Slavery and The White Female Educator

One thing that amazes me as I trudge my way through my life journey as an educator is the way that my days are truly bipolar. One moment I am floating on air with a flawless lesson plan and students who are hanging on my every word. The very next minute a student could be slamming a door in my face screaming phrases like, “You are the worst teacher” or “I don’t have to listen to you.” The part that takes my breath away, though, is that every time a negative moment arises in my day, it is quickly replaced with an abundance of small, yet mighty moments which restore my faith in me and my calling to be an educator. These moments, I’m sure, are God-given. I can almost feel His hand on my shoulder saying, “Don’t lose heart, it’s going to be okay.”

I have started reading a non-fiction text with my students which tells the story of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and the journey to abolish slavery. It is quite the humbling experience to be a young, white teacher discussing slavery to students of every color, race, background etc. My black (For you PC people out there, insert whichever term you prefer) students have been amazing me with their insightful questions. One question in particular stopped me dead in my tracks. “Why would white people treat black people so badly?” I, being a white teacher, approached this question carefully and with as much love as possible. I wanted to answer the question while still making my students know and believe that they are loved and respected by me, their white teacher. The mistakes that were made those many years ago were terrible and unthinkable. How could I look these beautiful children, who put their trust in me, in the eyes and explain all of the horrors that people of their color faced? We are only 10 pages into this book, and already I can feel our group growing closer together as we discuss this deep topic that affects all of us. It is so true that the decisions we make affect others. I don’t think that the “white people” thought their actions would affect a twenty-four year old teacher and her group of students in 2013, but it has.

This has me thinking about history and how we must be informed. I am highly interested in the history surrounding WWII. It is unbelievably disheartening to me that a hate of a culture could have been supported and taken to such a terrible level of destruction and loss of life. It is events like this, and the keeping of slaves, that must be taught to our students. We must not glaze over these events or even worse pretend they never existed. We must rather explain them so that they may never be repeated again. This whole teaching thing is a huge learning experience for me, but one that I would never trade. I am learning so much from my wonderful students. Their smiles shoot right through me and hang in my mind. I pray for them and their safety in this world we live in today. I know that many of them go to homes that I would turn my nose up to. How pathetic am I? My children are fighting a war. This may date me a bit (I am a year older after all), but our kids are living in a much more treacherous world than we grew up in. I feel responsible and blessed to have been given these kids, even if just for this short time.