Relationships & Resiliency

Spectacle of Saints welcomes Sarah Wilker as our guest blogger this week. Sarah was among the first cohort of PULSE volunteers. She hails from St. Mary's, Ohio and is currently teaching at Chaminade Julienne High School in Dayton. Sarah shares with us how her year of service helped to prepare her for the vocation of teaching high school math and journeying with students through the barriers to education that exist outside the classroom.

As I'm sure many college students do, I started to second guess my career path as I headed into my senior year at UD. I was feeling called to work with teenagers and in urban education, but so often felt the frustrations as a classroom teacher as overpowering and never-ending. I learned quickly that my kids—and all students, for that matter—have a lot of stuff going on outside of the 48 minutes a high school teacher sees them each day. Families who've split, having to help  younger siblings, pressure from parents, lack of resources, friend drama and peer pressure. It's no secret the list could go on forever, yet somehow I was supposed to expect them to care about learning the difference between a rational and irrational number?

I came to understand that if I wanted my students to succeed in the classroom, I first had to really get to know them and engage and learn more about the barriers they faced outside of the classroom.

In my discernment of a year of service, I came to the conclusion that I still had a passion for teaching, but needed to first feed my desire to learn more about the struggles students face outside of the classroom. Fast-forward to The Victory Project, an after school program for teenage boys in Old North Dayton. (www.victoryproject.org) While at VP, I helped run the after school tutoring and was a liaison between our young men's teachers and parents. Entering into this role as a young white female, I quickly realized I had a lot of trust to build with both the guys and their families. In most ways I had no idea what it was like to be in their shoes. Our life experiences were so different. I spent many of my first weeks at VP calling and meeting with families and I learned to simply listen to whatever they felt comfortable sharing. I learned to be honest with our families, and to recognize that our role was not to take their place, but to come alongside them and provide support in whatever ways they needed it. 

Our parents wanted more than anything for their sons to be successful, but the demands of work, illness, lack of transportation, etc. oftentimes prevented them from fulfilling every obligation they deeply hoped to. The listening led to trust and the trust led to relationships with both our students and our families. And it was these relationships that empowered our students to be successful both in and outside of the classroom. They had the tools necessary and more resiliency than I've ever seen to overcome any obstacle that came their way. Sometimes, they just needed an extra voice to help them see it within themselves.

Sharing laughs with a fellow #MP1 volunteer, and PULSE Chaplain Fr. Ted. 

                       

As I was nearing the end of my time at VP, I felt God was calling me back to the classroom. Now, I in no way felt that I had suddenly discovered everything there was to know about empowering students to overcome the barriers they were and would face, but I think through VP God opened my heart to what being a teacher could really be. I began to see that it was more than just teaching the Pythagorean Theorem, but about challenging students everyday to see the resiliency and potential within themselves. 

The students and families at VP taught me that building relationships and academic success go hand-in-hand, and that these relationships and success must start with listening. One of the reasons our guys at VP are so successful is because their parents trusted us. We listened to them, we valued them and we loved them as our own. This is the attitude I try to enter my classroom with everyday. I’ve still got some work to do on understanding how to eliminate or fight all the barriers my students face outside of the classroom, but I am constantly striving to come alongside them and their families, to listen, to encourage, to affirm and to love them into reaching their fullest potential and being the best version of themselves. And let me tell ya, watching them discover this is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

Peace,

Sarah