I’ve spent much of my teaching career metaphorically banging my head against a concrete wall.

Hannah Graham

3 min read

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Just now

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I’m not qualified to be here.

I don’t have an education degree: I graduated with a Bachelors in English. I’m getting my Masters in Professional and Technical Communications. I don’t have a teaching certificate. I never completed an internship. I’m not what one would call “great with kids”. I was the manager of a coffee shop. I know how to make a half-assed rosetta and gentle-parent entitled adults. Yet I’m here: sitting at a wooden desk, staring at 30 smaller ones and dreaming of kids who care.

The sad truth is that they don’t. I’ve loved every single child that has stepped their foot through the threshold of that doorway more than one could possibly (healthily) give out and stay sane. I have 90 minutes with them Monday-Friday for one full semester out of their 12 years in the school system. It will never be enough. I show up at their basketball games, their dance concerts, their breakdowns and their battles. I give them food and deodorant and more paper than they’re used to. I know them. I baby them. I spoon feed them Amy Tan and Jason Reynolds. I give and I give and I give and I give. They don’t care about school work or test scores or a degree. But they give back. They care about me.

These kids are stupid.

I looked at the state exam finals staring back at me with a black-eyed glow. Smirking. Non-proficient… non-proficient… non-proficient… non-proficient.

For twelve years these kids are told they are stupid. They are held up against a wall, measured by state scores and their ability to infer. They are thrown, head-first, into a system that does not care about them. Life is squeezed out of public education until it’s just a shell of multiple choice questions on a computer screen and the RACE method written in black ink on the back of a hand. The idea of a successful student is narrowed down into a one-size-fits-all in a school that ranges from students dealing with homelessness to students with three homes.

In the 50th ranked state out of 50 states a teacher that does nothing receives the same salary as a teacher that does everything. Forty-five thousand dollars a year is a good deal if you just want to sit. Forty-five thousand dollars a year is poverty if you aim to make a difference. Educators become bitter from the citrus peels and black coffee they’re forced to live off of. When I arrived at my interview, I was told to run. I stood still in place. I was fully aware of what I was getting into. Kids don’t care. Why would they? For twelve years they are told they’re stupid. Why would they try to be anything else?

My kids are not stupid. They are brilliant. They are kind. They nap in class. They lose their work. They gawk at me like I’m speaking Latin when I start a tangent about thesis statements and. 5-paragraph essay structure. BECAUSE HOW DO THEY NOT KNOW WHAT A THESIS STATEMENT IS? They sigh when I open a book. They apologize when they complain too loudly. They do what they have to and nothing else. They are not stupid.

But I have to be a mom. At 21 years old I am a mom of 90 kids and it happened all at once. I have to teach them empathy. I have to teach them how to spell “write”. I have to explain to them the difference between a verb and an adjective. I have to brush their hair. I have to wrap band-aids around their scratches. I tell them they are loved. I ask them if they have enough to eat. I have to teach them Shakespeare. I have to bury the hatchet. I have to be willing to give up my life for them. I am willing to give up my life for them. I have to do this in 90 minutes. In 18 weeks. Twice a year. I live off canned beans and Grandma’s soup. I do it willingly. Who will make the kids not stupid? When everyone already thinks that they are? My kids are not stupid. They are afraid of failing because they have always been told they will fail. You will never be a failure in my eyes. Not my kids. Not mine. We have failed our children by insisting on their failure. You are non-proficient on paper.

But they are kind. That is enough. That is enough.