The teacher who showed up for me

When I was 8 years old, school was a struggle for me. I remember sitting in a formal meeting with my teachers as they told my parents that I was not measuring up. “He’s too far behind,” one said. “He’s too anxious, too bewildered, too distracted, too much to deal with,” others followed. As I sat listening to my deficiencies, the truth of the matter was that I already knew these things. At 8 years old, I had convinced myself — and apparently my teachers — that I was unworthy of help and just didn’t care. I know now, as an educated adult who is also a teacher, that a series of socioeconomic struggles in my family contributed to my situation and poor performance. I was balancing trauma from poverty, immaturity, and the demands of school, and I was failing. But my parents, who have always supported me in the best way that they knew how, chose not to give up on me. They decided to try a smaller class with more support. This new setting did not come without a cost, but my parents recognized that this was a serious situation and worth the risk.

In my new class, my teacher was Mrs. Mickey. I remember my first day in her class like it was yesterday, especially when the class lined up for recess. As the children formed a line according to birth date, I stayed planted in my little plastic chair in the back of the class. Mrs. Mickey tried to get me to join the others, but I just sat there, unmoving, with tears streaming down my face.

For me, recess had never been fun. It was a time to catch up on work not done. And since I always had work not done, I did not go to recess. Looking back, I don’t think it was intended to be a punishment, but it certainly felt like one. Recess was just another place I didn’t belong. I liked Mrs. Mickey, with her warm smile and her story-like way of teaching, so I thought I would do her a favor and save her the trouble of having to tell me to stay inside. But instead of making me complete my work, or practice standing in a line, or rehearse my phonics skills, Mrs. Mickey did an unusual thing. She dismissed the other students and sat with me to talk.

As we started talking, she pulled out a brand-new box of markers and asked me if I wanted to stay inside and draw instead of going outside for recess. My eyes lit up. I loved drawing — it was kind of like my thing, my way of escaping. And I rarely had the opportunity to draw with markers. I used crayons sometimes in Sunday school, but never markers. So I wiped my nose on my sleeve and said yes. Mrs. Mickey taught me to draw a sun wearing sunglasses (I didn’t get the irony then). We also drew rainbows and Mrs. Mickey talked about how sometimes our lives are dark and stormy, but on the other side of the storm there is a rainbow — we just have to look through the clouds and the rain to see it.

At the end of recess, Mrs. Mickey picked up my drawing, held it up to the light to get a good look at it, and said, “Wade, I think you’re going to be an artist someday.” She said it with a quiet conviction that made me feel proud. Then she asked if she could keep my drawing. When I said yes, she taped it to the front of her desk — a place of honor. It might sound silly, but that picture was a symbol to me, a physical representation that I belonged there.

Potential in brokenness

Mrs. Mickey realized that I was broken, but just like she saw a rainbow on the other side of the storm, she also saw a strong, brave little dude on the other side of my brokenness. She believed in me before I believed in myself. And she kept believing. Mrs. Mickey always said that our class had a special place in her heart. She wrote every one of us letters at the beginning of each school year, all the way through graduation. She always ended her letters with, “And don’t forget, I love you!” Now that I am a teacher myself, I know that she probably did that for all her classes, but that doesn’t change the impact those words had on me. She gave me hope when I could not find it myself. I believe — I really do — that Mrs. Mickey saved my life.

Mrs. Mickey realized that I was broken, but just like she saw a rainbow on the other side of the storm, she also saw a strong, brave little dude on the other side of my brokenness.

I grew up on a dairy farm nestled in an old French settlement in the backwoods of Pennsylvania. We were what was known then as land-rich but pocket-poor. We had a farm and we worked hard, but many months, we survived on about $100. Even though we were generally happy, this poverty had repercussions. Some of my earliest memories include repeated hospitalizations because of malnutrition, poor living conditions, and accidents. The worst was when I contracted a life-threatening E. coli parasite after a mouse died in the springhouse that provided us with drinking water.

Today, I teach 6th-grade English to students in a small school in the rural area where I grew up. I have learned a lot about how poverty led to struggles that put me at risk for failure, but I have also learned about the power of seeing past student brokenness.

Writing in The Washington Post, Ivory Toldson (2019) makes the case that we need to stop labeling students “at-risk” because they become saddled with a label that they are not able to shake. I believe that it is undeniably important for teachers to recognize students who are at-risk and provide support for them without labeling them as such. One of the most important ways to provide this kind of support is by showing up.

The power of showing up

I follow a poet named Justin McRoberts, who posts short poems on social media. He posted a poem to his Instagram account in October 2020 that has become my mantra:

It is,
in no way,
an exaggeration
to say that
you and I
change lives
(and even save lives)
by simply showing up
and doing
what we promised to do.

In the first week of school last year, I wrote this poem on my board and read it aloud, thinking that I would use it as some sort of bell-ringer activity to motivate my class that day. But after I read it, I turned to face the class, and almost every student was in tears. I realized then how few of my students really knew what it was like to have someone show up and do what they promised to do. More than 70% of the students attending my school that year came from poverty, so in a typical class of 20 students, at least 14 of them experienced deep, generational hardship. We also had a high rate of incarcerated parents and drug use, and my county tops the state in child abuse cases. My classroom was filled with students who experienced brokenness, trauma, and hurt. On top of this, few of them felt they had somebody in their life they could point to and say, “Yeah that person took care of me like they said they would,” or “That was the person I could turn to when my life took a turn for the worse.”

It’s our responsibility as educators to break the cycle of abandonment, to show up and do what we promised to do, even when it’s hard.

After reading this poem to my students and seeing their reaction, I knew I had to do something tangible to show that I could be trusted. I got out a piece of paper and taped it to the front of my board and wrote, “I vow to show up and do what I promised to do,” and signed it Mr. Owlett. Without being prompted, one-by-one my students took out little scraps of paper from their agendas or undone math homework and wrote the same thing, signing their names to seal the deal. We transferred all those bits of paper to a bulletin board to serve as a constant reminder that we were all there to show up and do what we promised to do.

It’s our responsibility as educators to break the cycle of abandonment, to show up and do what we promised to do, even when it’s hard, and especially when doing what we promised to do seems to aggravate our students, their parents, or even us.

Just showing up and doing what we promised to do can, in fact, be difficult. We live in an America where it’s hard to know who’s safe to talk to about anything. We have become divisive and polarized and the gaps between people are growing larger and larger. The ironic part of all of this is that our students need our support now more than ever. And we need each other more than ever. Schools often serve as safe places for students, whether they are escaping abuse, facing discrimination due to sexuality or race, or overcoming trauma. It’s our job to create a safe environment before even thinking about academics.

I saw Mrs. Mickey a while back at our local thrift store. She was buying little things for her classroom, and we had the chance to catch up. I showed her pictures of my daughter, and she showed me pictures of her new grandchildren. When the conversation was coming to a close, she gave me a hug and said, “Wade, I still think you could be an artist someday.” As I turned to leave, she picked up a little mug that had a chip in the in the handle and said, “And don’t forget that I love you!” We all have it in us to save students just like Mrs. Mickey saved me. It starts with creating a safe place to show up and do what you promised to do.

Note: This article is adapted from Wade Owlett’s keynote address at the 2021 Educators Rising Conference. The poem by Justin McRoberts is printed with permission.

Reference

Toldson, I.A. (2019, January 23). Why we should stop labeling students as ‘at risk’ — and the best alternative. Washington Post.

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This article appears in the May 2022 issue of Kappan, Vol. 103, No. 8, pp. 58-59.