Adolescent Cynicism & Mutual Aid in the Classroom
Teaching amid chaos, I'm grappling with how to ignite care in my students.
I came to this job with a backpack full of mutual-aid-isms & big dreams about redistributing classroom power. Like we could somehow build this tiny utopia where paintbrushes & clay & care would flow. Grades wouldn't matter because we'd all be too busy MAKING THINGS THAT MATTER. Everyone would get a good grade because everyone would TRY.
(pause for bitter laughter)
You know how at the end of a movie that takes place in a classroom, the admin and students and the teachers are all like YES WE ARE CHANGED FOREVER? I thought that by the end of my first year teaching, I could look at all of my friends & say with absolute certainty: the kids are alright.
the kids are not alright.
the kids are not alright.
the kids are not alright.
The weight of this truth rides the bus home with me every day and sits heavy on my chest while I try to sleep.
What nobody warned me: the entire structure of school itself is built to crush exactly what I believe the world needs to grow. Try explaining why the grading policy isn’t working because everyone's sharing their projects & helping each other & the whole idea of individual achievement feels suddenly hollow & strange. Try explaining that you haven’t seen this one failing kid’s eyes all year and it’s NOT because your lessons are not engaging - it is because he is scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.
The cynicism in my classroom isn't all empty teenage posturing. It's a demand disguised as apathy: tell me the truth or don't talk to me at all. I've started to see it as the most honest thing they have to offer. I find this frustrating. How can I both empathize with this cynicism and also communicate there there are ways to remain in this world without sounding old or lame?
Mary Oliver said "attention is the beginning of devotion" and U keep thinking: these kids' attention is being fractured and stolen every second of every day, and then we wonder why they can't devote themselves to anything. That’s not fair. Many of them have devotion, but the ones who don’t - I am scared for them.
My job isn't to lie to them about the flames. My job is to stand in the fire beside them, hands blackened with charcoal, and say: yes, I see it too. Now what will we make from the heat?
I carry impossible questions onto the bus each evening:
→ how do you teach kindness in a world that keeps proving cruelty wins?
→ how do you validate legitimate fear without feeding it?
→ how do you say "yes, the house is burning" without erasing the possibility that something might still be saved?
To find the answers, I have been diving deep into my commonplace book, rereading quotes pulled from beautiful books by beautiful people. bell hooks wrote that "to teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin." but how do you care for souls that are already convinced caring is for suckers?
The contradictions would break me completely if not for these tiny moments: the boy tells his friend that he HAS to take a walk across the bridge instead of the subway because the view is SO BEAUTIFUL. The rare but perfect silence of 34 bodies completely absorbed in the act of creating. The project that begins with cynical detachment but ends with something so tender it makes my throat ache. At the end of the week, I wish it was every kid. I wish that they all wanted to take the reigns, to see the mess of the world and clean it up. But I also understand if it is all too much. What about the students who are not even cynical? Who just don't care at all? How do we as educators not let that get to us?
One more quote. I’m sorry to stack this newsletter with them but sometimes I need the words of another to figure out a feeling. I found this quote unlabeled in one of my notebooks but didn’t help me to find the source: "the self who could practice care & politics simultaneously was the only self I could stand to be." Reading over this feels like a personal attack on days when I'm too tired to be either.
It's not enough. It's also everything.
Maybe, actually, this is enough—to keep showing up with cardboard and colored pencils and the belief that creating something together still matters - full stop. Art isn't a luxury but a necessity. Maybe attention, even fractured attention, is a form of love.
Okay. I love you. (And I promise not EVERY email will be about teaching).
Liah