Getting To Know People

I’m beginning to realize something about people. When you first meet them in the grocery store, on the sidewalk or at a party, you are only seeing about one percent of them – if that.

OK, OK, maybe there are moments where lightning strikes and you find yourself being sucked through a wormhole and you are suddenly in love or something. Maybe then you can see something like five percent of who someone is right off the bat — but I doubt that because you need time.

As I get older and older I see my parents as people just like me – not just as infallible beings of love, justice food and warmth.
I recognize that they are people too, with different aspects to their personality that I have never seen before. It is the same for my cousins, my siblings, my friends, and every teacher I have ever had and now it is true for my students.

I started out knowing about zero percent of them and maybe now I am at seven percent— but that’s iffy.

It is easy to never get to know people. There is a huge temptation to write people off with in moments of meeting them. You do it when you cross the street to avoid that group of teenage boys with bandanas and backwards hats. It happens when you decide which seat on the bus you want to take. It definitely happened to me with every single student who walked through the door to 6C.

Well, it happened shortly after I could tell them apart with some consistency as they all wore the same exact school uniforms.
However, right after I knew them by name I placed labels on their foreheads (not literally of course, just in my head).
JD, you who lit a candle in the middle of class, you are forever to be known as “6th Grade Flunkie With No Real Future.” Theodore, you who learned the word ‘loser’ from a movie and called me one behind my back in the first few weeks of school will be “Smart-Ass.” Rebecca, you who secretly listens to dirty rap songs on your CD player while I am giving instruction and then ask me with five minutes left in class what we we’re supposed to be doing, you are christened “The Attitude Kid.”

Well, you may think you know where this is going, some big-life lesson on how I have learned to do a better job of not judging people when I only know a small percentage of who they are, but that is not where I am going at all.

Well, maybe I am going there a little bit, because I do think that it is important not to judge people too harshly for what they may or may not seem to be in the first few moments of meeting them, but more of what I want to talk about it how I have begun to get to know my kids more and more.

JD has some sweet dance moves on top of that candle-lighting affinity, Theodore has not missed one spelling word the whole year so he is defiantly not a loser and Rebecca loves to help me clean up the classroom after school as she pumps herself up with some thick beats.

So, now that I am safely at, let’s say a 10 percent level with my kids, I am excited to get to know what else I have yet to discover about them.

Lets just hope it’s not some hatred for people pale and tall.