Teaching free thinkers

Once upon a time, I was a teacher. A high school teacher.
It is really difficult for an empath to be a teacher, but I didn’t truly know about being an empath in those days. Also, I was told that girls didn’t have many other choices, but that is a completely different story.

This is a story about love and acceptance.
And yes, making a difference.

Tonight, I was chatting with one of my favorite students.

“You guys were the only people who ever treated me like a human being, and not a statistic or the bad kid because I had a child.  So I’ll forever thank you for that.You gave me the free thinking mind to write what I felt and thought, and to look further into the readings of others, and what they meant to me not just what the author meant.”

Yeah, one of my problems that school admins didn’t like was that I didn’t require my students to answer exactly how the textbooks expected. I wanted my student to be free-thinkers and to decide for themselves what readings meant. I always felt that any well-thought-out answer could never be wrong.  Of course, that is not how schools worked in the 90s and Oughts. And I’m pretty sure that is still not how they work. Schools in America teach for testing. All that matters is getting those high scores on State and National testing. The students themselves still don’t matter and that’s what needs to change.

My student said that I was ahead of my time. I was woke before “woke” was a thing. She wants me to help others like I helped her.
“I truly think you were just the woman ahead of your times. [If you were teaching now],  like  you had taught and felt and believed.  What you did back then would these days  be the teacher that everybody says was “woke”.  [You would be] the teacher that everybody needed to learn [how to be] who they were and what was to come [as they grew into themselves].”

She wants me to find a way to teach again but to teach like I taught before.

“I think if you wanted to come back and be a professor or a teacher, they would be a lot of interest in that for free thinkers, especially in today’s society which sometimes you know [needs more free-thinkers]. I think free thinkers are a little too advanced, but people thought that about you back in the day and look at the people that you’ve changed and affected.”

(Powerful words that made me cry.)

Sadly, though, I don’t think the world is ready for my kind of teaching yet. At least not in a standard classroom environment. That and I’m older now and my teaching certifications have all lapsed.

But what if.. what if I could teach people to teach like I used to. What if I taught empaths to teach free thinkers?

 

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