Just took a hot bath, I love them. Then I got to thinking about my family and siblings, and then I got to thinking about how fortunate I am.
The game of life is rigged. Period. It’s not so much a game of losers and winners, it’s more about you get what you want sometimes, and many other times you have to try and make the best out of your situation. Which is why I claim that I am quite fortunate.
I’m fortunate because I have a huge network of supportive people who I love and who love me. Not only is my family gigantic and very caring (in their own strange way), I have a good handful of friends around the world that I love, feel deeply connected to, and know that if high waters came, they would swim out to get me, or at the very least try.
Not everyone has this. And that’s okay. It’s not about a popularity contest or checking off a list of all the things I’ve done that others haven’t. However, I find it quite humbling to think of all that I have, all the extras that I don’t want, and it’s not so much about “denying” myself the things I want as much as it is about me truly not wanting what I don’t want.
Which brings me back to how fortunate I find myself to be because I have a ton of people I care about and vice versa. So why did I say the game of life is rigged?
In a non-collective, individualistic focused society, the emphasis is put on one’s ability to “succeed” on their own. This is known widely as (American) [rugged] individualism. So this is the narrative that I sorta, but not really, grew up with. It has a lot to do with growing up bicultural, where one set of values tells you to respect your elders, community members, and family, while the other set of values tells you to succeed and achieve material success as defined by money and being alone. But I never fully integrated into either narrative fully, but rather picked and chose what I felt fit my needs. Which is where the rigged falls into place.
There’s quite a few people that would argue that there are folks who are “naturally” smart, and there are folks who well, “have to work harder.” My whole life since I can remember, I’ve never bought this argument, and now I know why.
There’s this thing called opportunities, that as a child, I was given so many. I was allowed to blossom and flourish and become my own person with my mother (a huge part of my life) never consciously hindering anything that she thought I should learn from the world. My family in a nutshell: “there’s life, live it, and we’ll be here if you need us.” This is the family I come from, this is where I get my teaching pedagogy, it’s what influences my values, and it’s what has shown me that intelligence isn’t gauged by any academic measure and in fact, we ALL have the same intellectual potential.
So it was rigged. I could read better than all my peers because my mom forced reading onto me and basically made me struggle hard until I got so sick of not understanding what the book said that I said “fine” and started reading. I was more apt and problem solvey than my peers because my mom focused on things I thought were fun and used them to spark my interest in learning. Bugs, animals, food, water. All of these were used to teach me math, science, health, and just about every other subject you can think of (I still use these basic references as an adult today). So when I “outperformed” my peers, I was always deemed to be more “intelligent” than the rest of them and a whole world of “reserved rights” were literally given to me, placed on my lap almost. Things like extra computer time, being teacher’s pet, getting out of trouble because I was such a “good kid” and the other kids “weren’t” even though we had done the exact same thing.
But I never bought the “fact” that little Jose or Alejandra or whoever were dumber than me, I simply wanted to play and learn together with them. What differed between me and some of my peers was that I genuinely found learning fun (still do), and it was never a chore, but something cool to do with my time and my life. This is a characteristic I see in my siblings, and it is obviously something that is somewhat of a byproduct of my mother’s raising, and of her mother’s as well. So this is why I say I am fortunate.
I am fortunate because I had a mother and a grandmother who were able and had the [mental] resources to show me that life can be what you make of it, and you have to know how to use your resources well. In my family, problem solving begins in infancy. If the kids fall, they get up, if they cry like spoiled brats in public, we tell them they are embarrassing, maybe hit them, and then make sure they understand why we don’t want to take them to go get pizza until we know for sure they won’t make a scene again. Verbal contracts are binding. If we fall in deep water, we learn to swim, if we get dirty, we wash ourselves off. If it’s raining outside, we go play in the mud, if we’re hungry, we learn how to cook, and if we want to learn something new, we do it. All with the support of my mother. My mom and especially my grandma have been a huge factor that have played into my “success” in my now adult life. I’m fortunate to have them.
So how does this drive what I do? Well, the best learning experiences I believe are the ones you are able to accomplish on your own AND as a group. Essentially, when you can realize your potential and how that fits into the complex puzzle of society, then you are learning, and you are progressing. Now, this process requires a tremendous amount of commitment and mental (and material) resources and a bit of trust in the power of the mind. But, not everyone has these opportunities. So, one of my goals in teaching is to help create these opportunities. I want to make my lessons challenging and worthwhile, indeed the lessons in life most worth living are lessons as such. But nothing is set in stone. So it’s not about just worksheets or looking at the clock to see when I get to go home. It’s very much about being cognizant that when I’m in my teacher role, I am genuinely happy, that students and teachers are counting on me, and that the students can feed my energy and I can feed there’s and that we develop a healthy respect for and desire to learn.
I’m fortunate because I was given plenty of opportunities throughout my life to develop this potential and rarely did folks try to hinder me. Now imagine what we could do if we allowed people to be themselves, if we could help them see why society at large is so important to every individual’s existence. And imagine if rather than trying to get students to fit our boxes and labels and pre-determined categories so that they would be “successful” as defined by us, we allowed them to flourish, gave them projects that allowed them to create innovative solutions to many social dilemmas, and then gave them the opportunities to carry all of that out. To experiment, to believe in their ideas, to be receptive to feedback from others, and to discover their own potential while simultaneously allowing them to recognize, respect, and utilize the potential of others. It is more likely that folks will care about and be invested in a society and world that respects their thoughts and that they themselves helped build and take pride in. It is not without conflict, that is part of learning, but what a wonderful pedagogy that would be I think. It would be like my mother had allowed the children of the world to work together, to be willing and able to explore their own potential and see how that fits into the existence of all people, to laugh when things got tough, and to never stop loving each other for as long as existence existed. Now imagine if we gave everyone the opportunity to awake that potential. Now you know the ideals that drive my teaching and learning processes alike. And now you know why I will never believe that any one person is “smarter” or “dumber” than any other.
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