I truly believe that part of being an advocate for kids is believing that all of them, no matter what, possess redeeming qualities. I know that I see kids do absolutely amazing things with talent and grit and an awareness of other people that I don’t remember myself or my classmates having when I was their age. On the flip side, I know we have students who are so angry and struggling and do things that are unkind and frankly, sometimes violent. But, instead of asking why the students are so poorly behaved, I think the better question is what support did we miss as parents/educators/society and how can we bring out the goodness? My point being…no matter the child, if we don’t believe that there is a place inside of them that has the potential for greatness then that is more about our shortcomings than it is about them.
I often hear adults speaking about kids like they are some lost group of souls; that they make bad choices, they have terrible attitudes, they’re impolite and spend all their time doing inappropriate things on social media. While there are many lines of thinking where I am very open to listening to the other side of the coin, believing that kids these days are inherently bad is just not one of them. If that’s truly what I believed, I clearly don’t belong in education. What I believe people sometimes miss is that kids live in a world that adults created for them and are just trying to survive the reality we concocted.
For every time that I have seen a child not say thank you, I have held the door for an adult who has given me about the same attention as a doorstop.
For every child I have seen bully someone on social media, I have seen an adult get personal and nasty over political posts on Facebook or Twitter.
For every student I have seen lash out physically at another person, I have seen an adult grab their child too roughly in a grocery store or watched brutal shows on TV.
For every inappropriate song that I’ve heard a student listening to, I have been listening to my own 80’s playlist with Pour Some Sugar On Me and She Shook Me All Night Long.
Do students make poor choices? Absolutely. As do adults, and we are supposed to be the models. But deviant or socially unacceptable behavior does not equal worthlessness. What we believe for students could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I would so much rather believe that our students have greatness in them and take the chance that that’s the prophecy that comes true than believe that they are inherently awful and perpetuate that thought into the universe. Students learning differently, speaking differently, listening and communicating differently, does not mean that the way they do it is wrong. If I have to be the one person that believes in a student when it seems hopeless I will be that person because that’s why I got into education and that’s what teachers do. If you ask me about kids these days, I will tell you about all the kids I know that are already better people than I ever was at their age.
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