Friends’ Writings

I was glad to know that Emily Guck was going on for a stimulating Master’s program in Secondary Education at U Penn. She began not too long after graduating from SLU in May. Her current classes include “School and Society” and “Teaching and Learning in Urban Contexts.” I recently asked her what she is learning, and the following is what she shared and, naturally amigas and amigos, I want to share it with you.

It’s hard to articulate the energy I experience here. I am tired in ways I’ve never been. My eyes hang heavy like the like the saturated summer heat, but my breaking, enraged heart is effervescent. Through sleep deprived pallor, I glow everyday. I glow because here I get to spend everyday learning about being a teacher for social change. And everyday I am surrounded and supported by others who are just as committed to inquiry in practice, critical awareness of bias, and the tireless pursuit of providing every child in this country an education that’s worth something.

But what am I learning?

In the way of answers? Not much. But I have turned questions over to find more, deeper, less comfortable questions. I have been digging through history and rhetoric shifts and pedagogical movements to see how our seemingly insurmountable messes have been made. I am learning court cases. I am learning white privilege. I am learning the ghettoization of black America. I am learning the evolution of public schools. I am learning grade and education inflation. I am learning power structures, political corruption, and the curricular reinforcement of it all. I am learning that all children want to learn and be successful, even if they don’t show it to you. I am learning how Taesha sees the world, what Marquis thinks about violence in his neighborhood, why Nasir had a bad weekend. I am learning about Silly Bandz (they glow in the dark!). But mostly…

I am learning that I am in the right place. That I have meaningful things to say and do in this community. In this world. I am learning that I will never be done learning. I am learning that this thing I want to do is hard, it is never finished or perfected, it is always in process. Yes, I am learning that this is, and is going to be, very, very hard. But it’s the hard that makes it worth doing.

I am delighted to share the following essay by Chelsea Jaeger, who studied with me in the spring 2010 semester in a Spirituality of Service class.

Sometimes there are experiences so wonderful and pure that you swear you’ll never forget a single detail of the perfection. We want to preserve these rare events in our minds to treasure within our hearts and share with the people around us who truly care. But a human mind is wont to forget even the most important things in our lives far faster than we would want. Still it startles and scares me at times when I forget one of the villager’s names or the new Spanish construction words I learned. It’s been a month since I was there, but with everything that’s happened and all the things I’ve done since then, it may as well have been years. Sometimes it feels infinitely far away; the people, places, emotions I so longed to hold close seem merely to be dreams. Other times the floodgates of my memory open and everything is real again. I can hear, see, smell, and taste as if I were still there. The memories are boiled down to their simplest and most pure recollections, unaffected by the pressures of American culture and by my own faulty memory. I smile when I experience this, lost in the recalled perfection of that week abroad. Maybe it wasn’t the typical way for a college freshman to spend her first spring break, but I will surely never regret traveling to Guatemala and giving of myself to the people so desperately in need. And while I gave of myself in my time, my talents, and my treasures, I received far more in return from my Guatemalan Sisters and Brothers in Christ than I ever could have imagined. But maybe I should start at the beginning.

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