HOPE

So, I can't tell you how much hope I feel this week. I have a little bit of a "hope hangover" that's still lingering a couple of days after the election. Here's what has sealed the hope double ziplock bag for me: my students' sense of excitement. It's one thing to feel personal satisfaction and elation over the electoral victory of a candidate in which you can believe (who also happens to make historical inroads and has really cute little kids of his own). It's another experience all together when hundreds of students--young people who missed the chance to vote by a year or two and are genuinely upset about that--greet you with smiles and wide eyes. "Can you believe it, Ms. Stutelberg?" "I think he can change the world, Ms." and "I feel like I matter now." Okay, that last one almost got me as much as watching Jesse Jackson's cheeks drown in tears as he stood in Grant Park. My students' hope is shocking; these are minority kids who live in poverty stricken or lower-middle class homes and normally have a very healthy dose of cynicism about...everything. Never before have I seen so much idealism and joy in them.

I guess that's why, on the morning after, I drove to work and listened to NPR (okay, that's usually what I do) and suddenly had to announce to myself aloud in the car, "This makes me want to be a better person!"

I bring you, Things I've Done This Week To Be a Better Person:

1. I allowed my students to pound on their desks and chant each others' names before they presented their Beowulf Boasts to the class. Then I let them chant Dr. Le's name (he teaches math across the hall) to see if he'd come over to the room. He did. That was a little embarrassing.

2. I used my Sigmund Freud finger puppet to present Freud's theory of psychosexual development to my students before we read Oedipus Rex.

3. I brought cupcakes to my 1st period class when I found out that two of my 20 students had their birthday on the same day.

4. I found on the internet the official "code" for determining what one's Captain Underpants villain name would be, and I spent actual class time allowing students to determine and announce names like, "Crusty Pizzapants" and "Poopsie Toiletchunks".

5. I shared my damaging middle school bullying experiences with my freshmen class. I even told them about how bad puberty was, how I finally broke down and had my mom get me Converse All-Stars so I would fit in, only to be harassed for wearing the wrong socks, and how the only girl who would be nice to me in seventh grade was the girl with the insulin pump, because no one would be nice to her either.

6. I helped a student read and understand a biology article (The Birth of Complex Cells) by showing her how you can turn any science article into a cartoon by using cartoon voices and imagining everything drawn like it's in SpongeBob Squarepants.

7. Something to be added tomorrow as I still have a day this week to be a better person.

So, what can HOPE do for you? As for me, I'm exhausted. This hope, change, be a better person stuff is a lot of work. Thank goodness I've got my students to inspire me.