sometimes it's good not to know....

Although I've only been working at our local high school since August, it feels like a lifetime.  I can't say I have thoroughly enjoyed the undertaking.  It's been more of a white knuckling experience.  If I were to give thought at all to the benefits of being placed among today's youth, I'm sure I could come up with all sorts of lessons relevant to my own life, but sadly I feel more like I've been clenching my teeth through my time there rather then reveling in it's wisdom.  I'm faced with some parallels daily, however that aren't missed on me.  While so much has changed from when I was in high school, the great duplexity is that so much hasn't. 

There have always been classes for kids that couldn't, wouldn't or didn't want to, pass your typically required classes that college bound kids are required to take and I spend some time in these classes each day.  As I was mulling over the future employment/college/financial options for some of these students one frustrating day, I was suddenly struck by the realization that I was them.  They were me.  I have trouble describing my own high school years.  I loved them and I hated them, but mostly I didn't see things for what they really were.  Until now.  I was very social and never wanted to miss school for fear I'd miss out on something fun.   But certainly not because I was afraid I'd fall behind academically.  I wasn't a particularly motivated student.  I was smart, but not sure I viewed myself as such and college was never in my plans.  My parents divorce and a move to another state changed my outgoing nature and my social network.  Whether I was at school didn't really matter as much.  My senior year landed me in some classes that were meant to simply fulfill graduation requirements and fill the void of classes I hadn't passed in my previous years.   Fast forward to present day and as an adult with lots of life experience, a little wisdom and a ferocious desire only a mother has for her children to be all they can be, I have a few thoughts as I sit in on classes where I feel students are underachieving.  And let's be real, they're not always that nice of thoughts.  I had an epiphany of sorts when I realized out of nowhere that I had been where these kids are now and that I never knew it about myself.  Even though I had failed Geometry and Biology and was now spending my Sr. year in Business Math and Earth Science...even though I had never taken my ACT and didn't plan on going to college....I really thought I was going to be fine and everything was going to work out.  I guess.  Who knows what I thought, things were not good at home.  Here's the beauty of it.  It's the not knowing that saved me.  Okay "saved" might be over dramatizing a bit, but that's what I do.  Had I thought something differently about myself, I might not have given college a go the following year.  Had I thought myself less intelligent (my classes and GPA were much more a reflection of my circumstances then my abilities),  I might not have had the confidence to set out in the business world and apply for the jobs that appealed to me, to strive for promotions that I knew I would be well suited for, to ask for salary increases above any that I had ever dreamed I would be paid.  And perhaps, I would have thought I was not good enough for a certain athletic, college bound boy who got all A's and B's, took mostly honor's classes and 4 straight years of a foreign language.  The one I've built my life with today. 

My job is to be an encourager for all kids.  It gets frustrating fighting daily against the evils of apathy, but maybe, someday, a few of them will get it, and maybe it will be because a teacher thought they would.