Starting Again

A couple weeks ago, I attended the graduation ceremony at the organization where I teach. Seventy six students marched across the stage and received their high school diplomas-certainly a momentous occasion in anyone's life, but for these folks it was especially wonderful.

I teach in an adult education program. Each of these students was disenfranchised in some way by the public school system and they all finished their secondary education with us instead. Some left school as soon  as they turned 16 (or more recent ones, 17, as the law has now changed). Some left with only a few weeks left in their senior year - some even sat for the full 12 years and ended up as little as a half credit short of graduating. Some stopped attending around 8th grade, and some were squeezed out of learning in elementary school by a too-fast curriculum and then passed along until they could officially drop out. Graduates ranged from 17 or 18 years old to grandparents - people in their 50s and 60s.

One of the reasons why I am good at what I do in my day job is that I am able to greet each new student as a capable human being, despite what may be strong evidence to the contrary. I don't care what problems they may have eventually caused after years of struggling in a school system that wasn't right for them. I don't care if they are with me because they choose school over juvie. I don't care if they have pending court dates. I don't care how many times they have tried to start with adult education and then dropped off the face of the earth before returning - the average record for adult education students is that they will graduate upon their third re-start. That means that, for each student who is successful on their first try, others will restart many many times before finishing. Of course, that statistic only takes into account the ones who do eventually finish. There is no way to figure in those who don't.

I am patient with my students. If they need to take many, many breaks and start with work they have already mastered, that is what we do. If they need constant reassurance, they get it. If they need to be served pizza for good attendance, I do it. If they need to march around the building to present their good test score to everyone who will listen, I escort them. I take what they can give and know that it's more important for them to feel successful than it is for them to, on the first day, look successful on paper. At the end, they will know how to be a successful student, not at the beginning. I am patient with them.

Why am I not patient with myself?