I believe the classroom is....

I believe the classroom is a place where children should feel safe. This safety should include the ability for kids to be curious without getting chastised. They should be able to ask questions. To be themselves. To wonder about others. To explore the person they’d like to be but just don’t know how to be yet. To be the person they know they are, but can’t be “in public”. If the classroom is felt to be a safe place for students, then they will be able to work on all of these things.

Obviously, the first day of class will not automatically feel safe for students. They must learn to be able to trust not just the teacher or their peers, but themselves as well. The teacher is the first step to making this happen. Fostering a sense of openness, a sense of community, and a sense of empathy are all vital to establishing this trust. As the teacher, I cannot be afraid to be the first one to put myself out there. There will be some that have been waiting all their life just to be able to do the same, and there will be some, no matter how much encouragement, will not quite be ready. However it works out, students need to know that it’s okay and though we all travel our paths at different speeds, everyone’s journey is just as vital. It’s up to me as the teacher, to make that path available for each child, so that when they are ready, the journey is there’s.

I believe the classroom needs the truth. It is no secret that some children’s journey will be more arduous than other’s. Throughout my childhood, I was taught to ignore this point. I was taught that unless it was out in the open and directly affecting me, it didn’t exist. Part of the truth that children need to learn is that life’s path is unfair. But if we can realize this, recognize it, and bring it to the forefront of openness, then we can begin to make steps to change it. Minimizing and ignoring differences only makes them more pronounced and less understood. As the teacher, I must create an environment to explore and be open to those differences. Students will see that what makes us different is not something wrong or taboo, but something completely natural and interesting. And no one should feel badly or wrong for wanting to ask those questions. The classroom is a place for exploring and learning, so why should there be any difference between life lessons and scholastic ones?

At the same time though, as Delpit suggests, children from outside the “culture of power” deserve and need every single chance they can get to succeed. So not only does that mean to hold them to no less high a standard as any child in the culture of power, but also to openly discuss the injustices that do exist in society so that all students, both the privileged and the ignored, can work to brake them down.

In my classroom, I value empathy. There are a lot of people out there in the world that lack the ability to empathize with others. When there is no empathy, there is no concern. If one is truly concerned about something, then they will try to change it. There is certainly a difference between sympathy and empathy. Many would say that sympathy is patronizing and often times more degrading than caring. However, I think that the ability to empathize comes first from the ability to sympathize; to really give a damn about someone else’s situation. This is something that some people naturally possess, but that others lack that knack for. But I do believe that it is something that can be taught. Because today’s society tends to be a bit more me-focused and selfish, I think it is vitally important to work on understanding others within the classroom. It is easy to just say, “Well, that’s your problem”. However, if one is taught from a young age that one’s problem is everyone’s problem, then everyone will start to not only help each other solve problems, but work to prevent problems as well. So often, whatever the problem is, there is something we can do to help, even if it means just a smile. So if we can all smile just a little more often, not only for our own sake, but for the benefit of others, we will soon create a more friendly community.

Many say that sympathizing is easy, but that for true empathy, one must possess some knowledge or experience of the other person’s issue. How can say, a child of white privilege understand and have experience of a black child’s struggles? The answer is communication and community. With open communication in a place where others truly care, a community setting will naturally occur. However, it is the teacher’s job to create this setting by fostering open, safe communication between the children in the classroom, the adults within the school, and the families outside. There are many opportunities in which this can happen. It might happen organically within the classroom setting, but if the teacher makes the effort to truly promote and create a classroom culture which includes little pieces of everyone’s culture, then the class as a whole will feel and act as one cohesive unit, therefore making empathy quite possible for all children. We as teachers are the trainers to ease our students into a world where they become catalysts of change. I think that although it will be hard at times, it will be completely possible to make that difference.