I had a bit of an “aha!” moment today at work. I don’t normally do this but I felt it was important enough to share. Every Wednesday we have professional development. Today we focused on shared text, which is basically teaching children to find the main idea of certain texts, mainly poems (in 1st grade!). We were planning a lesson on Langston Hughes’ “Dreams,” which is as follows:
Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
Now, I didn’t have a great day today, every single day at work is a serious challenge and sometimes I want to give up but I’m doing what I’m doing for a reason. My school has a goal. We want these kids to succeed, we want them to go to college, we want them to have dreams. How does this tie back to the poem? Well, we came up with a main idea, and basically we decided that Langston Hughes felt that dreams and hopes are the essence of life, without them there is no actual living, there’s just a life disappointment, it’s just empty, barren like that field. A life without dreams is like “a broken winged bird that cannot fly” - birds are MEANT to fly, that’s what they were born to do. As a human being, we are MEANT to have hopes and dreams. The whole point of living is to DO something, have a goal and just go for it. I’m teaching 6 year olds this and I can’t believe I am just learning this now, at almost 23 years old. Where would I be right now if I took the easy way out? Nowhere special. Right now, I’m somewhere special. My school is in the top 1% of all public schools in New York state, we’re closing the achievement gap in places where most people thought it was impossible. What we’re doing is emotionally draining, I might work 11 hours a day and be frustrated at having 31 kids in my class, many of which have serious behavior and attitude problems, but that doesn’t change the fact that all of this is a part of my own goals and I think that’s really something. I always think about a Lemuria song that has the lyric “I’d rather be slapped than pitied” and this poem really slapped me today. Thanks, Langston. I needed that.
