"The one who makes the most mistakes makes the most corrections."

Today has been a telling day of the quality of my teaching. I think it is a question of my thinking, and my ability to share my thoughts with others. I need to take a critical look at why I am sharing knowledge at all. I believe knowledge to be an understanding of experience, and the relevance of that experience to the surrounding society. My experiences are relegated to an entirely different realm of possibilities. These possibilities are only visited when one wants to be entertained, and or encouraged. It has no place in the "actual" educational world, and only has relevance in extreme times or in children's fairytales. All of my mistakes as a teacher have caused me to question my reason for being here at MICA. When does my experience matter? What can I do when my experience isn't the one others want to hear, but maybe the one they need to hear? What has lead me to believe that others need to hear my experience? Why am I even attempting to be an educator if I'm still attempting to educate myself?
My life as a minority in itself is one that makes many people uncomfortable. The history of the black male is one of much pain and great triumphs. Its an epic story that involves both the destruction and reconstruction of the soul of a living being. The very mention of this topic can silence the most non-bias of educational environments. My black experience, wrapped in its Christian foundation, can silence an entire college class room full of great thinkers. I have found it hard to separate my experience, my thinking, and my ways of teaching from the effects of my cultural history. There have been many tears shed this semester in regards to my failures as a teacher. I have wanted to give up for so long, and just walk away, silently. The weight of ignorance, and the haunting of insignificance has been with me at MICA. In all of this, the only joy that I have found is that I have not been alone in these feelings. What has broke my heart, has been how some of my peers have felt these same feelings. It has hurt me to the marrow of my bones that my fellow classmates have been experiencing the same pain as myself, and I have missed it completely.
We are our brothers and sister keeper, and yet I have not been able to care for my neighbors as I should. Hurt, pain, and misunderstanding can paralyze a persons attempts to live, and sadly force them to just survive. In this experience I have thought about how these are very real emotions that effect students. Everyday students sit and feel insignificant in a world that qualifies insignificant things. How can a student be well rounded, when all that is asked of them is to pass a test, or regurgitate information? Words alone are dead, when they are not given the chance to grow into meaningful experiences. Someday I will be an educator, and in that day I must make a vow to myself and my students. I must promise them that no matter their race,their gender, their faith, their sexual orientation, their socioeconomic status, or even their IQ, that I will not allow them to be forgotten in my classroom. I will not let my students slip into the trap of feeling useless or not smart enough. No experience in my classroom will be buried by the weight of logic, because no human on this earth lives by logic alone. I will uphold this with all my strength, and if even one of my students gets lost in any of these, I will know how to find them, because I was once there.