Qualifications

Sitting around the office, as school employees often do after the day's work has been done and all the students have been set on their ways, the conversation dodged and swerved. There is a supremely cathartic joy in having conversation with adults after spending six to eight hours immersed in the cares and woes of five to twelve year olds. As a matter of this course, I found myself relating not for the first time, the story of how I came to be a part of the few, the proud, the teachers.
Near the beginning of the admission interview for the credential program I was joining, the professor asked me why I thought I would be a good teacher. My thoughts raced with words about potential and generations and community, but what came out was, "I dunno. I've always been pretty good with kids."
This elicited a chuckle from the professor. Not a full blown laugh in my face, but a wizened guffaw at my sentiment. "Good with kids," he muttered as he looked down the list of questions that came after. Would it be best for all involved if we just cut this one off short?
As it turned out, the interview did continue, and either I eventually won him over with my much more decisive and clever answers to the rest of the questions, or the Oakland Unified School District was desperate for candidates like me. The warm-bodied breathing types. I got a call two days later that told me that I had been accepted into the intern credential program, and more information would follow.
These turned out to be prophetic words. The information continues to flood in, decades after I received my entree into the world of public education. As it turns out, "being good with kids" has been helpful in my career, but being good with trauma is even more valuable. That conversation in the office turned on this idea, as we each found our own way to express the notion that "it wasn't like this when we were kids." Somewhere out there in a suburban enclave there mus certainly be a school that is just like the one I attended when I was young. Or at least more like it. I don't know exactly what prepares you to talk to an eight year old about her cousin who died at age sixteen, or the seven year old whose parents were sent back to Mexico while he stayed here with cousins to learn English from next to nothing and discover a world that has expectations for him that grownups don't fully understand. Parents who bring their kids to our school because they don't have the time, money, resources to deal with them. Those folks are good with kids, right?
Of course we are. And a whole lot of other things.