We had just purchased our first home, in a Detroit suburb, when I got a call about a counseling job. Times were a little lean then, and from what I was told, this may be the only school counseling job available in the state, even if it was a 75-minute drive one way. I had just earned my degree, and eager to get started, I decided to take the job.
There were exactly two traffic lights from my house to that high school, and without a lot of traffic or stops that required my attention, most of those rides included a lot of gum chewing. There were still some hair-raising moments, like the time I thought there were crows on the road, so I honked them off, only to discover they were chickens. Woops.
About half the students went on to college, and half of that half went to the local community college, so there wasn’t a lot of dialogue between me and Harvard. I talked with students eager to understand what college was all about, excited at the prospect of being the first in their family to go to college, and lots of students eager to make sure their grades were in good shape by November 15, the first day of hunting season in Michigan.
There were also some moments new to me, like the student who handed me an invitation to his wedding, scheduled for a week after his graduation from high school; learning about recruiting students to build a homecoming float on a schedule that didn’t interfere with their farm chores; and the student who gave me a ridiculous discount on produce and eggs I bought from his parents’ stand—with the eggs laid from the chickens I’d nearly killed the week before.
There were more than a few things I had to get used to, having been raised in the city and the suburbs. I had to reschedule my financial aid night after I had first set it for Wednesday—the night when every church youth group meets—and the time I had to walk several blocks to the football game Friday night, because everyone—that’s everyone—went to the game.
One thing I didn’t have to get used to was helping students understand the purpose of college. Back then, even the most sophisticated city kids had ideas about college that leaned towards the idealistic. The topics were different, but the motivations were the same; make the family proud, be the first in the family to do something, start something new, run from something old.
The innocence of my students sometimes made difficult family dynamics more apparent to me, a significant challenge in a community where your business is supposed to stay your business. I learned more about dealing with families than grad school had ever taught me. The skills needed to move forward in those circumstances were of great help later in my career, when stubborn parents resisted a different kind of news—like why Harvard said no. Different, yet somehow not.
Time has moved on, and the suburbs crawled out toward that farm town quickly. There are probably twenty or thirty traffic lights on that same drive now, and even a Starbucks or two. But I still see students from that town now and then, and the hope and idealism is the same, along with a work ethic that puts most suburban kids in the slacker category. I was grateful to get to learn about that part of the world firsthand. It set the tone for working with kids in a caring, real way.
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