She said, “I won’t amount to much.”
That’s what she said. If that’s not exactly what she said, it’s VERY close. She was an 8th grade student in my Self Contained Behavior Disorder class in 1996. I could probably deduce the exact date if pressed because we were discussing the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, even though Tupac wasn’t specifically part of our curriculum. I’m glad I wasn’t being observed. TKES be damned.
One of the male students said that he too wanted to be a rapper. I actually think he did try rapping at some point. He even gave me a mixtape back when that was a thing. He was no Tupac I guess. He works as a UPS driver now, which is, I suspect, less lucrative than being a rapper and more lucrative than being an educator.
He sent me a Facebook birthday wish just last week. He would be about 42 years old now, or something like that. Since I try not to celebrate birthdays anymore, I really don’t want to think about that depressing math too much.
Well, his comment sparked a class discussion, which, by the way, is still the best learning technique in my opinion, but that’s a didactical topic for another day. Some of the other boys wanted to be rappers, some athletes. I can’t remember if there were others. Most boys usually want to be one or the other, but that too is a didactical topic for another day.
Though at least one of the girls also wanted to be a rapper, their answers were generally more varied. I can only recall what one of the girls said. When I threw my “stuffed bear of wisdom” to Destiny for her turn to speak, she laughed and said, “I don’t know. I know I won’t amount to much,” and then threw the “stuffed bear of wisdom” to the next student.
I chuckled a bit, because Destiny was always flippant and irreverent about any question, even ones about integers and coordinating conjunctions if I remember correctly.
I didn’t think much about it at the time, but on the commute home it finally hit me. (I’m a bit slow sometimes.) Most of my pedagogical epiphanies happened on my commute to school or on the way home from school. Traffic jam reflection is such an important part of what educators do.
Someone had said that phrase to Destiny. It was not a common phrase among early adolescents at the time, and is even less common now. It is something adults say, and some adult had likely said that phrase to, or about, Destiny. I want to believe it was a family member and not a teacher who had said it. I want to believe a lot of pretty things but I’m not so sure.
About a decade ago I recall watching the kids board the bus on the last day of school. One of our more … lively boys walked by and punched me in the arm. I punched him back and said, “see you next year, scrub.”
(Please don’t report me. I didn’t punch him that hard.)
He laughed and called me a name I’d rather not share, something about my mother and something about my male-pattern baldness. An administrator, and a good one by the way, laughed and said, “that boy’s got a real future … in prison.”
I laughed … and I shouldn’t have. I should have told the administrator off. He wouldn’t have been the first … or the last.
We hear these sorts of things sometimes. We hear them too much. May God forgive us if, and when, we find ourselves saying, and thinking, those things too. You know the things I’m referring to.
“He’ll drop out before he’s 16. She’s gonna get pregnant before graduation. He’s not the brightest bulb or the sharpest knife. He’s gonna fail this class. She won’t amount to much.”
I’m sure you can add others.
I’ll add just one more anecdote, a very old one.
I once overheard two teachers talking about a young boy who was sitting in detention during his PE class for not doing this or that, or for doing this or that, or for saying this or that. Neither this nor that is important. But it was evidently important enough that one of the teachers told the other teacher that the boy was nothing but “white trash.” She may not have known that the boy heard it, but he did. She may not have known that the boy saw his father abuse his mother the night before, but he did. It doesn’t matter what she knew or didn’t know. She shouldn’t have said it. She probably shouldn’t have even thought it.
As fate, or providence, would have it, that “white trash” boy would become a pretty successful educator himself, and a widely-published author, and he cried a little bit when he typed this out. That was almost half a century ago.
What we say about our students is important, and how we think about our students is important, because what they say, and think, about themselves is important.
I would like to claim that I told Destiny some wise and meaningful words of wisdom that made her believe in herself, but I didn’t. I did praise her when she did something well or said something positive, small things, just small things. Praise, even small praise, like criticism, should be immediate, specific, and genuine. It matters.
Destiny did amount to much. She graduated high school. She struggled, but she graduated. She didn’t go to college. She went to work at a hair and beauty salon. She saved some money, made some investments, and bought her own salon. She developed some creative products and amounted to much, very much. If I said her real name you might even know it. She makes a lot of money and seems happy because of, and maybe in spite of, that money.
She sent me a Facebook birthday wish last week too. She’s in her early 40s now too. I think she lives in Europe now or she did at some point. I guess you can go where you want if you have your own airplane.
