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Why Should We Weep?

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

—Kahlil Gibran

This chapter title may seem like a strange question. As professional educators, what makes us weep? Perhaps you might think I am referencing the figurative sense. But I am not. I do mean this literally. When is the last time you shed tears over your students or your colleagues?

Merriam-Webster defines the word weep as just that: “To express deep sorrow for [something] usually by shedding tears.”²⁹ The definition doesn’t state whether it is public or private, but for me, there have been three occasions when I felt the deep need to weep as a professional. Two were private, and one was public.

In every case, as Gibran indicates in the opening quote,³⁰ I was weeping because I knew better, meaning I knew what could be and wept at the stubborn absence of the possibility. In the following text, I explain one example and then ask you to write your personal story. By definition, weeping requires deep sorrow in our professional life, not shallow sorrow or the everyday annoyances. I think, too, weeping requires a certain degree of deep caring.

I sat in the parking lot in my car. It was 11:18 a.m. I called my wife Susan, who was, at the time, working two time zones away from me. She too was often on the road for her job, and it was one of those rare during-the-day moments when I just needed to connect with her. This was something we normally did not do during the day, as over the years, we fell into the habit of connecting at the end of our workdays. I prayed she would pick up, and she did. All I could do was cry. I could not even muster a hello.

Giving me some space, she eventually asked, “Everything okay?” My sadness seemed strange to me in that I did not know the persons for whom I was weeping that morning. I had never been to this poverty-stricken middle school before. The student population was mostly Latino, where English was not the primary language. And that day I was only there for about four hours. During that time, the principal described to me all the reasons why he could not get the students or staff in his school to perform better. When I asked him if there was no hope, he mostly agreed. It was spring, and he relayed to me his plan to leave for “a better building” job next year.

As I talked with the teachers, I discovered that—from their perspective—the real reasons for the lack of student success were all factors out of their control: a faulty central office (lack of support for the teachers), excessive student absenteeism, and required testing.

“The students just don’t care,” they told me.

“How many don’t care?” I asked.

“Most of them,” they replied. Don’t blame us was their implied tone.

As I observed classes, I saw most of them filled with students. Some of them were not paying attention, but most were polite, took notes, and did exactly as they were told. Most sat in rows and quietly faded away.

I saw many things being taught that were just wrong. I took notes and left some feedback, but overall, I felt like I was applying a bandage on a gaping wound, a wound so ugly that almost 52 percent of the students were failing the classes, and the teachers were blaming the students for the failure. Feeling like victims, they asked me, “What do you expect us to do?” So, when I reached my car, I wept.

It is rare that I am so overwhelmed I don’t know where to start. The culture of this school was void of hope. Both the students and the adults were suffering. The heart and soul of this school were missing. My eventual response is partially revealed in part 3, “A Is for Alliances,” when we talk about the PLC life of collaboration. Collaboration is the engine that drives a school culture and ultimately the agreed-upon covenants for improving the school. At that moment, there was no collegial collaboration and certainly no covenants, agreements, or meaningfulness to the expected work of the adults.

The reason I sat weeping is because I knew better. As Gibran said, “When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”³¹

I knew the delight of schools that had overcome these barriers. I wept for the reality and the shame for my profession and its service to this community.

I recently mentioned this story to my friend, colleague, and fellow author Luis Cruz, when we were working together in San Antonio. Luis, an outstanding school leader, in collaboration with a committee of teacher leaders at Baldwin Park High School (just east of Los Angeles), received California’s prestigious Golden Bell Award from the California School Boards Association for significantly closing the achievement gap between the general student population and students learning English as a second language.

As an elementary, middle, and high school principal, Luis helped schools just like the one I visited on that fateful morning to find their hope and take action to overcome their language and poverty barriers. In reflection, I asked Luis if he would send me a written note of what he had said to me, as it had touched me deeply. Here is what he said:

We have reached a point in education whereby public school educators, especially those who teach in low-income communities, must embrace the reality that we do more than just teach reading, writing, and arithmetic to students, we break kids free from the cycle and wrath of poverty. Those of us who choose to teach in ghettos and barrios must not only provide a sense of hope to a community drenched in hopelessness, but must be willing to change archaic policies, practices, and procedures in schools that were never designed to address issues related to poverty and a community’s sense of helplessness. (L. Cruz, personal communication, June 10, 2016)

Take some time to dwell on his thoughts and any connection to your current school situation. If you could identify one aspect of your current school culture that fails to address issues related to poverty or a community’s sense of helplessness—what would it be?

When you are connected to your heartprint for teaching and leading students and colleagues, there is a profound understanding of what it is about your students, school, and culture that is worthy of your tears. Take some time to read and respond to the My Heartprint on page 46.

MY HEART PRINT

Take a close look at your story. Compare it to the following seven types of situations we should weep for in our schools. Does your story fit one of these situations? If so, which one? If not, how might you provide a new situation for the list?

1. Students become marginalized, and no one notices them.

2. Students are viewed as interruptions to the workday.

3. Flaws in work-life conditions prevent equity or cause inequity in students’ lives.

4. Teachers and leaders are more worried about data than the students (the persons) represented by the data.

5. There is a confusion between working for money versus working for meaning.

6. Inequities exist in student rigor and learning experiences because of the failure to reach agreements on learning standards, assessments, and homework expectations.

7. Teachers and leaders seek to control and not liberate student empowerment and thinking.

This takes me back to the teacher strike at Community High School District 94 that I mentioned in chapter 1. In the end, the strike had very little worth weeping over. Teachers lost a week of pay, and that hurt. For three years, my salary was frozen, and that hurt. Contract language was changed to provide some better working conditions, but you cannot legislate or contract happiness.

Eventually, pay increases and better working conditions were helpful. But none of those things caused or were rooted in the happiness of our teachers and leaders. Getting paid really well in a culturally dead place like the middle school I described is still a really bad job.

Getting paid well enough to work in a place that understands the conditions of happiness and the motivations of change based on actions worth weeping over—that is a culture worthy of your time, energy, and effort.

Describe a time and the event when you wept for your students, your colleagues, or your school.

Describe your response in the aftermath of the event.

Why? It means you are contributing to a professional workplace culture that embraces the heartprint of teaching and leading each other and your students—a workplace culture that although never perfect, finds happiness in the colleagues and the students that come together every day.