Time is not our enemy. It ticks away regardless of how much we wish that it would slow down.It flies when we're too busy to notice its march. Time etches its footprint in our faces with character and proof of our perennial frowning or smiling. It can be our friend though. Time will give us perspective if we let it.I'm letting it. Yesterday was MLK Day. I reported to work as usual. The district had scheduled students to be off that day, but Mother Nature had other ideas and delivered us a snow day to make up. We teachers were scheduled for an in-service, and that has been postponed until the spring. In all the hustle and bustle of snow day make-ups, curricular restrictions, and state testing prep mania, it is all too easy to forget this day's significance. For once, I gave myself permission to bring my student's attention to the day.
I shared with my students the benefit I received from time giving me a new perspective about the legacy of Dr. King, Race in America 2015, and the hope for the future that I believe my students represent.
First came the 2 minute history and math lesson. The first slaves were brought to our nation, destined to be slaves for their whole lives leaving a legacy of slavery for their progeny, in 1619. President Abraham Lincoln freed all slaves in rebelling states in 1863. From 1863 to 1965, the freed slaves and their descendants were second class citizens: segregated, denied equal protection under the law, and legally disenfranchised from our nation's promises of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not only in the Jim Crow South but throughout the nation. Did you know that the state with the most Jim Crow laws was California? The Voting Rights Act was signed into law in 1965, finally recognizing the full citizenship of all people born or naturalized in this country, regardless of skin color. I finished that snap shot of history with a question that many adults struggle with: Is it reasonable to expect that 347 years of a culture of prejudice, cultivated to justify the permanent enslavement of one race of humanity, can be erased in fifty years?
King had a dream. Are we there yet? What is your dream: for this country, for your family, for yourself?
My students are our future and a story about my interaction with one family gives me hope for a country I will live in if I'm lucky to become elderly. Four or five years ago (time is fleeting when you get older) I was hosting parent conferences in my room. Typically, parents appear in my door frame, tentatively-- uncertain they are at the right place at the right time. I always put them at ease by asking if they are here to see Mr. Logan for English and by asking their child's name. So this encounter was pretty much routine--- hesitant parents at my door way. But the story took a curve ball when I introduced myself.
"You're Mr. Logan?" the father asked me incredulously.
I was not prepared for that reaction. I cocked an eyebrow at him quizzically.
"You're not what I expected at all." He continued matter-of-factly.
My stomach lurched to my throat. "Oh here it is..." I thought to myself, and the foreboding I felt when I found out that, in 2004, I became the first person of color hired to teach in this district returned to me. A flood of emotions and thoughts flooded my psyche in the space between two heartbeats before he continued.
"I was expecting some old white dude in a beard." He explained humorously at the irony of meeting a completely different form of Mr. Logan than whom he expected.
I laughed too. In the same space between two heartbeats, half a year's worth of my teacher schtick came back--- blaming my forgetfulness on my advancing years, Shakespeare's picking on Orlando for having a young man's spotty beard... I understood in an instant what his child had told him about me.
The mom laughed too. The ice was broken. We had a great collaborative meeting about how to make their son successful in class. I felt lighter than I had in a while.
Time has given me the gift of perspective. When I shared this vignette with my students I pointed out why they give me hope. I never hear myself described as my student's black teacher. I'm just their English teacher. I get on their nerves sometimes because I am a little nutty: turning their beloved pop tunes into instructional ditties. Creepy laughs. Demanding their attention, thinking, and energy.
That's why I'm living part of the dream. My students judge me by who I am to them. My heart. My pedagogy. My work ethic. My example is how they judge me. They judge me by the content of my character not by the quality of my permanent California tan.
I agree with my students. Fifty years isn't enough time. We're living the dream in pockets. My pocket is room 225 at South Eastern Middle School - East.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
