By Derrick Brown (follow on Twitter @dbrowndbrown)
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The Classroom Across the Hall (942 Words)
By Derrick Brown (Join Our Mailing List!)
<PLOT SPOILER ... This is an imagined conversation ... that still hits "close to home" ... selah>
Across the hall from my geometry class sits a first-year physics teacher named
Ms. Parker.
She teaches a senior-level class of mostly White students … who call her “Miss
P.”
Her students arrive early, sit where they are told to, and raise their hands to
ask permission to breathe.
When I pass her door, the hum is gentle ... calculations whispered, laughter
polite.
When she passes mine, she sees “hidden” phones, hears bass lines muted by
headphones, impassioned “top five” arguments, and my voice doing triple duty …
as teacher, counselor, and referee.
We work on the same hallway, but we live in different worlds.
I joke sometimes that I do not teach as much as I babysit.
It is dark humor, but it is also defense ... a way of naming the emotional tax
of showing up every day to manage chaos born from years of neglect … from
multiple offenders.
My students are mostly Black and Latino teenagers who have learned to read tone
faster than text … to sense danger quicker than definitions.
They come to me carrying the residue of anger, unbelief, depression, anxiety,
overcompensation, fear, self-dishonesty, self-loathing, stereotypes, cruelty, suspensions,
transfers, and invisible scars … from “mind molding” institutions that never
quite knew what to do with them … but knew what to do to them.
They are brilliant, but bruised and unaware of that brilliance … and the
responsibility it carries.
They do not just test equations; they test boundaries … and endurance.
Meanwhile, across the hall, Ms. Parker is learning how to teach ... with a group of students that seem to want to learn.
Her students call her by name … with the affection of a niece calling her
favorite aunt.
Mine test me every day to see if my patience has an expiration date.
Hers test kinetic energy … mine test boundaries.
Both experiments matter, but only one gets included in the district newsletter.
One afternoon she caught me locking up late.
She smiled, holding her thermos and a stack of cleanly typed lab reports.
“Long day?” she asked.
I told her that all of mine were long now.
She laughed, said her kids were easy but exhausting in their own way ... “they
have never failed at anything that mattered.”
I told her my kids had failed at everything that was made to matter.
We stood there, two teachers separated by a hallway and a century.
She had read my essay, Lizard Liability, about the day a
gecko crawled out from behind my whiteboard and turned the room into a zoo.
She said she loved it, how it moved from comedy to confession.
Then she asked the question no one had dared ask …
“How do you keep doing this?”
I told her the truth … I don’t know.
Maybe because someone has to.
Maybe because I believe that peace is the precondition for patience.
Maybe because the moment I stop showing up, the story about kids like mine gets
told by someone who never really saw
them.
She said she sometimes felt guilty ... that her calm classroom was built on
an invisible inheritance.
I told her guilt is cheap … awareness costs more.
She nodded, quiet now.
I could tell she wanted to bridge the gap between us … but did not yet know the
language.
So I tried to give her the language.
I said, “You teach in a room built to sustain; I teach in one built to
contain.”
She flinched, not out of offense but recognition.
She said, “I never thought of it that way.”
Neither had I, not until the words left my mouth.
Sometimes clarity is what happens when exhaustion finally tells the truth.
I have learned that our hallway is a microcosm of American education ... two
classrooms, two realities, each pretending the other does not exist.
Her students learn about force and motion … mine embody force and
motion.
Her kids calculate velocity … mine are trying to slow down enough to breathe.
Both are learning physics … but only one group is learning what happens when an
unequal system demands equal outcomes.
And yet, when we finally talked, the distance shrank.
We admitted that both of us were tired ... just in different languages.
Her fatigue came from trying to meet expectations … mine came from surviving them.
She worried about rigor … I worried
about relevance.
She measured mastery … I measured mercy.
Before we locked our doors that evening, she said she wanted to visit my
class.
I told her she was welcome, but warned her … “It is not a show ... it is
survival theater.”
She smiled.
“Maybe I’ll bring my kids too. Let them see that energy changes form.”
I said, “Just make sure they know it is conserved.”
We laughed, but I think we both knew we were talking about something bigger
than physics.
Energy, like dignity, cannot be destroyed ... it can only be transferred.
Some days I feel the transfer happening … a quiet student who finally looks me
in the eye … a class that works for ten straight minutes without a shout … a
hallway conversation that feels like reconciliation.
Maybe that is what teaching really is ... not instruction, but energy exchange.
Across the hall … across history … across race.
Some days it feels like progress … some days it feels like penance.
But every day it is a choice.
And when I walk past Ms. Parker’s door now, I do not just hear calm.
I hear possibility.
Two classrooms, two frequencies ... learning … maybe … to resonate.
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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