"We will guard each man's dignity and slay each man's pride." Today my pride was repeatedly wounded. Actually, before I even get in to that, I should begin by saying that the title of this blog will soon no longer be applicable. I've secured a position as an Educational Assistant in the Special Education MIS classroom at an elementary school in Metro. MIS stands for Moderate Intervention Services, which translates roughly to kids with severe behavioral disorders who can't function in a normal classroom because they throw fits all the time. So my pride is wounded daily now, which is probably absurd for it to be so wound-able by small children. But their continuous disregard for my authority --the thing I am being paid to wield so as to make a peaceful learning environment possible-- as well as their personal insults and violent abuses really do dig in after awhile. This is, I've both concluded and been told, "meaningful work." Yet the children say "I hate you" to us multiple times a day, as well as "I love you." I reason "They don't mean it" when I hear the former, and therefore cannot help but conclude the same with the latter. Reading and basic math: these are the ultimate meaning thus far, the only thing I know that these kids are taking home a little extra piece of each day, if anything. Tough love, self-discipline, the fruit of encouragement and new challenges: all these seem to just bounce off of their prematurely thick hides like the rubber erasers they methodically break off of all their pencils and toss to the floor.
Whenever they're not working they thrust their seven-year-old hips in the air mimicking movements from the music videos their parents watch, or stab the tables with their pencils or knock chairs over. And they are not working most of the time. Unable or unwilling to focus, Quiondez takes ten minutes to write his name. Baror, a 2nd grader from Rwanda, told me today, "I hate brown people. I'm black. I hate brown people." Briona is the most consistent screamer-kicker-cryer, putting in at least a solid half an hour a day into the act. And Kavian cannot keep his body still for longer than ten seconds at a time; it's a miracle he completes any work at all, which when he does he's typically a whiz at, be it math or reading/writing.
Today, after two weeks of being with them, was their worst day ever. On the way home I determined to make it home without falling to pieces, a nervous wreck, and through prayer and a bit of delirious laughter I thought I had overcome my soul-sickness. Then I parked in the wrong spot to pop in to FYE and see my brother, and my Jeep was almost towed. I don't know why, but it absolutely set me off. I was screaming at the cop and the tow guy. I told them about my day, about how I was there to see my brother because I didn't have any groceries or money and my paycheck hadn't gone through yet, that I just needed a break. The cop let me tear up my $95 ticket, but the tow guy wasn't having it; he demanded $45 immediately or else he was towing it. My brother thankfully paid it (with money he doesn't really have), but something about it was just a huge affront to my pride. I have felt grateful lately to have found a job being disrespected by children for seven hours a day for low pay, so the line between learning needed humility and enduring unreasonable humiliation has been an easy one to blur. But it's a line that must be made. Because I earnestly want for myself the same thing that these kids need: the preservation and enrichment of true dignity, and the slaying of false pride. So below is a clip from one of my favorite movies that I'd like to dedicate to keeping the old head up.
