust between educators and families, and we have a moral responsibility to treat that trust with reverence.
I now get choked up about all sorts of things on all kinds of occasions. Recently, I found myself saying good-bye to Dr. Jackie Merz-Beck, principal at Minnehaha Elementary, who retired from Vancouver Public Schools after a 30-year career in education. I wanted to wish her the best in retirement and thank her for years of service to students and families. I was retelling a story about a conversation I had that morning with a student in one of her 3rd grade classrooms. I was almost through the telling when my voice began to waver and tears welled.
So what caused this reaction?
As I typically do when I make classroom visits, I try to find a seat right next to students. I usually engage students in a conversation about what they are learning, why they are learning it, and how it will be useful in the future. I sat next to a young lady who was very eager to speak to me. As we finished our conversation, she proceeded to tell me that her birthday was four days ago. I wished her a happy belated birthday. She then shared that her father’s birthday was the day before, and her brother’s was two days prior. I thought that was quite a few birthdays at one time and said so, wondering if they celebrated all the birthdays at once in their family. Her response: “We don’t have birthday parties. We can’t afford to.” I learned later that her life circumstances are challenging. But that’s not what brought me to tears. It was this student’s passion for making something of her life—it was her expression of her hopes and dreams, in spite of these circumstances.
Students are often curious with the Dr. title and often ask where my lab coat is. This young lady followed suit. And I’m always a bit chagrined, in the right sort of way, when I have to explain that I’m not that kind of doctor. When I finished describing my title and degree, there was a pause. The young girl looked at me and retorted, “Well, I’m going to be the kind of doctor that has a lab coat and stethoscope and helps people.”
Don’t you just love the courage and tenacity of this young lady? It’s that passion and hope that is so compelling, and for me, so moving. It’s resiliency in its purest form.
It reminds me of the sacred trust I spoke of earlier. It speaks to our moral purpose of service to our children in public schools and captured so poignantly by Bettye Spinner in Harvest Home.
In the ideal it is a harvesting, this work we do — a reaping of crops grown from ancestral seeds, a gathering of first fruit from vines that trace their sources beyond geography, beyond gender, beyond the bleach and blush and black of skin and root themselves in watery grace, in knowledge that nurtures us all.
In the ideal our classrooms fill, like cornucopia, overflowing with the bounty of our grange. Life stories, heaped among the texts, spill into hallways of our schools, crowd the sidewalks or the subways or ride yellow buses home, altering the form of knowing, changing heads, changing hearts, changing history, bringing harvest home.
Thanks again for all that you do. Continue to bring the harvest home.
Take care,
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