On the last day of the first year of our PhD program, one of the groups presented on the “joys of education” to step back and remember some of the things that we truly enjoy. Our work as educators is difficult, discouraging and vastly complex. Those of us that want to create discourse and disrupt the system have a steep uphill battle to face and being in the trenches batters you down. In a society where school shootings are a norm, lunch debts, high suspensions and expulsions disproportionately targeting Black and Native youth, we have a lot of serious work to do.
So as I sat there listening to their wonderful presentation, I thought, “what brought me joy in school?” I was conditioned to learn as much as I could from an early age. My mom always encouraged curiosity and to be hungry for answers. I grappled with (and honestly still do to this) the idea of being too smart. Through most of my schooling, I was the quiet observer, I was the one that would watch, listen and absorb. And that brought me so much joy overall.
But one of the first memories of joy in school that popped into my head when I heard that question was my first library card. I was so excited when it arrived in the mail and I couldn’t stop holding it and examining every detail of the blue and white piece if plastic. See at the time, I was in third grade and my mom wanted me to meet with a tutor after school. Her plan was to have someone coach me through my homework since she was busy working and often couldn’t help me with my homework because her of lack of time. After a while I would finish my homework very fast and my mom had the tutor help me learn other things like memorize all the states and capitals, flowers, trees birds, and whatever else states use to make themselves unique. I learned the Presidents, Vice Presidents and whatever else we could cram in. I was satiated with knowledge at the age of eight years old. But my library card story is also a tragic one. I was walking to my school for tutoring, holding my library card high, watching the light reflect off the blue sheen. Just as I was about to shove the card into my pocket, sweaty fingers and a small gust of wind lifted the card out of my hand and into the street, right onto a storm drain grate. I took a deep breath and as carefully as I could, tried to pluck the card that was balanced on the grate without error. No luck. I pinched the card too tightly and it popped out of my hand and floated the twenty feet down into a pool of stagnant water. The panic filled my body and my heart sank. I desperately formed plans to retrieve that glimmering blue and white card at the bottom of that storm drain, each and every day I walked pasted it on my way to school for months.
With each moment of joy I experienced in my early years of schooling, I had moments of reality equalizing things. My next moment of joy was how much I loved to read. I remember waiting all year for the scholastic book fair to come along. It was thee day that I could dream of all the new books that I could crack open and soak in their stories. I loved adventure books, the ones that could take you someplace far from my current world. But, each year, I would come home empty handed, with no new adventures that I could take with me. Finally in the fourth grade, I got my wish. I begged my mom to get me the Goosebumps books. They had some crazy deal so I practiced my best sales pitch and gave it to her. I talked my way to getting the whole subscription where 3 books would arrive once a month for like $5. It was a steal and I loved it. I loved being immersed into the world of the creepy and paranormal. So even though I had to go years empty handed while my peers got to take home new books, I got to experience the simple joys of reading through some spooky books.
Short side story, like the later Goosebumps books used to do. Reflecting on these memories from elementary school gave me a flashback of my mom insisting on me going to summer school, even though I did not have an academic need to according to the school (same years I had a tutor as well). I believe I went to summer school twice and then the school didn’t allow me to go anymore because summer school was for those that were "behind" in their classes. I take back the statement about this being a side story, it comes into play in the next section.
With all the schooling that I have, I would say that I have become an expert in critical analysis. All I do is evaluate systems and strategize how to dismantle those systems. So when I thought back to how my school would not let me go to summer school, I thought more about why that was. Summer school was for those that needed to catch up on school work. Why was there a need to catch up? Because these students selected for summer schools were often those that "acted out" regularly in the classroom. They were the "trouble makers." I knew this then because I was one of those troublemakers and that is precisely why I was there the first time. Now that I reflect back from the doctoral level, I look at those practices with all the knowledge that I have absorbed since then and I know that that is exactly why summer school exists. There are a lot of practices that exist to "put students in their place" and be "obedient contributors of society." As I continued down this rabbit hole of thoughts while listening to my peers drop knowledge about all they absorbed this semester, I thought about the material that we learn in early grade school that was supposed to bring us joy. See, in those first years of your educational curriculum all your learning is tied to associating joy with learning. So you learn, you have fun, you create and you become a good student. I was a great student when I wasn't "acting out" in the classroom. I still have so many of my little art projects that brought me joy and made me smile. As a good student, you learn to be a good citizen of our nation. But once again my critical mind went specifically to my fourth grade year and the California Mission project. And then I asked myself, "how does learning about a glorified image of missions bring students joy?" Just another way to erase the narratives of Native people...
There is a power to learning about ethnic studies and from perspectives of those that have been minoritized in this country. There is power in the validation of learning about yourself in the material if a class. This reinforces that we have to teach the truth, no mater how much it hurts, no matter if folks believe that children are too young to understand the hardships many folks had to face. we have to be authentic and through that, we are informed and enlightened. And while that enlightenment is the real threat to those in power, it only makes you, an individual person, so much stronger. And as we concluded class that day, I thought, even through all the things that supremacists/bigots do to oppress us like name schools after war generals, ban our books, hurt us with detention and more, all I wanted was to learn like so many little school children that navigate the scary world that school has been and has become.
Graduations are the momentous and joyous celebrations that are a signal for ending your educational journey. I looked back at all my moments as I "ranked up" through each level of the education system and find so much joy in those celebrations. But I also mourn in these moments today. So many families have lost their children in school shootings in this country (there have been 277 mass shootings to this date in 2022 according to the Gun Violence Archive). So as I look at my own accomplishments, I carry the burden of fighting this terribly destructive system that says it's ok to lose children when all they want to do was learn and experience joy.
Kommentare