Another Blog Entry

Here’s a thought that just occurred to me - I’ll throw it out there to see what you think.  I just got back from work - I had a short 3-hour day before I came back home with an unusual amount of free time with which to do homework before I have to get ready to go to class tonight. (That is, about 2 1/2 hours)  Well, here I am, blogging, trying to get caught up from all of those days when I finished work with no time left to take care of school work (this honestly seems like every working day) and I’m reflecting on how easy I actually have it.  By this I mean to say that, while my job is by no means always easy mentally or physically, I can survive with my one job.  An 8- or 10- hour day may for me, four to six days a week assures that I won’t have to worry about where my next meal is coming from or how I will make rent this month.  I have never in my life had to take a night shift job to supplement my income from my day shift employment.  I am extremely lucky.  So I sit here and remember a conversation we had a few months ago about educators who judge some of their students’ parents who don’t seem very involved in their children’s academic lives.  Why?  Because they don’t show up to things like parent-teacher conferences.  But while I might otherwise have been one of those educators out of ignorance, I know that I will never be one now.  How could I, who finds it so hard to find time to do my own schoolwork right now, while working no more than 50 hours a week and taking only two classes, ever be so arrogant as to pass judgement on parents, most of whom are doing the very best they can - some of which will be working 12-hour days or even as many as 16 hours, to make ends meet.  I guarantee you my school production would be seriously inhibited under these circumstances, and if I had children, I can’t imagine that I’d be able to make it to rigidly- timed conferences during work hours or immediately after.  (We’ll leave out for the moment some of the other issues mentioned in class about lack of transportation et. al.)  Maybe knowing some of these hardships, I can now try to take steps to try to involve parents who would like to know how their children are doing, but cannot adjust to my school’s schedule.  Sometimes I feel like half our job as urban educators will simply be thinking creatively outside the box.