At noon today, as I was checking my mail, I received a call from a fellow board member. This board member is working with the summer youth program. The summer youth program hires a certain number of high school kids every summer. They do different jobs all over the reservation.
In addition to having high school students do work, the program has them attend training sessions. Different professionals are brought in to present information about their profession. Apparently, there was a mix up in the training schedule today, because there wasn't anyone available to present at two o'clock, so the board member called me.
Although it was short notice, I agreed to speak to the students for about twenty minutes or so. When I arrived at the location where the training was taking place, the first thing I noticed was how many students were there. "How am I going to keep their attention for 20 minutes?" I worried. The reason why I was worried was because I know I have little or no patience with teenagers. This is why I was an elementary education teacher instead of a secondary education teacher.
Sure enough, I had barely begun speaking when several of the students began to talk and whisper among themselves. I immediately became irritated. To keep their attention, I decided to "shock" them. I mentioned when I was in the Marine Corp boot camp, the drill instructor (DI) had told us to, "look to your right and look to your left. Take a good look," the DI went on to say, "because one of them will not be finishing boot camp with you." I followed with statistics on high school drop out rates that say, "One-third of young people your age will not finish high school, will not find job, and will not own your own home." I went on to quote more distressing statistics. By then, I had all their attention, but I was running out of things to say.
Fortunately, the room I was speaking in had a board, and posted on that board were the traditional Native American values, the values on which I base my online ethics courses: courage, honesty, perseverance, and generosity.
Walking over to where the board was, I pointed to each word in turn and explained how practicing the values those words represent would help them avoid becoming one of those dismal statistics. All was going well except for one student who kept turning around and saying something that would cause the students behind him to giggle. By then, I had described all the words on my list of traditional Native American values, but I had not talked about respect. Losing patience with the student who continued to "disrespect" me, I told a story about respect and my sons. I finished my story by saying, "I taught my sons to respect their elders. To pay attention to them when they are speaking. I don't care if the elder is wrong, intoxicated, or belligerent, you respect them." Indicating the young student who talked through my entire speech, I told the rest of the students, "apparently this _______ does not respect his elders..." I went on to thank them for listening to me, and I wished them luck. My worry that I was a little too harsh on the student who talked throughout my entire speech was immediately dispelled by the rousing applause they gave me.
This experience validated my decision not to become a high school teacher.
