Motivation.
When I was in high school, my step-dad would pop the leather belt he wore to hold him his work pants on the route and say, "When you think about doing something other than school, remember this." So motivation to succeed was felt upon the lashes of a belt and the worrisome notion that the most sensitive skin was found on your behind. It kept me straight most of the time. I still hung around idiot jocks, laughed to impress and searched for meaning in poems, action-hero short stories and the in the eyes of pretty girls.
In college, it canyoned during stress and cascaded with specific professors. My freshman year in college, the professor who assigned Babylon AD and Ethan Fromm will forever be remembered as the year I realized I could back out of something and momentarily feel no consequences, rebuke or shame. Backing out of college the way I did after my first year was a work of art. Waking every morning, driving to an undisclosed parking lot, park or abandoned road, reading the paper, daydreaming, people watching. Spending money on lunch, then driving back home in a rush as if I had homework to do. Eventually I think I wanted someone to notice I wasn't in class. Community college registrars don't call when you're absent. It was a friend of mine who eventually turned me in, albeit he was an unwitting accomplice in my demise. He called looking for me after weeks of ditching class. At least someone was worried.
The summer I met my wife I dedicated myself back to studies. It's not like I had another choice. When you have a proficiency for laziness and your hands are too soft for work, going to school is the next best thing. Getting a degree was always ingrained in my life. My parents spoke of it often, it's just that I hadn't quite seen it being worked out in the lives that were closest to me. The struggles didn't hit home, the speeches about being more than your parents. The struggles I saw around me were from people's own abuses, addictions and fear. What failures did I really have at 20? A bad break up with a girlfriend? Being fired at Target for throwing away merchandise I refused to bag and tag for returns? A flat tire on a broken down Delta 88?
Even being in college was different in every form. Culturally, there weren't many people of color. I held college at bay like some preppy white-boy fantasy Hispanics could only see in movies. I thought toting the books across the quad would make me better. Get me laid. Get me appreciated. I failed to realize the hard work that went into it.
So that summer I had a lady who read over our compositions with a fine tooth comb for erroneous colons and wayward apostrophes. I worked hard, I read Faulkner, I turned in 12-paper essays when the assignment called for 10. By the time I moved to Ohio, I again found myself in familiar territory. The people who looked like me were not here to remind me the struggle it took to get me there. I felt at home actually. No one pressured me into spanish guilt (on the contrary, it was cool to be different. To be brown. To be unique), no one wondered why I wasn't hanging with the chucos and vatos.
When I entered the teaching field, the motivation to do well stemmed from the fear of failing. I was thrown into a rough class with 2 new teachers and one veteran. I only knew what the guides and books told me about teaching. The management and frustration of kids whose basic needs were not being met had not been taught. I screamed, I yelled, I erased so many mistakes on the chalk board my hands became ashy and gray. 9/11 happened my first year, too. I remember being on lockdown on a gorgeous September afternoon and ranting at a student who was pissed we didn't go outside to play. Like he understood anything I told him was beyond the moment. It was anything I could do to explain walking the halls with kids watching cartoons for recess juxtaposed with the rest of us watching the news. Ashes, paper, bodies. The things that fell that day were more than memories.
Four years later I was looking for reasons to give extra recess. I stalked the parking lot for the administrators SUV, and seeing none, knew that doing the minimal would suffice. There was no motivation. I took it for granted. I wasn't thankful.
Moving schools. Again, a change of venue leads me back to the beginning. New face, new opportunities. Fear motivates. Then God stepped in because He had enough of my ways. The fear.
And the blogs I have written since then have been a part of that transformation. Still new, still learning under the authority of the grand professor who goes through the compositions of my life with a fine toothed comb. I felt inspired not because I was scared for failing, but in letting Him down. In doing the minimal, I was inherently squandering the gifts.
And now this year. 34 kids. New curriculum. A desk of papers that need homes. Kids that need a home too. Last night, one of my students may have slept on a tile floor. I'm sleeping under a fan with a shitzu dog at my feet. And I'm the one that needs motivated.
Good conversations today. Sarcastic frustration. Eye rolling. There seems to be such a vast distance between the people who make educational decisions with the ones who do the grunt work. Do they know of the third grader who barely can write his name and leaves at 2 in the afternoon every other day? Where is the book about the helpless look of a girl whose mom could die any day from cancer? Or the kid from a tough city with something to prove? The girl who gets bullied?
This morning, the computers didn't work. My student teacher comes in, smiles and energy. The kids are eating mini-pancakes. Not one kid asked me to help open packages. Pancakes was the only motivation they needed.
And they didn't even have any syrup.
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