*something about airplanes*

Planes.

Most people see a shiny jet, soaring through the sky and they start to think of things like clouds, or flying… I think of the destination.  I daydream about where those planes are flying to and the characters aboard.  Maybe there is a little boy, traveling all alone to go visit his grandparents in Oberndorf, Austria for a week.  Perhaps it is a businessman, flying to New Delhi with the intentions of spending less time working and more time sightseeing. 

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s a college senior, traveling to Ireland to finish her student-teaching requirements abroad.

In October of 2009, that college student was me.  I took the biggest leap of my life when I stepped off that plane… my family, friends, teachers and even my country were suddenly thousands of miles away.  Within the first few hours, my luggage was lost, I took the wrong bus, missed my stop (after finding the correct bus), and ended up soaking wet before I even made it to my host family’s house.   Throughout the next several weeks, I had hundreds of mishaps, but within every mistake there was a spectacular experience.  My confidence increased ten-fold and I also learned to love the stillness of being alone.  I found the thrill of getting lost and relying on the kindness of strangers.  I spent an afternoon, sitting on the edge of a cliff, with a magnanimous view over the Atlantic; finally realizing how small I was in such a big world.

I got the chance to truly discover who I am.

My students haven’t had those chances.  I work with kids who never get the chance to travel outside of the county, let alone the country.  As high school students, they are constantly battered with ideas and images that are not their own.  They preach their parents’ opinions and race to conform to the social norms.  They speak with hate towards others, but have no defense when asked why.  They are offended by the thoughts of others, but can’t give a reason or rebuttal.

These are the students I most want to teach, and it has nothing to do with math.

I had a young man, let’s call him Joe, who made a very hateful comment about a certain group of people… let’s pretend it was about brunettes.  Joe said that he hated all brunettes.  As a person, I wanted to rip his statement apart and make him look absolutely foolish in front of the class, but as a teacher, I took it as a learning opportunity.  I calmly asked Joe why he had such resentment for brunettes. 

       The first words out of his mouth?

"I don’t know"

That’s what it all comes down to.  They don’t know!  And how could I expect them to know?  Joe only knows what he has learned up until this point.  He has never ventured out to discover his own thoughts or learn how big the world really is.  Right now, his world is the size of a pea; there is no space to grow, no adventure to be found… it’s just too small.  I want him to have a fighting chance at discovering the world and his own ideas and beliefs, but how do I do that?

I teach.

Even though these kids will probably never see another quadratic formula after high school, they will remember how to solve problems.  I will make sure of it.  I will teach them to laugh when they make a mistake, not cry.  I will teach them that the road to success is tough, but very worthwhile.  I will teach them to memorize, and visualize, and strategize.  I will teach them to accept challenges as they come instead of complaining about them.  I will teach them that there are more important things to life than school… and yes, even as a teacher, I strongly believe that.  A ‘B’ isn’t the end of the world and the ‘F’ doesn’t mean you get to stop trying.  I will teach them to have compassion, or at the very least, tolerance.  We are all sinners and everyone has done something they are not proud of.  Rise above it.

When I have a really tough day as a teacher, it’s usually has nothing to do with math.  Teaching math is easy.  Teaching life is impossibly difficult. 

-Kate

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”  

-Mark Twain