first dayz

By now I’ve met them all. There are just 43 of them in three classes. All week I was nervous about the start of the semester and I felt the familiar panic as I walked into each classroom. I couldn’t help but worry. These would surely be, I told myself, very different students. There would be men, for one, and after two years at a women’s college, I wasn’t so sure that I’d know what to make of them. And in one important way, I was sure, they’d seem unfamiliar. After all, the college where I now teach exclusively accepts poor students and primarily those from Appalachia. They’d be coming from some of the worst high schools in the country and I was warned to check my expectations before I walked through the door. I read about “culturally responsible” pedagogy and promised myself that I wouldn’t assume anyone had heard of Walt Whitman or Harriet Beecher Stowe. A colleague warned me to “forget everything you learned at Bryn Mawr.”

After I met them, though, I realized that there was no need to forget. Because students are students, pulled into the classroom by desire, by curiosity, by command, by mistake. But no matter the reason, they’re there. Sitting and eager and ready to give me a chance. So our conversations might sound a little different; they surely were on the first day, but they were conversations nonetheless and I feel privileged to be having them.