“You’re always just a week ahead of your students,” a teacher once told me.
At the time, it seemed like an absurd confession. I’d always pictured educators as these almost biblical like figures; artists who descended from mountaintops carrying tablets etched with wisdom spanning centuries.
I only started to appreciate how teachers are just as scared and often less informed than the students they’re supposed to be enlightening.
The truth is, I’ve learned far more from my class than they have from me.
Each Wednesday afternoon, I hop in my Honda Accord and make the 30-minute drive to a city called, Pittsburgh. You’d be right if you guessed it’s name comes from that famous steel town nestled between Ohio and a couple of Virginia’s.
And similar to the “City of Bridges,” the people here are hardworking and not keen on nonsense.
Frankly, they don’t have the time.
There’s a grit that comes from working two jobs while balancing a checkbook and sometimes a kid or two. They work hard because they have to. Desire is a luxury that doesn’t even factor into it.
Nine weeks ago, I could still claim to be a teacher but only with people barely tall enough to reach the medicine cabinet. I worked with middle schoolers and on occasion rebellious high schoolers. But this was the first time I’d stepped into a college class to face the back of the room.
Each week, I put together lesson plans I hope will inform, and if I’m lucky inspire. But, what I care about most are my students.
“Remember to ask them how they’re doing,” my adviser reminded me. “You might be the first person who’s asked them all day. Maybe all week.”
Minutes before each class, I amble through rows of desks and ask each student how they’re getting on in class and beyond. I shamelessly steal a page from Dale Carnegie’s, How to Win Friends and Influence People:
“Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language”
Every class begins with a greeting, a warm-up, and a story. The 3 hours proceeding are a not so delicate two-step of trying to make the work somehow relatable to their lives.
Sometimes it feels effortless. On those days I practically skip to my car.
Other days, I feel like a fraud and wonder what business I have teaching someone so much as how to boil some water.
Fortunately, yesterday was one of those former type of days. Everything seemed to come together and once again it was done through the power of story; something I’m convinced is the universal link to the human condition.
If you don’t believe me try telling a story some time, preferably a good one. Watch how people, often without realizing, lean in and listen as if their life depends on it.
I think it’s because in some perverse way it does.
In 1992, I was in the 6th grade. My childhood was not atypical of most 12-year old-boys dreaming of playing shortstop for their local baseball team.
I spent summers in Hawaii, Korea, and New York.
Each for different reasons.
Each to see different people.
Each to influence me in different ways.
And on rare occasions, my family and I would hop in the car and make our way to Los Angeles. Sometimes we’d go to see friends, but usually to wait in line for a roller-coaster, or to have my photo taken with a man dressed as giant mouse.
Both were, and still are, equally frightening to me.
But on April 29, 1992 there was a different type of fear in Los Angeles; one more pervasive and far angrier. People were very upset that day. And as a young boy I didn’t understand why.
Today I do and better for it.
I even know enough about the incident to discuss it with a class of mostly Latino and African American students; people who know a thing or two about being misunderstood, misinterpreted, and as a result, sometimes mistreated.
“What do you all know about the 1992 riots I asked?”
Several hands went up.
“Mike?”
“It was the result of the Rodney King verdict.”
The next hour or so we talked about the events leading up to the mayhem that swept through the city for nearly 4 days. We talked about the 3600 fires, the $800 million in damage, and the lives lost.
We also talked about tension.
Lots of tension.
Specifically, how the relations between the African-American and Korean communities went from bad to worse; how friction had been simmering for years until they quite literally blew up during half a week of anarchy.
And its root was pain, anger, and feelings of disrespect and humiliation. There were cultural differences and of course a language barrier high enough to obstruct the view of commonality; of two people who were different, but mostly the same.
Half way through class, I started a film called, Gook.
It’s a film about two Korean-American brothers running their father’s shoe store during the first day of the 1992 riots. They do so in the midst of turmoil, but personal and environmental, all while sharing a unique friendship with an 11-year old black girl.
The film is compelling, raw, and deeply moving. And at the film’s conclusion not a single word was uttered nor a soul left unstirred.
This is the power of stories.
“What themes resonated most with you? Which character did you identify with? What part of the story was most powerful?”
Hands went up and honesty ensued.
And though their answers varied, they all tried desperately to wrap their heads around the senselessness of the violence both on and off screen.
Just a few weeks before, a student told me how he’d traveled the globe during a stint in the Navy.
“What did you learn in your travels?” I asked.
“Oh, man. It’s a beautiful world. No need to fight.”
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