Sharing Our Humanity Matters More

Sharing Our Humanity Matters More

September 6, 2024

I stood there staring.

City roads of dirt with curbs. People riding bikes.

Exactly the same bike.

Dusk. A vibrant, typical, uneventful evening in Guilin, China. 1988.

I was 15. My mind ablaze with curiosity. I must’ve looked hilarious as I stood there, alone, in my USA tracksuit we’d been issued for the trip.

A kind-faced old man’s smile beckoned me to his street cart on the other side of the street. There was an umbrella overhead and some sort of grinding machine mounted on a metal box before him. Several people stood in line.

I was supposed to be in my room. Room check was at 9:00 PM. It was 9:25. Later this would nearly send me home early from the trip.

As I came closer, I noticed several people began to smile and glance at one another. I hid none of my ignorance.

They were all sharing the same cup.

The same process repeated for each person in line. A foot-long stalk was inserted into the grinder. The man cranked the handle. The stalk emerged from the other side flattened, as water-like juice filled the cup below.

The cup was handed to the first person in line. The person dropped a coin in his hand and then drank it down.

Repeat.

The fifth time through, the man handed me the cup. I had not been in line. I was just standing there frozen.

I had no money. The man smiled. His nod told me to drink.

I sniffed the cup. I took a sip, then slowly drank it down. It was the sweetest thing I have ever tasted.

Only later would I realize what it was. Pure cane sugar juice, freshly squeezed straight from the sugarcane stalk itself.

That night was a transition point in my life. I had never seen such a thing. There was something special about experiencing it alone, too.

Just me. Thousands of miles away from home.

Completely lost in difference—the difference between where I was from and all that surrounded me.

My curiosity to explore has never abated. Explore the world. Find out what is out there, and what is inside me.

The search for meaning and understanding burns in me to this day.

Bay Village is a small suburb outside of Cleveland, Ohio. I grew up there. The first 18 years of my life were spent living amongst people who were like me. Kinda. Sorta.

They were exactly like me.

There’s a lot of power in that. A lot of safety and security and pride and a sense of home. I like that. I still do.

But on that street in 1988, something shifted in me. I saw the world as a huge place with thousands (millions?) of places that were home and safe and secure to other people like Bay Village was to me.

At twenty-six I started teaching and it all started emerging. In the eleven years since that night, I was fortunate enough to expand and travel and seek little pockets of humanity that were different than me.

It was fascinating. It still is.

And, as I bumped my way through my first year of teaching at the Atlanta Girls’ School, these little vignettes of life, small, subtle, powerful, not powerful, mystifying and humbling, started filtering out during my lessons.

Over the years, my most powerful teaching moments were when I left content aside and shared a story that brought out the shared humanity in us, as people.

That night in China. The hard-boiled egg on a train in Bangladesh. Everest Base Camp. Drinking the coffee. Road-tripping through Patagonia. Winning the state soccer championship with my childhood friends. Camping in Moab. Knowing less Spanish than my neighbor’s dog; then knowing more. Explaining what a house phone is (was?). Converting the van. Feeling inept as I try to mutter my first words in Bulgarian.

These moments of shared humanity serve as bonds between us.

Laughing and listening and realizing that every day in class is an opportunity to connect with other humans who, even though much younger than me now, have a life of experiences behind them too.

And those experiences are educational for me too. I love that. A lot.

In a lot of my writings, I mention that “the world is our classroom.” It may seem like a bit of a cheesy slogan. It's not, at least not to me. I mean it in the truest and grandest and simplest of ways. It is. And I find that exciting and inspiring and endlessly motivating.

What we do as teachers matters.

What we do is good and pure and real.

The more real we can make it by sharing a little bit of our path as humans the better we become as educators—and the better the collective experience becomes for our students.

Yes...

Content matters.

Assessments matter.

Grades matter.

But sharing our humanity matters more.

At least that's what I think.

See you next week.