Injustice

A time in my life that I can reflect on where I felt an injustice was my junior year of high school. This was a point in my life where so many things where going on, so many emotions where flying around. I had found out a couple weeks before that I was pregnant so all eyes were on me at school and everyone had something to say about me. A teacher that I had really trusted and had established a trusting relationship with had wanted to meet with me in the school library during lunch. This was not weird for me because me and her have shared many moments like this before. I would tell her about issues I had at home which was frequent and the issues I had with my friends. I could trust her with my feelings and for her to give me some advice or just say things that made me feel better. On this day when she asked to meet with me she had me sit down and started talking about how her brother and sister in law adopted a baby and it was the best gift they could have received. She kept talking about how unstable of a household I live in and that this environment would not be healthy for my baby. As I sat there with tears rolling down my face she told me she knew why I was crying and it was because I knew that what she was saying was right. All these thoughts ran through my head as I second guessed myself and my abilities to actually be able to parent, as if I was not feeling defeated enough in the moment. Her words really impacted me and it forever changed the relationship I had with her. The trust was no longer there because when I thought she was listening instead she was judging. As I walk about from this moment in my life, what I took the most out of this was that this is not the type of relationship I would want to have with the youth in my life. I know she meant well but she did not really know as much as she thought she did. Rewinding, I wish I had stood up for myself more but now I think I have proved myself.

My observation of injustice I could connect to one of our previous readings about teenagers. The stereotypes that teenagers have on others, and also just stereotypes in general. This is an example of how society today views the capabilities of our youth.

Youth Work is care

The work of keeping “kids in mind,” remaining attuned to their needs and perceptions even whenthey’re not present, echoes one of Lynch’s (2007) core practices of “love labour:”

Care based on a love of humanity, rather than maternal instincts.

Caring labor and intentional linking of “self and community” reflects a care philosophy rooted simultaneously in individual. 

Caring for relationships is a broader conception of community and justice.

↠The way Sarahs hair is cut is to represent gay community and they way she dresses but also opens up about herself to her students that provide them a perspective of the LGBTQ community that they may not receive in their home environment.

Care beyond the classroom. Michelle, buying weekly snacks is more than the physical effort, cash expenditure, or time it takes before school. 

↠ It is very much the invisible work of “feeding the family” that MarjorieDeVault (1994) describes—the planning, shopping, preparing of meals that go into raising children up. It is the effort of making school a “safe space” and a “second home,” effort comprised of all the countless large and tiny, often invisible, acts that mothers and motherers do to make a space feel cozy, predictable, provided-for, safe.

Care in terms of race, culture, social identity and survival.

 ↠ I cannot be a teacher without exposing who I am.” She connects cleaning to deeply held practices and roots as a Latina woman. She says that sometimes she “want(s) to break that stereotype of the female teacher—nurturing, keeping everything nice and clean,” but she cannot. Cleaning is part of where she comes from as a woman, a mother, Puertorriqueña, and as someone who also came up in neighborhoods where public investment in cleanliness and community were lacking.

Care within self

 ↠ Eli demonstrated his caring approach in work of seeing himself “through the eyes of students,” in his commitment to breaking through with hard-to-reach youth, in the great care he takes with his own practice and with supporting and mentoring other teachers.

It is physical, emotional, intellectual. It is compassion, presence, and curious care.