I Still Remember

I still feel kind of bad because I made one of my kids feel bad this week. He made an inappropriate comment about 9/11 and I didn't really chew him out, but I was brutally honest in my reaction. Teaching the kids life lessons doesn't always feel good, I'm learning.

So they were working on their warm up, and someone notices the date. Says "hey, it's September 11th. Whoa." To which my student says something to the effect of "Yea it's been seven years, can't we forget about it already?" And I respond something to the effect of "I am not a person you want to say that to." And left it at that.

A little later on I was making my rounds around the classroom and I privately said to him "I really hope you didn't mean what you said earlier. I realize that it's been seven years and maybe you don't think people should make a huge deal out of it anymore, but you can't say we should forget it. My friend's dad died that day, and she'll never forget it." He felt really bad and apologized profusely, actually he was quite mature and said "I'm really sorry. I had no idea." And I just said that it's alright, but you can't make comments like that because you never know where someone is coming from. I spared him my personal story about where I was and how it affected my life, but I think it maybe really never occurred to him that peoples lives really were changed on that day.

The rest of the period though, he was like a puppy that had been kicked. Super polite and diligent in his work, even helped me clean up the lab area without asking. I could tell he still felt really bad about what he said. But I couldn't really help it. I don't think I was completely tactless in my response, and I think he really did need someone to teach him that lesson. But I can't help that I felt bad about making him feel bad.

We'll have to see where our relationship goes from here. Maybe it'll strike a chord with him that I leveled with him. It reminds me of when I was student teaching and I had a talk with a kid when I over heard him calling a misfit chair "gay", and a week later I heard him passing it on to his friend, saying "hey man, don't say that, that's not cool" when his friend made a similar remark. Ahh teaching. It's not just about reading, (w)riting, and (a)rithmetic. Or even physics. Sometimes, it's just about LIFE.