The Power of Youth

Nearly 15 years ago, sometime in the late winter of my very first year teaching, I stood behind a woman in our local grocery store while she loudly lamented the state of today's youth.  It was an unfortunately typical, "Kids today are good for nothing, selfish hellions," conversation.  The middle aged clerk grimly nodded as she scanned her groceries, affirming the older woman's heated condemnations. At the ripe old age of 23, I was not far removed from the age bracket being roasted, but as a gainfully employed "adult professional," I felt I could weigh in on this diatribe.  "Have you ever given one of them a chance?" I asked her, as politely as I could without seeming like I was itching for a fight (which, admittedly, I sort of was).  She gave me a down the nose sneer, huffed, paid for her groceries, and righteously marched through the automatic doors.

"Really, kids aren't that bad," I said to the check out lady. "I know.  I work with them every day.  I teach at the high school."   She gave me that rather sad smile and shake of the head you give to someone who clearly has no idea what they are talking about and said, "God bless you."  I left feeling like I owed it to my students to do something to help them show the world that they were not to be cast aside as a generation, as mine had been.

When I was a senior in high school, in 1995, one of the major news magazine ran an article about Generation X, which I am on the cusp of, branding us as do nothing, care for nothing, apathetic slackers.  They painted a picture of morose, plaid-wearing misanthropes who would earn less, care less, and be less than every generation before them.  I was outraged. I hated labels and stereotypes then in the passionate way only a purple haired adolescent can, and I vowed that I would NOT, under any circumstances, allow society to see ME in that way.  You see, I had been blessed with amazing adults in my world who never once told me I couldn't change the world.  I had phenomenal parents, mentors, teachers, and administrators who supported me while I argued for gender equality, gay rights, drug and alcohol free choices for students, condoms and the arts in schools.  I did advocacy work, sat on youth panels,  attended and worked at a camp called New Hampshire Teen Institute that stressed education, outreach, and the development of leadership skills and self esteem in teens to help them stay healthy and drug free.  People believed I could do good things.  They didn't have to be big things, but to me, they made a difference.

I attended college at the University of New Hampshire, where I quickly saw that kids like myself from poor, rural towns were at a great disadvantage in comparison to those who had grown up in well connected, affluent area.  I had never heard of AP classes.  I didn't have the money to travel.  So I used my passion for advocacy and my sociology major to start researching disparity in educational funding, proving that separate is not equal, not simply in the matter of race, but socioeconomics, as well.  And again, I was blessed to find people who supported me and believed in me.  I had two amazing professors who helped me do funded research for four years on various aspects of education. I took graduate classes as an undergrad, I managed to worm my way into classes in the education department by taking on a second major in English Teaching and a minor in Education all with the goal in my mind of going to law school and becoming a lobbyist or activist on the national stage.  I agreed to do my M.Ed. at UNH because they let me into the program early and it would only take me a year.  Everyone told me they expected grand things, BIG things, from me, that I would be Secretary of Education or president of the NEA or head of some major think tank. And then I started student teaching.

All of a sudden the "big" things I hoped to accomplish took a back seat to being in the classroom. I found I loved it.  I could touch lives and affect change in a very real, albeit microcosmic way through teaching literature, writing, sociology, psychology.  I connected with students.Their curiosity and questions inspired me.  I thought I might teach for a few years and then head off to law school.  But I didn't.  And for this I blame my students, my amazing, passionate, forward thinking students.

Not more than two weeks after my disheartening grocery shopping experience, I was approached by a handful of students at White Mountains Regional High School, my alma mater and where I was spending my first harrowing year as a teacher, to see if I would help them with an idea.  They wanted a class where they could work on real projects that would have meaningful impact on the school and local communities.  With my combination of youthful naivety and social science background, I somehow was their choice (or perhaps everyone else had turned them down!). This was exactly the antidote to the check out counter lament that I needed.  The students and I approached the principal about our idea, and not only did he support it, but he paid me over the summer to design the class and purchase books. You have to understand, this doesn't often happen in spring when the budget process begins the previous November.

This class, which was officially titled Community Activism, but students referred to as Revolution 101, has affected everything I have done in education since.  It showed me clearly, with tangible evidence, that students crave the ability to do good for the world around them.  They are acutely aware of social issues, injustices, problems that need solving, people who need help.  Sometimes they just need a place to convene and brainstorm, an adult who will help them access their resources, and the support of the community at large to allow them to spread their wings and try.  Not every initiative that the CA students undertook was successful, but many of them were.  The point was that they learned from every attempt.  The communities surrounding the school embraced them and sought them out for projects and research.  Students were empowered.

Unfortunately, the administration who supported the development and deployment of the class was not supported by the local school board, and they were all asked to leave or they resigned.  The replacements were not student-centered and seemed threatened by young people having a voice.  Rather than exist in a culture that was clearly not healthy, I chose to leave WMRHS after three years and take what I had learned to another school.  Over the next five years I worked in a small private high school, White Mountain School, where I learned about the power of truly knowing every student in your community, Lancaster Elementary, a K-8 school where I taught 8th grade English and worked on my Administration certification, and simultaneously, an Adult Diploma program I helped to develop for people who had dropped out of school but now wanted a new chance.  

When I made the incredibly difficult decision to leave the classroom after eight years and move into Administration (at the encouragement of that very first principal who believed in me), I brought with me the idea that young people will surprise you if you believe in them and treat them with respect.  If you treat a school like a police state, it will become one.  If you expect the worst, that is exactly what you will get. However, if you remember that everyone wants to be heard, everyone wants to be valued and treated with respect and humility, and everyone has their own baggage and needs, EVERY student can succeed.  When we were faced with issues of intolerance at Profile School, where I have made my home for the past seven years, I knew that the only way I could change the situation was to enlist the help of a diverse group of students.  Working together as a team, they helped educate the entire student body on the toxicity of hate, and as a school, they decided that we would not tolerate that culture.  It wasn't me preaching or hammering out discipline, it was them.  They made the change.  Profile's teachers embrace this philosophy, and it pays off.

This most recent act of kindness on behalf of the senior class is just one example (a fantastic, amazing, phenomenal example) of the power of youth to do beautiful things.  They saw a problem, cancer in someone in their community, and they knew they had to do something.  They had amazing mentors in their class advisors, Kristy Duris and Ann Eaton, who gave them the tools and support to do good.  The school secretaries, Lisa Peckett and Kim Antonucci, knew that this was special, and they wanted them to be recognized.  Never, in anyone's wildest dreams, did they anticipate that it would gather the attention it has.

And why has it gone viral?  Because the world so desperately needs to see good things.  People need to believe that there are people out there who are kind, selfless, and giving.  They don't want to demonize today's youth or believe that there is nothing but mayhem and destruction in the world.  They simply need to be freed from the paradigm that that is the only way it can be.  And it works with adults, too. People have been inspired to reach out to my seniors and support them, offering money, new trips, and simply their kind words.  People of ALL ages want to do good.  They simply need an outlet.  If we empower people to see the positive acts, to realize it doesn't have to be a cure for cancer, but simply the support of someone with it, a relatively small gesture in this grand world we live in, perhaps we will all start to believe again that we CAN, as Gandhi said, be the change we wish to see in the world.