The Kids Are Alright

No complaints, no pity, but it has been a long week. Through a series of commitments and choices, I have found myself at work and at play late into each of the last five nights, with no break in sight until Monday, when the week starts all over. No worries.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am a teacher. My district just wrapped up Fall parent/teacher conferences. This is primarily a positive couple of nights when many moms and dads stop in to "get the good news" as I call it. Too often the parents we need to see stay home. Their children, making up less than 20% of our student population, are the ones who occupy more than 80% of our time; time spent re-directing, re-teaching, re-everything. But even an old social studies teacher can tell you that less than 20% of anything isn't too much.

My long work week concluded with a 7am flight to Boston on Friday morning. Confession: I am not a frequent flier, or a good one for that matter. When you have to remind yourself to breathe as you sit in a metal cylinder rocketing down a piece of asphalt in a foolhardy attempt to reach a ground speed sufficient enough to lift you to the height of 7.5 miles above terra firma to settle into an uncomfortable 650 mph, well, maybe flying isn't your thing. But I digress. 

All of the physics-defying machinations were worth it when I took the keys out of the ignition of the rental car and began wandering the campus of Boston University, where my son is a freshman. He would be in class for a few more hours, giving me plenty of time to get the lay of the land. In the course of doing this, however, I was pleasantly overwhelmed with all of the humanity.

Boston, for all of its other boasts, is a college town. Recent estimates have placed over a quarter of a millions students attending more 30 different universities in the Greater Boston area. Wow. An easy statistic to believe after just a few minutes stroll down Commonwealth Avenue, which cuts through the heart of BU.

This stroll, along with the heart-soothing reunion with my son that followed, could not have been more perfectly timed. You see, teachers, much faster and more cynically than the rest of the general population, do a great deal of complaining about kids. Not a news flash, I realize. It simply comes with the territory, of which I am no exception. But, like the percentage thrown out earlier, the sources of these complaints are few even if the amount is not. It took a trip to the east coast to remind me of that. 

In fact, I think the kids, and consequently our shared future, are going to be alright. I know I have plenty  of students who are going to grow up to be very impressive adults. They are simply in their awkward years, trapped in bodies and minds that are doing their damnedest to defy them. Teachers forget that and too often rush to all manner of judgments condemning our collective future to hell in a handbasket. Me too. 

Certainly an unfair condemnation. Just like we once did, these kids are dreaming big dreams. They want to do great things. And some of them will. After all, they have had great role models. You see, as much as we may complain about their behavior and their futures, they are learning from us; learning how NOT to abuse the planet (we do), how NOT to govern (we don't), how NOT to do so many things. Even when we weren't teaching, they never stopped learning, never stopped paying attention. In all seriousness, I believe we are going to be in good hands. 

In fact, I'll go one step further and state that I believe we just might be heading towards a better future than any of us can imagine right now. This hope has nothing to do with my generation, or the one that came before us. It's these kids. Are they going to change the world? Probably not. But they will make it a better one. Don't you remember feeling that way? It's just this sort of youthful optimism that I am willing to bank the future on. And you should too, because these kids are alright.