Sometimes I cry ...

... sometimes I sigh ...

I wake up with the phrase of a song ringing in my head. Echoes of some dream I can not remember. Tears prickling and twinkling in my eyes. I keep thinking the song and staying with the phrase, "Sometimes I cry ..." and then, "human condition," comes next. I realize it is connected to the children I had seen yesterday and the day before, during my visits to different classrooms to supervise teachers or consult with other early childhood programs. Little children reaching out for love and attention, soft, sweet bodies with bright eyes burning into my soul, searching my face for answers. Little hands clasping mine, warm bodies melting into my lap as we listened to the teacher telling a story. One little girl asked me, as I tied her shoelaces in preparation to play outdoors, "Will you come back tomorrow?" I wanted to reply, "Yes, and forever after that. I will always be here." Instead I said, "Soon." She registered resignation in her face and I went on, "I have to go to my work of teaching teachers, but I will come back another day and see you." She smiled and skipped out to play. And I drove away with her eyes imprinted in my heart and brain.

I think about my Chair who said to me, "Children should not be poor. It simply is not right." My heart melted at that. "No," I thought, as I drove away from one of the schools in one of the poorest districts, "No child deserves to be poor. But more than that, no child deserves to be unloved or neglected, teased or humiliated, ignored or laughed at."

I think, too, of missed opportunities. Instead of enveloping the children in their mental and physical embrace, a few of my students choose to sit back and scorn the school culture, despising the teachers who host them.

White privilege is insidious, toxic, all pervasive, deep in our collective psyche affecting who we are, choices we make, how we think, behaviors, expectations ...

The human condition.

Sometimes I cry ... sometimes I sigh ... and then I climb wearily into my car, and off I go again ...

Comments

[tamarika]

Yes, Janna, you know how all of this feels. Thank you for your support and encouragement about this.

[Janna]

"Instead of enveloping the children in their mental and physical embrace, a few of my students choose to sit back and scorn the school culture, despising the teachers who host them."

Oh, this makes me so mad. Give 'em hell, Tamar!

[tamarika]

Yes, of course, Always Question, if they make the effort that is important too. Am worried though that a few are not even making the effort, so paralyzed by feeling superior or seated in judgement the way they are.

[AlwaysQuestion]

Good point about "white privilege" although I don't know that it's unique to privileged whites. I hear comments from co-workers about every time I work at the food bank which lead me to conclude that they see themselves as "other" than the people we're there to serve. Still, they're there making some effort, and that has to count for something even if they don't entirely get the point.