Speech by Christina Miller, 1st/2nd Grade Teacher at First Place
Good early morning to you! I am so honored to be here speaking to you and that you all took time out of your busy schedules to join us.
My name is Christina Miller, and I teach 1st and 2nd grade.
I give hugs, band-aids and check-pluses.
I get dandelions, boogers and love notes.
I dance, I act, I sing, I read.
I solve world problems.
I cry, I sweat, I get really dirty.
I always do my best to fix broken crayons, broken hearts, and broken lives. But I don’t always have enough tape.
I accept hugs as currency.
I went to grad school to learn how to use just enough glue, cut on the lines, and write really fast.
But that’s not what I am here to talk to you about. I am here to tell you why I show up every day.
I often get stuck on the idea of "homelessness" because it is such a huge part of our population and it seems it should be the focus point. After all, according to the 2010 count, over half the homeless population in Seattle consists of families with children. That’s daunting. I may know how to use just enough glue, but what do I know about how to help?
What I do know, is that when children deal with trauma, and turmoil, the approach to teaching them becomes completely different. These kids know how to survive, but how do I teach them to dream?
Yes, the achievement gap is important, but a child can not cross that gap without safety and hope. When you are moving from home to home, school to school, you can only hope that the teacher doesn't single you out too much, because half the time you don't know why you are acting out. You just are. When you don't know what situation you will come home to, or where you might sleep that night, you can only hope to go home unnoticed and unscathed.
How do I teach them to hope bigger than that? That life is more than getting by unnoticed or unscathed?
One day at a time, one child at a time. That’s how.
That’s why I show up everyday.
More often than not, I feel like I am learning right there with them. Like we have become this little pack of dreamers that can hope for our dreams to become wildly true, because together we are safe. And we have forged a language built in that trust.
I am thankful for that language.
Any teacher can tell you, that any child, anywhere, can not show up for school and leave their baggage at the door. Everything that happens in their young lives is carried around with them. And yet we expect them to push it aside for 6 hours a day in order to learn their basic academics.
Too often, as adults we forget that they are still fine tuning their coping mechanisms. They have not had the time, or often the support needed to do so. Children are still learning how to communicate their pains, but how can they if they don’t understand them? Something as simple as looking at the calendar and realizing that yet another move is coming can trigger a melt down. I know, I’ve seen it happen. And when this happens, can I really expect for them to get their math work done?
Add to this the elements of trauma that homelessness brings, and you would expect a recipe for disaster.
What I have learned, is that this is often not the case. Our kids are resilient, they are survivors, and they carry their baggage with the hope that it can only get better. I see them begin to burrow their roots deep into First Place’s fertile soil and they become more and more sturdy in the foundation of hope built around them.
That’s why I show up every day.
Of course, some days it isn’t as easy to see.
Students may come and go in our classes. The going is always the hardest part. I must admit, I was not prepared for the feeling of a child leaving and knowing that we were just on the verge of something good with them. I will always remember the sweet little girl that came in, and completely altered my whole forward motion. She had moved more times in her 6 years than she knew how to count. In first grade, she was reading below kindergarten level and could not comprehend basic number sense. It completely turned my whole teaching plan upside-down. There were so many gaps in her education caused by a life on the go. But, slowly…slowly, over the course of 6 weeks she began to settle in. We began to trust each other. I began to understand how to teach her.
And just like that, she was gone. Oh the what-if’s. The could have beens. The why didn’t I sooners…
I have to remind myself that for every child that I send off with my wonderings, I see 5 who begin to grow and thrive.
Take the child who started at First Place with an attitude bordering on dangerous. In any other school, he would be seen as a behavior problem. Brushed aside or alienated into a specialized classroom. We teachers and case managers were the lucky ones to have the time to get to know him and his family. We were the ones blessed with seeing his mother take ownership of her life. I even caught myself off guard by cheering out loud with, when she told me she was finishing her GED. The case managers supported her as she took the daunting steps to get stable housing and a safe environment for her young son. And it seemed that literally overnight, we saw a peace enter his demeanor. His normal violence turned into concern for others. His bad attitude turned into respect for himself. And of course, most important to me, his refusal to do his school work turned into a note passed to me from the back of the class:
Dear Teacher,
Math is FUN! Let’s do it more.
That’s why I show up every day.
Because if I don’t show up, who is going to dream big with my kids?
