Let me tell you a story about a kid we’ll call Tim. Tim is short, stringy, and full of energy with a smile that can light up a room. He’s absent most days but when he’s not he makes my class a better place.
One day after school during basketball practice, he was working on how to fake a shot properly with his coach, Mr. Ball (his actual name). Every time Tim would fake a shot he would extend his knees and his legs would straighten out, and every time that happened Mr. Ball would stop him and tell him to fake the shot but keep his knees bent.
I watched this occur about four times before I went up to Mr. Ball and asked him If I could take a crack coaching Tim. Mr. Ball nodded, and so I asked Tim a question, “Tim, do you know why Mr. Ball doesn’t want you to straighten out your legs during a fake shot?” He said, “not really.” I said, “It's because the moment you straighten out your legs you take away your movement options. If your knee stays bent and your hips stay back you have the option to move in any direction you want, but if you straighten out your leg you actually slow yourself down. The bent knees allow you to move around your defender as he potentially tries to block a fake shot. It allows you to keep your athletic position.”
Tim took a second to take that in, then his eyes widened and he cracked his smile, “so if I keep my knees bent I’ve got the chance to make my defender look like a fool.” I smiled back, “Exactly.” When you teach, every once in a while you get to enjoy seeing the lightbulb go off in someone's head, and this was one of those moments.
A couple of months later I was sitting in the basement biology classroom with Mr. Modeste, one of my favorite coworkers, and we were having one of our post work conversations around the usual topics: what kid stepped up today, what kid pissed us off, what’s fucked up in the education system and how do we fix it? I usually stop by for what I think will be a five minute chat that turns into an hour long conversation.
Eventually the conversation turned to kids with major absenteeism and I mentioned how bummed I was that I hadn’t seen Tim in a very long time. Modeste immediately stopped the conversation.
“Dude, you don’t know? Let me show you something.”
Modeste pulls out his phone and goes to a grainy security video of a short skinny kid with a mask standing in a fluorescent lit hallway holding a black plastic garbage bag. He’s just standing around shifting from foot to foot until three other kids approach him. One is considerably taller than him, one is about his size, and one seems to be around middle school age.
The video has no sound, but the masked kid seems to be talking to the tall one. As they talk the conversation seems to get aggressive until the tall one reaches out and yanks the black bag out of the masked kid's hand. The masked kid immediately takes a gun out of his coat pocket and shoots the tall kid multiple times at point blank range. The tall kid falls to the ground and the other two kids run away. The masked kid yanks the black bag from the fallen kid's hands and bolts out of the scene.
“That kid in the mask was Tim?” I ask in horror.
“That was Tim.”
The Narratives We Spin
Right after I saw that video I felt pain in the pit of my stomach and a mass of confusion. How? Fucking how? Five seconds before I saw that video Tim was a fun loving boy who enjoyed basketball…now his story includes murder.
I can only helplessly shrug at the collision of both these narratives.
-Tim was a student I looked forward to teaching. Fact
-Tim killed an unarmed kid with a gun. Fact
There are a million other narratives that I can spin out of this situation that would torture me if I let them.
There’s not a thing I can do to make a true difference.
The education system is utterly broken.
Teenagers are nasty and cruel.
Do I even know these kids?
I’m wasting my time here.
All of these statements have kernels of truth in them, but they also lie, because I can just as easily believe the following statements.
Teaching is the profession that makes the most difference.
The education system provides endless opportunities to change kids' lives.
Kids’ positivity surprises me everyday.
I have made the most meaningful connections of my life while teaching.
I can think of no better use of my time than fighting the good fight in this school here and now.
Again, lies and truth reside in all of those statements and I would caution anyone from giving 100% of their belief to anything. As much as I would want any teacher to commit to believing they make a difference in all their students' lives, if that’s all they believed, Tim's murder video would slam their worldview off it’s axis.
On the flip side, you have to believe in something. You need a strong narrative that helps you make sense of why you’re doing what you choose to do. It needs to be strong or else you’ll eventually quit from some future hardship.
This applies to any profession in life. If you’re in finance and you’re there because all you want to do is make a ton of money, then that’s your “why.” I’d argue it’s a shitty why, but there it is. If you’re in finance because you want to make a ton of money to insulate your family from hardship, that may be a better “why.” That’s a “why” that has more resilience when you're up till midnight locked in a cubicle making rich people richer.
When people ask me how I endure the teaching job, they usually assume I’m on some social justice warrior quest. Why would I deal with the ludicrous behavior, the abject disrespect, the shitty pay, and the emotional hardship that comes with inner city teaching? They assume my “why” has to do with helping kids who had it worse than I did growing up. Not gonna lie, it does sound all noble and shit.
The truth is quite a bit more selfish. I just happen to love the psychological process of building relationships with kids. I enjoy trying to figure out ways to make lessons stick inside teenager’s skulls. I like passing down the mental and physical tools I have learned over the past three decades. In general, I like teaching for the miserable process that it is. At the end of the day, I usually ask myself a simple question, “did I make a high school kid’s day a bit better?”
That’s my “why.” I’d do this anywhere - Harlem is just where I happened to land.
I’m not here to argue that my narratives are better than anybody else's, but they have helped me stay resilient in a place familiar with tragedy. When I learned what Tim did, I was rocked to my core. It was an emotional knife I wasn’t expecting. But it was also Tuesday, and on Wednesday I still had 150 students hoping to have a good day. I took the hit, sent a prayer for Tim, and got back to work.
I don’t know how well the social justice warriors weathered Tim’s murder. Maybe some of them doubled down on that particular belief because they saw that tragedy as yet another reason why what they’re doing is so important. However, I’m guessing more than a few decided they were failing the kids they taught.
My school has an 80% teacher turnover rate for a reason.
If you expect to stay in the teacher game, you need a strong “why”. Regardless of whether or not you teach in the inner city, tragedy is going to strike, and it's going to strike hard because you’re working with children. You can do your damndest to make a difference in their lives and sometimes it won’t matter at all.
Can your beliefs survive that?
Make sure you know.
If you’ve been enjoying the Substack and you’d like to directly contribute click the link! https://paypal.me/FitToTeach?country.x=US&locale.x=en_US
Shout out to top supporters
Casey
Lurie
Annamaria
Corey.b.black