I was subbing in a local school on Thursday, the day before this particular school system was off for four days, Fri-Mon, due to the state’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday on that Monday.
A teacher who pulled kids out from classrooms to work with them in small groups was talking with three students as they all entered her work area.
“When did Martin Luther King die?” The student who asked this was maybe seven years old.
“1949, I think,” the teacher said.
I was packing my book bag. Immediately, my head shot up. “It was 1968,” I said. “Not that long ago. I was eight years old. That year. . . It was a dark time for our country.”
The teacher barely blinked an eye. “Oh, maybe he was born in 1949, then,” she said to the students. She started passing out worksheets.
I was in the process of leaving the classroom to head to another location in the school. I stopped, stood there paralyzed. 1929. I knew this. He was born in 1929, the same birth year as my dad, my dad who wasn’t murdered at the height of his humanhood, and who went on to live a gorgeously full and remarkable existence until he passed at age 88, all this living stolen from the great Dr. King by an assassin’s bullet.
I said nothing.
My excuses washed over me. I was a visitor to the building. I was not even supposed to be in this room at this time. This teacher was starting her lesson. Already, I was in the way and out of place.
I taught about Dr. King, his life, his necessity, for thirty years. If asked, I could have stepped in immediately and led an engaging lesson right then and there, no materials necessary, on this heroic hero catalyst for good.
I wasn’t asked. So I didn’t.
I continued packing up my things and as I headed to the door, the same student said, “Why did he die?”
I stopped and waited to hear the teacher’s response.
“He wanted everyone to be good to each other,” she said. Could she have been any vaguer?
“But why did he die?”
“I don’t know,” she said. That was verbatim.
She started passing out books and papers to the kids.
Before she could change the subject, I had to say something. But what? How? I didn’t have the courage inside me to convey what I wanted to say – “You need to talk about this with these students right now.”
What I said instead was almost worse than saying nothing. From across the room I called out, “Does the district not want you to teach about Dr. King?”
“That’s their classroom teacher’s job. She read a book to them.”
I nearly stroked out. This was a classic teachable moment, and this teacher fucked it up big time. She should have dropped everything - EVERYTHING - and talked with the students about Dr. King. To hell with lesson plans. To hell with any excuses.
Here’s what I would have done.
Nope. Just deleted all that because that's just excuses. Any words about would I WOULD HAVE done muddy the waters and distract from this fact: I did nothing. I turned around. Left the room.
There’s no coming back from that. I did nothing. That’s a moral failure on my part and I need to own it.
Tact. Self-control. Courtesy. Diplomacy. Those are some of the terms that came up when this morning I googled “saying nothing when someone else says or does something wrong.” That’s proof right there that google isn’t the end-all-be-all of human understanding.
I know in my gut exactly what I am – a coward. I could have seized that teachable moment and, with just a few carefully chosen phrases have changed a kid’s life. Because it was obvious to me then and is even more acutely obvious to me now that that young student wanted to talk about Dr. King. It was obvious he was still processing the story his teacher read to him. He had questions. Good questions. He wanted answers. Good answers. Possibly life-changing answers.
And I could have given them to him.
I chose cowardice. I took the easy road.
This week my being is consumed by the events unfolding in Minneapolis and the protestors who are doing all they can in freezing, dangerous conditions, to protect the Constitutional rights of their friends and neighbors. They are heroes. They are everything I am not.
And here’s me, in my nice warm house, choosing passivity and comfort when, with just a few words I could have done so much.
They put me to shame.
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