You’re an Anointed Teacher: Part 4: The Cool Thing about Kryptonite
I am the proud father of a two year old French Bulldog named Goblin. Goblin is like the mayor of Brooklyn. Everybody in the street presses the pause button on their lives to say hello to our little guy. I have met so many people on our walks around Bed-Stuy. I took him to a Jazz concert with another teacher friend, and he just sat there, winning people over. Walking Goblin has become a spiritual exercise in “Who is my neighbor?”
One day, Goblin walked up to two people. They were unhoused. In my mind, I coded them as drug addicts in seconds. Normally, I would have walked right by them. Not Goblin! Goblin doesn’t make any rapid fire judgment calls the way I do. Goblin is a much better Christian than I am. Goblin showed them love. These two folks started crying. They said that Goblin made their day. These folks were probably getting ignored all day. Goblin was not going to let that happen. Not on his watch.
Our little guy is the mayor of Brooklyn in public, but poor Goblin suffers from separation anxiety in private. Goblin has an entire team of vets, trainers, coaches, and friends who swing by to help him with his separation anxiety. After weeks of training, Goblin can be totally by himself for just under five minutes. This is not a terrible problem to have. He’s like velcro and he wants to be around us all of the time! He loves his friends at doggy daycare, but it can be exhausting supervising all of his dog friends. He comes home wiped out. Goblin wants to play, but he doesn’t know how. Nobody ever played with him when he was a puppy.
Taking care of Goblin is a lot of work, but it’s the good work. My wife and I are doing our best to learn about how he learns. We have done our homework and subscribed to different schools of thought around dog care. It’s been a long road and we can’t even imagine life without our Goblin.
Now that I’m a parent to a Goblin, I think I can speak with some authority about the age-old parent-teacher relationship in education. I think I finally understand where parents are coming from. As much as I appreciate what parents do for their children, I think I had some preconceived notions about parents that I needed to unlearn.
My best parent relationships were with parents who fed me. Period. They treated me like family because I assumed a more loving, avuncular role in their children’s lives. They bought me dinner, gave me big hugs at dismissal, wrote beautiful cards with a fountain pen, and they seemed eternally grateful for the work we were doing in the classroom. Goblin and I are both food motivated, and I was sure I figured out the secret to good parent management: be a wonderful teacher to their kids, and the kids will go home glowing, then their folks will notice and make you a plate!
Then, I experienced a long slump in my so-called parent management. After pouring through my old journals, I still cannot explain it. How can you not get along with me, I wondered. If you can’t get along with Mr. Dave Robles, that’s a you problem, not a me problem. I went through a phase when it seemed as if I didn’t get any love from home, even from the parents of my best kids. I concluded that parents are fickle. Some days they love you, and some days they can’t stand you.
At dismissal, I have had parents who waited across the street and just nodded, and I even had a parent threaten to beat me up. I had a parent tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about because I am not a father. That one hurt. She had no clue about why my wife and I don’t have any children.
BRO, what happened to all the parents who came up to me, hat in hand, thanking me for inspiring their children? Where did all of those parents go? Where were all the parents who came up to me, put a hand on my shoulder and were like, “it may be bigger than you and it may be bigger than me but it ain’t bigger than the both of us!”
In the faculty lounge, Ms. Jackson rolled her eyes in my general direction. “Robles, stop. There’s only so much you can do for these kids, Robles. At 3PM, it’s the parent’s turn to figure out what to do with their kids. Some of these parents are still out there getting parented by their parents. The blind leading the blind and all that. I bet you know exactly where that scripture is.”
“But I don’t want an adversarial relationship with parents,” I protested. “We’re all supposed to be on the same team.”
Ms. Jackson turned and stared out of the one window in our faculty lounge, a window affording a generous view of yet another building in Harlem. “I got kids too,” she said. “They had good teachers, they had bad teachers, and my kids came out just fine.”
And that’s it, y’all. That’s the blog.
No fancy sagacious quotes or inspirational passages from scripture to tie it all neatly together. No challenges to young teachers. No charge to receive the anointing in our so-called parent management. No high minded cheerleading. Some problems are simply bigger than us.
This area is my kryptonite. That’s a Superman reference. Superman is all powerful until you toss a glowing green rock at him. The cool thing about Kryptonite is that it was a piece of rock from Superman’s home world. It didn’t make Superman weak. It made him normal. Our problems in and out of the building do not make us less super, or less anointed. They make us normal. Let’s step down and hold the kryptonite close. It’s a piece of home. Parents remind me of home so much. They look like my mother, my aunts and uncles. I can easily be related to them. But they’re also not my family. Not even close. That’s the preconceived notion I needed to unlearn over and over again.
I am writing this to you, but also writing this to me. The So-Called Parent Management is an area where we can all improve. Everything we do in the classroom is relational. But why is it hard to adopt that mindset when we’re thinking about our “parent load?”
I asked some of my parent friends, “What do you wish teachers knew about your child?” Here were some of the responses:
“I wish my child’s teacher knew how complex my childrens’ internal worlds are…how much they teach themselves when they’re at home…how their social skills don’t seem to match how kind and good they are, especially when they’re under pressure at school.”
“I wish my child’s teacher knew the enormous difference they made on my kid’s attitude and body and focus given the time of day, amount of rest, diet, social situation, transitions, and events from the commute to school.”
“I wish my child’s teacher knew that it’s a team effort, and I’ve found open parent/teacher communication to be invaluable.”
“I wish my child’s teacher knew that a desire to be informed and involved doesn’t automatically equate to wanting to boss the teacher around.”
Taking care of our “parent load” is a lot of work, but it’s the good work. I see how easy it can be for us, as teachers, to subscribe to narratives about parents that can lead to an unsympathetic understanding of who they are. They may seem like the Real Housewives of Harlem sharing bad YELP reviews of their kid’s teachers, but if we can train our spiritual eye, and if we can chip away at the concrete in our hearts, we can zoom in and we can see them not for who they are, but for what our relationship with them can be:
It may be bigger than you, and it may be bigger than me, but the problems we’re having ain’t bigger than the both of us. Now let’s cross the street at dismissal and hug it out. We’re on the same team.
