Sometimes it can be difficult to properly express my feelings about the students I teach. It’s easy to slip into anecdote and complaint, but I feel that they deserve better. However, I do see how great the problems outside of school can be and how critically they exacerbate the problems inside school. The facts were simple; we spoke albeit briefly about the relationship between a father and a son in a text for OGT test prep.

Within seconds, the students were whooping and yelling like Viking warriors, loudly proclaiming their children and their heritage. The women held one universal constant – they had one or more children, or they were pregnant, or they expected to be pregnant again. It was horrifying; rather than teen mothers being the exception, it was the near-universal rule.

I am unsure what to make of this revelation. I can extrapoplate a few facts; first of all, the sheer amount of work that goes into raising a child no doubt makes doing schoolwork or performing well in class a distant priority far in the back. Furthermore, I was somewhat curious to learn that the students’ behavior changed little before and after having a child, and that often times their newborns were being raised by their parents. I wondered to myself how frequently this was an issue in previous generations.

How many children had they had? What was it like? They seemed to take it so lightly, as if having a child was more of an inconvenience than a life event. We couldn’t get them back on topic, no matter how hard we tried. Perhaps I was actually misreading the situation; perhaps I had become jaded and was refusing to allow the diversity surrounding me to impact me. Was it perhaps possible that instead of proving to be uncouth and uncaring in the face of that most grave of legacies, one’s child, the students were actually expressing pride in their own way? I did not have time to inquire as to this subject but I do hope to again at some point in the future.

Which brings me back to my original point; I echo advice that one exasperated teacher gave to me, solemnly, soberly, and without any pretense: “You can’t really bring yourself down to their level, but you CAN show them that you understand that they have things going on outside of class.”

The exposure to the students’ children was a good start.