Ideals and reality

I think maybe that's what this whole ordeal will end up being about: finding the intersection, the functional relationship, between ideals and reality. My belief in social justice, through my daily interactions with my students, is transformed by my love for them as people. Which is prior to the other? Of course the ideal was the motivating factor in my positioning myself thus in the first place, but from whence were these ideals born if not from my love of humanity, that love which now manifests itself in my relationships with my students.

What is a teacher? This exchange begs the question. On the surface, a giver of knowledge and an organizer of daily life for children. A layer deeper he is a moral guide and a role model, a sculptor of character and behavior. But there is a deeper, more human layer. This layer is borne in deeply personal exchanges of hatred and love, in screams of anger and proclamations of joy and pride. It is something akin to the relationship of parent-to-child, but it has yet a different character. It is deeply personal, perhaps the deepest non-familial, non-romantic relationship I have encountered.

Given this it is no surprise that such a genteel, sheltered person as myself would be absolutely destroyed by engaging in such a relationship with a group of children that harbor so much anger and frustration as my students. In this dichotomy we begin again to run into the relation of ideal-to-reality. The difference in our identity, and its presumed sources, is a reification of those motivating ideals of social justice.

How then does one conceive of the struggles of the classroom in this context? I have to find something in my own peaceful, reflective, intellectual (bourgeois?) soul that is stronger than their anger and frustration. It is an unknown enemy to me though. Or maybe conceiving of it as a battle or a struggle is wrong outright. Perhaps the quelling of that anger will come through recognizing it, accommodating it, and ultimately redirecting it.

All of this is complicated by the social structure of my school context, where I am the clear outsider.