A gentle reminder to my fellow educators that, for many of our students, just showing up is “grit” enough. Their “bad” behaviors aren’t innate, but manifestations of the environments handed to them. Grace and patience with them matter in this work.
Instead of constantly looking up classroom management strategies, we ought to consider self-management and relationship-management strategies, too. The classrooms that look most pristine might actually be the classes with students most stripped of agency. Don’t conflate.
We need to keep asking ourselves whether we want students to have developed their own voices or voices that sound like bourgeoisie versions of themselves, which is not themselves at all. Our society keeps mandating acculturation and asking teachers to do that work. Let’s not.
Lastly, we should be skeptical of perfect classrooms with perfect children and adults. Because “perfect” in education is often a reflection of compliance, silencing, and mass assimilation. We do better being our complicated, problematic, reflective selves. With students.
