I am a teacher

I'm a a teacher. But I don't teach math. I don't teach reading. I don't teach language arts or writing or social studies or science. I teach kids.

The mind of a child is just as precious as it is hilarious. I've found, though, that the reason for this pure beauty of imagination is a result of its openness. Kids aren't afraid of anything, probably because they have yet to experience most things. They haven't been plagued by the predispositions of a falling people. They've been let down, but the scars haven't been deep enough to matter. They've fallen down and been hurt, but the pain is still subsided with wet paper towels, bandaids, and kisses. Jodi Picoult paints a candid picture of this in her novel My Sister's Keeper.

"When you are a kid you have your own language, and unlike French or Spanish or whatever you start learning in fourth grade, this one you're born with, and eventually lose. Everyone under the age of seven is fluent in 'ifspeak'; go hang around with someone under three feet tall and you'll see. What if a giant funnelweb spider crawled out of that hole over your head and bit you in the neck? What if the only antidote for venom was locked up in a vault on the top of a mountain? What if you lived through the bite, but could on y move your eyelids and blink out an alphabet? It doesn't really matter how far you go; the point is that it's a world of possibility. Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewing shut."

If you know anything about kids at all, you know how true this is...

...unless they're robbed of their childhood. These babies have no one to trust anymore. Fathers are beating their sons, mothers are smacking their daughters, grandmothers are turning into lawful mommies, daughters are turning into child prostitutes, sons are turning into middle-men drug dealers. "Uncle Joe" is really mommy's boyfriend, and "Aunt Susie" is really daddy's drug-abusing whore. Babies are being taken behind the turned backs of their parents, being beaten and dragged away in strangers' cars with tear stained faces and empty eyes.  For these children, there is no longer innocence. There is no longer childhood. For many, they are deprived of the meaning of life without ever having the chance to discover it.

And then I look at myself. I had two parents that loved me and taught me how to be cautious of strangers. I had two parents that helped me with my homework and made me dinner. I had two parents that packed my lunch and waited with me at the bus stop. I had two parents that loved me unconditionally and saw me as their blessing, not their burden. I was blessed with incredible teachers, great friends, a high school diploma, and soon to be a college degree.

I am a teacher. Everyday, it will be my job to teach the precious souls in my classroom - many of which who will have seen the worst of the worst. Will they even know that there's another way of life? That marriage is meant to be forever? That being beaten isn't normal? That being hungry at bedtime isn't okay? Maybe. Maybe not. But they will know love. They will know acceptance. And they will know hope. Because I am a teacher. And I will teach them.




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