A Radical Love
I just finished listening to the heartbreaking podcast “Finding Cleo”. Without giving too much away, the podcast details the story of a plains cree family in Saskatchewan who were victims and survivors of the sixties scoop. Six children in the family were adopted out to white families and faced unspeakable trauma and oppression. The storytelling of the podcast is so beautiful and touching while giving moments of hope and redemption for a family who is trying to piece together their story after being ripped apart by social services and the Saskatchewan government.
The whole series was beautifully done but today as I listened to the final episode, it hit me in a way that I did not expect. The last episode featured an interview with a teacher who worked with the Cleo, one of the protagonists of the story and the sibling that the rest of the family had been looking for since she passed away in the 1970s. What hit me was the way in which the teacher spoke of her former student and the impact that losing Cleo had on her. I resonated so much with this teacher as she kept mementoes from Cleo that she still used forty years after she had taught her. She kept notes and Christmas gifts that Cleo had given her as a student and kept those gifts close to her throughout the years. It was so touching to hear this teacher speak so fondly of a student from forty years prior and how the grief of losing a student never really leaves you.
And I know this because I’ve lived it….six times. I’ve written about my lost students before but the grief of their loss is impacting me more now than when it happened years ago. I’ve also kept mementoes from my time with them. Things like notes and photographs that capture their spirit and my short time with them. I loved those students and I miss them terribly. I wish I could tell them that I’m sorry and that I wish I was able to do more for them when they were my student, but that’s not possible.
My heart ached to listen to another teacher share their story and similar experiences. It hurt because even though I know my thoughts linger with those I’ve lost, I still have former students who are still with us but struggling against insurmountable challenges. Many of my former students dealt with the same trauma as Cleo and her family did and over the years I’ve worked with young people struggling with addictions, homelessness and a loss of connection to school, community and themselves.
I keep in touch with a fair amount of students from those days. Some students have found peace and happiness in their lives while others still struggle. I often get updates of former students spending weeks and months in hospitals recovering from a society that does not see them. Many students bear the brunt of the overrepresentation of incarcerated Indigenous youth in western Canada. From time to time, I get the opportunity to meet up with a former student for lunch or a coffee and we get to share a laugh about old times but for many, I still see the same pain in their eyes as when they were a student in my class. I give them a hug, tell them that I’m here and that I love them and then hope that I get the opportunity to see them again knowing that that’s not always guaranteed.
Working with these young people changed my life and perspective of education. I’ve always embraced social justice within my practice but these students pushed me to embrace a radical love for teaching and working with young people because at its heart, teaching is about love. It’s about the love we put into building relationships and community and about the deep love we have for the privilege of working for young people. And love isn’t always easy as there are many challenging and demanding days that push us to our limits but we must be relentless in our pursuit of a radical and deep love for what we do.
A radical love challenges us to not only reflect on our own practice but also the ways in which young people face oppression within our education system. If we are true in our advocacy of young people then we will consistently do the work to ensure that we are aware of how young people lose a sense of belonging within schools and are impacted by inequitable practices from standardized testing to academic streaming and disciplinary issues. And this work requires action as well as consciousness raising within and outside of our profession because I can sincerely say that we will lose more young people in our schools if we fail to address the ways in which systemic policies and structures impact students.
These are the students who are pushed out or are expelled. When they can no longer attend school, where does their story take them? What happens to them and how do they navigate a society that has forgotten and denied them their dignity and humanity?
I don’t have the answers to all of these questions but with the memory of my lost six students and the students I still have with me, I will continue the work of developing a radical love for my students and profession. This radical love will give me strength when I have none and push me to find my place in working for equity and social justice education. I don’t have a desire to be a leader of this work in Alberta but I understand that I have a platform and voice on these issues. My former students taught me to use my privilege and to be a voice for them where they had none. This is messy work but work I take up with humbleness and humility that I’m just an average teacher who has been given an opportunity to not only challenge myself but the entire system in which I work.
There are days when I wish I only had to care about lesson planning and worrying about what happened in my classroom and maybe that will be a reality for me down the line. But for now, I have a responsibility to grow a radical love for young people and our schools in order to ensure that they are more equitable and just for all. I can’t bring my former students back, but I can work to ensure that more young people can feel the warmth of being loved and cared for by educators in their community.
