I've said it before, but recently reading one of the blogs of the graduating second-years (again, at 4:00 am when I woke up to work) reminded me and now leads me to restate my case and add some thoughts.

He mentioned in his entry that what we do will hopefully be a chance, for some, at things beautiful and true that they would not otherwise have experienced, and therein is his cause for the work we try to do. He also mentioned that he is not sure he likes who has had to become to be effective in his classroom.

I could not agree more. Also, I started this partly to challenge my own notions, ideas and ideals. I believe in true things and beautiful things as pretty much the reason for living- at least, I think that's the best way I can describe it. Except everyone told me that the world is ugly and I am blinded and foolish and sheltered, and of course they were correct. I think that some part of my motivation for starting this was to test my boundaries on that, to see how my little sense of existence would hold up to a battering from a place where people never really had the opportunity to find their own sense of existence and happiness.

It has definitely been a battering so far. To even try to do a good job at my job, I had to abandon my usual approach to interaction in a way that I would not say I agree with. I don't really believe, in theory, that it is good for people to experience yelling, coercion to do what they don't want to through rewards and punishments, to maintain isolation from the actual human being behind their supposed role models. All of these things have proven to be important in the classroom. Intrinsic motivation is a fantastic idea, but if we are influenced by our environments right from the start, and they tend us toward turning off of education completely, shutting off chances to open up our minds, to get out of a bad situation, then is it really the person who has chosen? Or is it a survival response that has been programmed nearly since birth? What if a person has not been offered enough resources to see beyond the immediate influences and often inflicted restrictions of their experience to even decide what is real about them and what they truly want? Is it wrong or condescending to a culture to try to offer- and it seems like sometimes we even force- new ideas and alternatives?

As far as my faith in beauty, anyone who knows me knows that it has anything but dissolved. Honestly, I feel that as strong or stronger now than ever. Especially in contrast to dark realities- which can be overwhelming at times- beauty and spark and passion seem all the more sweet. There is some frustration and a lot of sadness, though, in not being able to share or give happiness to people who deserve and seem to cry for it, even though trying to share that or give that is probably crossing boundaries, getting too personal, trying to give ideas. That's actually been a struggle for me, too. I know that my job is to teach biology and chemistry, but I sometimes (usually only when prompted) will give my ideas about certain things, like being different and pursuing passion, and I can't help but feel like that matters more. I don't think I've crossed too many boundaries with it, even when I've talked with students at length, but that doesn't mean I haven't. I figure, if they didn't want to know, they would stop asking or they wouldn't listen. After all, they've had they're whole lives for other people to fill them with ideas, a few new ones can't hurt, right?