By Derrick Brown (follow on Twitter @dbrowndbrown)
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Boundary Value Problems (Across the Hall) (852 Words)
By Derrick Brown (Join Our Mailing List!)
Teaching has a way of sneaking the truth into your classroom when you least
expect it.
Sometimes it arrives as a lesson you planned.
Other times, it enters disguised as a question from a student brave enough ...
or tired enough ... to ask what everyone else avoids.
The question came from DB, a Black male senior whose eyes stay alert, searching for something more than the next assignment.
He looked across the room at AB and EB, two White Latino classmates, and asked, “What would happen if I came to your house?”
The room froze.
Laughter flickered and died.
EB answered first .... “My folks would be afraid.”
AB added, “You would be cooked.”
A few students chuckled.
DB didn’t.
He leaned forward. “Cooked?”
AB softened. “It’s not that they don’t like you. They just don’t trust you.”
That word ... trust ... hung in the air like chalk dust.
I stood at the edge of the room, minding my business … but really taking
inventory.
I had just called this period “babysitting” in my notes, but in that moment I
realized I was documenting anthropology.
Three teenagers had just re-enacted the social contract of American education
... curiosity punished by fear, honesty cloaked in laughter, difference
translated as danger.
Across the hall, Ms. Parker’s seniors might have been performing an
experiment on gravitational potential energy.
In mine, gravity had already pulled us down to the core of something real.
I teach geometry, but I have learned that my real subject is boundaries
... how to draw them, respect them, cross them, and recover when they’re
crossed.
Today’s “boundary value problem” was not mathematical … it was moral.
The question was not about what a function does at its endpoints.
It was about what happens when people reach the limits of their empathy.
DB’s question ... “What would happen if I came to your house?” ... was not hypothetical.
It was a plea for data.
He wanted evidence that belonging might exist beyond the walls of school.
He wanted to test a theory about acceptance.
What he received instead was a measurement of fear.
To their credit, AB and EB did not lie.
They told the truth as they understood it.
They did not use slurs.
They did not yell.
They simply told him that their families ... like so many ... had inherited a
reflexive mistrust of Blackness.
They named what most adults avoid.
And in that way, they exposed the invisible equation that runs this building …
proximity + difference = discomfort.
Across the hall, in the physics room, boundaries mean something else
entirely.
There, boundaries define experiments ... containment for control.
A student can calculate the trajectory of a projectile without ever wondering
who is allowed to launch it.
Their learning is predictable … measurable … safe.
Mine is volatile, unpredictable, and human.
When the bell rings, Ms. Parker and I lock eyes through our open doors.
She smiles ... a gesture of respect … maybe pity … maybe both.
She once told me she loved reading my story Lizard Liability … about the day a
gecko disrupted my classroom.
She said it was “hilarious and heartbreaking.”
I told her that described teaching itself.
We share the same hallway … the same pay scale … the same curriculum
deadlines.
But she teaches students who expect to be understood.
I teach students who expect to be misread.
She is trained to measure growth ... I am forced to measure grace.
Still, we coexist.
Her calm is not the enemy of my chaos ...
it is the echo of a system designed to give one classroom quiet ... and the
other "noise".
The hallway between us is not just tile and air ... it is history itself … partitioned
by race, comfort, and consequence.
When I think about DB’s question now, I wonder if he was asking all of us.
What would happen if he ... or anyone like him ... crossed that hallway?
Would he be welcomed as a guest … or managed as a liability?
Would curiosity still sound like defiance once spoken in a quieter room?
I did not correct AB or EB that day.
I did not call for a restorative circle or write a disciplinary referral.
I just let the silence work.
Because sometimes silence teaches what words can’t … that the boundary between truth and reconciliation is not a straight line.
It bends, it oscillates, it reflects.
Like any transformation worth studying … it takes time.
I ended class by reminding them that congruence ... like dignity ... depends
on correspondence.
Two figures are congruent when they match in every measure, even if one has
been flipped, turned, or shifted.
That is what I am trying to teach … that we can mirror each other without fear
… rotate without losing identity … translate without distortion.
Across the hall, they are learning about energy conservation.
In my room, we’re learning that human energy is never lost ... only
transferred.
And sometimes, the smallest exchange ... one question … one moment of raw honesty ... changes the
entire equation.
Selah.
(The "Follow The Leader (changED - Volume 2)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
(The "changED (Volume 1)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
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I am a “standup storyteller.”
I fuse rap, spoken word (poetry), oration (traditional public speaking), singing, and teaching into messages of hope, healing, and change that I write, direct, and produce to help people who help people.
Everything must change - and stay changED.
Tradition begins and ends with change.
Change begins with me and the renewing of my mind ... then continues through efforts to effect small-group discipleship (equipping others to equip others) with audiences that respect and embrace mentoring, mediation, and problem solving as tools of change.
I am the product of my mentoring relationships, peacemaking (and peacekeeping), and problem-solving ability.
My education began when I finished school.
After school, I enrolled in a lifelong curriculum that includes classes in ministry, entrepreneurship, stewardship, literacy, numeracy, language, self-identity, self-expression, and analysis / synthesis.
My projects execute a ministry that has evolved from wisdom earned through lessons learned.
I want to share this wisdom to build teams of "triple threat" fellows - mentors, mediators, and problem solvers.
We will collaborate in simple, powerful ways that allow us to help people who help people.
I now know that power is work done efficiently (with wise and skillful use of resources, interests, communication, and expertise).
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