Courtesy of: Mentoring Minds

Ferguson is not just about systemic racism — it's about class warfare and how America's poor are held back, says Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Will the recent rioting in Ferguson, Missouri, be a tipping point in the struggle against racial injustice, or will it be a minor footnote in some future grad student’s thesis on Civil Unrest in the Early Twenty-First Century?

By Natasha Walizer 

A teacher is the one who listens to the "strange" boy talk about his fascination with dragons and not judge. A teacher listens intently to the very animated child and might not understand what he is speaking of, but a teacher listens.

A teacher is the one who listens to the 7th grade girl complain about her over-protective mother and how she wishes she could wear what clothes she wants. A teacher calmly tells the child that her mother is just being a good mom and taking care of her. A teacher watches the teenager roll her eyes and inside cries because a teacher worries about what trouble that girl could get into one day.

A teacher sits next to the small boy, even though his clothes and he smells. A teacher wonders of the last time he bathed or his clothes were washed for him, but he can't add two digit numbers so a teacher sits by his side and helps him.

A teacher will call home to message machines over and over again trying to get through to the parent of the child who has been missing from school for days at a time without any reason. A teacher will take a 30-minute duty free lunchtime to call home and speak to the parent of a gifted child who again has done brilliantly on a class project.

A teacher wants to recognize the hard work children have done even though it is expected from some of them.

A teacher believes there are no bad students, just challenging ones.

A teacher will question and teach her students how to question.

A teacher can take criticism from students. A teacher will stay up until midnight to change the next day's lesson plans because the students said they needed to be taught in a different way than previously taught.

A teacher stands in the cafeteria and watches certain children waste food, throwing away what they don't eat while others have been given a free lunch and ask for people's extras because they know there is nothing at home. A teacher thinks of their own lunch in the classroom and knows they could go with less. A teacher looks at the students who do not have that choice.

A teacher pulls apart two girls or two boys bigger than them while they try to rip out each other's hair for no better reason than one supposedly said something about the other. Even though a teacher might get hurt, a teacher doesn't want the students to hurt each other.

A teacher puts extra pencils, crayons, and notebooks in a cart at the back-to-school sales because a teacher knows there will always be someone who needs them.

A teacher gets angry when a child has such potential and wastes it. A teacher sympathizes with the children who want nothing more than to be able to "get it" but they do not have that gift.

A teacher wipes the nose of the little kindergartner who fell on the playground and everyone laughed at him. A teacher cleans him up and lets him sit in the classroom while recess finishes. He's too embarrassed to go back outside.

A teacher will question why those students who cannot sit still must sit still through hours of state testing. A teacher knows a better way of assessing these children's knowledge, but a teacher must do what the state says. And have a positive attitude about it.

A teacher will stay up late grading papers and projects, writing comments and giving suggestions.

A teacher will step in front of the intruder to protect the students, the children, and someone else's baby.

A teacher will accommodate for a child's needs so that child can be successful in the way he or she needs to be successful. This is not always due to a learning disorder.

A teacher will tell any child "good job" for any simple or complex achievement, a perfect spelling test or their 500th strike out.

A teacher will accept change and adapt, as long as the teacher is given the opportunity and the training to change and adapt.

A teacher will be patient and remind he or herself that the student is only 9 or 13 or 17.

A teacher realizes this is public education. It is not perfect. It never will be. It will constantly change and a teacher must change with the flow, the current trend, and the newest idea.

A teacher will be a mom or dad if the need is there.

A teacher will put a student against a wall on timeout and put them in their place if need be.

A teacher will make the students cry, laugh, get really angry, and question why. A teacher will cry, laugh, get angry, and question why with that student.

A teacher educates every student to achieve his or her best and if someone or something impedes that process of learning, a teacher will make it go away.

A teacher often comes to work when it is still dark outside. A teacher will leave when it is dark again.

A teacher works on the weekends, on holidays, during the summer.

A teacher goes to graduation and hugs the student who called them names, wrote bad things on the Internet about them, lied to their face, and disrespected them. A teacher whispers in that student's ear, "I am so proud of you. I knew you could do it."

A teacher thanks the parents for their support, even when they do not get it.

A teacher thanks their colleagues for their support, even when that teacher doesn't get it.

A teacher doesn't get exasperated with a learning support student. A teacher doesn't tell the student to "try harder" but simply says, "Try again." The student is already trying hard.

A teacher can never leave their work at the office.

A teacher's day does not end when the buses pull out.

A teacher builds relationships and teaches the students to build relationships.

A teacher teaches students, not a subject matter.

A teacher never ever gives up.

A teacher is a gift. Cherish them.

*Published in  

HuffPost Education  07/01/2014

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.
The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience... 
I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.
But trust me, in 20 years you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked... 
You're not as fat as you Imagine.

Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. 
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind.
The kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing everyday that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy; 
Sometimes you're ahead, 
Sometimes You're behind.
The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; 
If you Succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your
Life.
The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium.

Be kind to your knees, you'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't, maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't, maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary.
Whatever you do, don't Congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either.
Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's. 
Enjoy your body, Use it every way you can... Don't be afraid of it, or what other people Think of it, 
It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own... 

Dance... even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.

Brother and sister together we'll make it through
Someday your spirit will take you and guide you there
I know you've been hurting, but I've been waiting to be there
For you. 
And I'll be there, just tell me now, whenever I can. 
Everybody's free.

Get to know your parents, you never know when they'll be gone for good.

Be nice to your siblings; 
They are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on. 
Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; 
Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will Philander, you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. 
Maybe you have a trust fund, Maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen... 

You went to school so you think you know what teachers do, right? You are wrong. Here’s a piece explaining all of this from Sarah Blaine, a mom, former teacher and full-time practicing attorney in New Jersey who writes at her parentingthecore blog, where this first appeared.

By Sarah Blaine

We all know what teachers do, right? After all, we were all students. Each one of us, each product of public education, we each sat through class after class for thirteen years. We encountered dozens of teachers. We had our kindergarten teachers and our first grade teachers and our fifth grade teachers and our gym teachers and our art teachers and our music teachers. We had our science teachers and our social studies teachers and our English teachers and our math teachers. If we were lucky, we might even have had our Latin teachers or our Spanish teachers or our physics teachers or our psychology teachers. Heck, I even had a seventh grade “Communications Skills” teacher. We had our guidance counselors and our principals and some of us had our special education teachers and our study hall monitors.

So we know teachers. We get teachers. We know what happens in classrooms, and we know what teachers do. We know which teachers are effective, we know which teachers left lasting impressions, we know which teachers changed our lives, and we know which teachers sucked.

We know. We know which teachers changed lives for the better. We know which teachers changed lives for the worse.

Teaching as a profession has no mystery. It has no mystique. It has no respect.

We were students, and therefore we know teachers. We denigrate teachers. We criticize teachers. We can do better than teachers. After all: We do. They teach.

We are wrong.

We need to honor teachers. We need to respect teachers. We need to listen to teachers. We need to stop reducing teachers to arbitrary measurements of student growth on so-called objective exams.

Most of all, we need to stop thinking that we know anything about teaching merely by virtue of having once been students.

We don’t know.

I spent a little over a year earning a master of arts in teaching degree. Then I spent two years teaching English Language Arts in a rural public high school. And I learned that my 13 years as a public school student, my 4 years as a college student at a highly selective college, and even a great deal of my year as a masters degree student in the education school of a flagship public university hadn’t taught me how to manage a classroom, how to reach students, how to inspire a love of learning, how to teach. Eighteen years as a student (and a year of preschool before that), and I didn’t know shit about teaching. Only years of practicing my skills and honing my skills would have rendered me a true professional. An expert. Someone who knows about the business of inspiring children. Of reaching students. Of making a difference. Of teaching.

I didn’t stay. I copped out. I left. I went home to suburban New Jersey, and a year later I enrolled in law school.

I passed the bar. I began to practice law at a prestigious large law firm. Three years as a law student had no more prepared me for the practice of law than 18 years of experience as a student had previously prepared me to teach. But even in my first year as a practicing attorney, I earned five times what a first year teacher made in the district where I’d taught.

I worked hard in my first year of practicing law. But I didn’t work five times harder than I’d worked in my first year of teaching. In fact, I didn’t work any harder. Maybe I worked a little less.

But I continued to practice. I continued to learn. Nine years after my law school graduation, I think I have some idea of how to litigate a case. But I am not a perfect lawyer. There is still more I could learn, more I could do, better legal instincts I could develop over time. I could hone my strategic sense. I could do better, be better. Learn more law. Learn more procedure. But law is a practice, law is a profession. Lawyers are expected to evolve over the course of their careers. Lawyers are given more responsibility as they earn it.

New teachers take on full responsibility the day they set foot in their first classrooms.

The people I encounter out in the world now respect me as a lawyer, as a professional, in part because the vast majority of them have absolutely no idea what I really do.

All of you former students who are not teachers and not lawyers, you have no more idea of what it is to teach than you do of what it is to practice law.

All of you former students: you did not design curricula, plan lessons, attend faculty meetings, assess papers, design rubrics, create exams, prepare report cards, and monitor attendance. You did not tutor students, review rough drafts, and create study questions. You did not assign homework. You did not write daily lesson objectives on the white board. You did not write poems of the week on the white board. You did not write homework on the white board. You did not learn to write legibly on the white board while simultaneously making sure that none of your students threw a chair out a window.

You did not design lessons that succeeded. You did not design lessons that failed.

You did not learn to keep your students quiet during lock down drills.

You did not learn that your 15 year old students were pregnant from their answers to vocabulary quizzes. You did not learn how to teach functionally illiterate high school students to appreciate Shakespeare. You did not design lessons to teach students close reading skills by starting with the lyrics to pop songs. You did not miserably fail your honors level students at least in part because you had no books to give them. You did not struggle to teach your students how to develop a thesis for their essays, and bask in the joy of having taught a successful lesson, of having gotten through to them, even for five minutes. You did not struggle with trying to make SAT-level vocabulary relevant to students who did not have a single college in their county. You did not laugh — because you so desperately wanted to cry — when you read some of the absurdities on their final exams. You did not struggle to reach students who proudly announced that they only came to school so that their mom’s food stamps didn’t get reduced.

You did not spend all of New Years’ Day crying five years after you’d left the classroom because you reviewed the New York Times’ graphic of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and learned that one of your very favorite students had been killed in Iraq two years before. And you didn’t know. Because you copped out and left. So you cried, helplessly, and the next day you returned to the practice of law.

You did not. And you don’t know. You observed. Maybe you learned. But you didn’t teach.

The problem with teaching as a profession is that every single adult citizen of this country thinks that they know what teachers do. And they don’t. So they prescribe solutions, and they develop public policy, and they editorialize, and they politicize. And they don’t listen to those who do know. Those who could teach. The teachers.