By Keith Sinor, OKCPS District Director of Athletics –
If you are anything like me, you hear the word love and immediately think of love, the emotion. Emotional love is amazing and can bring great joy but that is not the type of love I am referring to here. I am talking about love, the verb. It is easy to say you love your school and your students but putting your love into action is something else altogether.
I wished I had fully understood this concept in my first year of teaching when I was faced with a situation somehow overlooked by all of my college professors. It was early in the year and I had run out to my car to grab a few things and ran into a young student wandering near the front of the building. As I got a little closer I noticed the tattered clothes, unkemptness, and the cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Whereas most kids will try to hide when they smoke on campus and will put it out immediately when spotted, this young student clearly didn’t care and wasn’t the least bit worried that I was headed toward him. If I was teaching at a high school, you might think this was pretty normal but I was at a middle school and this kid was pretty young. As I approached, I told him to put out the cigarette and began to inquire about his presence in front of the building. I could tell he was annoyed with me by the tone of his voice and the colorful curse words he hurled at me for interrupting his cigarette and questioning him. In between all of the curse words I was able to decipher that his grandmother was inside enrolling him as part of his parole. Basically, he had to enroll in school or go to jail. I wish I could say my first thought was how can I show love to this young man but it wasn’t. It was more along the lines of praying he wasn’t in the 6th grade and that he wouldn’t be in my class.
The next day I noticed there was a student added to my second hour roster and my first thought was please don’t let it be the young man from yesterday.
I was standing in the hall greeting kids as they came in and out of the corner of my eye I saw that same young man heading right towards my class. I was ready to check his schedule and let him know that he was in the wrong area but as it turns out he was in the 6th grade and enrolled in my class. I wish I could tell you he wasn’t as bad as he seemed when I first met him but he lived up to everything I expected. I didn’t cut him any slack and we had daily hall conversations, sometimes twice a day, for the next three weeks. I am not sure exactly what we talked about in those hall conversations but I am sure it was centered on expectations, appropriate behavior and language. I thought we were making strides until one day he walked in five minutes late and was very agitated. Before I could even spit out the normal “where have you been?”, he went on a verbal tirade in front of the class. I am not exactly sure what I said but it was very loud and something along the lines of “you are not going to talk that way, I am not messing with you anymore, get to the office.”
I honestly didn’t care if he even went to the office because it would have given me more leverage to get him out of my class. I didn’t want to see him again. The rest of that hour went pretty smooth because I think my students were afraid to say a word. I dismissed the class and was getting ready to go and guess who walks in. Up to this point, all I had ever seen was this street hardened young man that always had his tough guy persona on but this time was different. There were huge crocodile tears coming down his face and my first thought was “man, the office sure did a number on him.” I quickly learned he never made it to the office and these tears were not because he got in trouble in the office but rather because I told him I was done messing with him. He proceeded to tell me the gut wrenching details of his life.
The story is much longer than I can write here but basically his parents were in jail, he was literally living on the streets, hungry, and that no one had ever taken the time to care for him like I did. He was broken because I told him I was done and had given up on him. Wow! Not at all what I had expected. After some tears and removing the dagger from my heart, we had a great conversation about life and his future.
I wish there was a happy ending to the story but the truth is he left school that day and never showed up again. I am not sure what happened to him but I have always wondered how the story would have been different if I had led with love. What if I started where I ended? Would that knowledge have helped me work with him differently for the three weeks he was in my class? Could I have helped him write a better story for his life? I hope our short time together helped in some small way but sadly, this a story with an unknown ending.
Why share this story and what does it have to do with leading with love? It’s because I wonder if this young man’s story would have been different if a coach, teacher or community member saw him as broken as I did and took the time to lead with love? Would he have been outside smoking that day, would he need a parole officer, what kind of grades would he be making, and most importantly, who would he be today? I am certain his story would have been different.
I hope that all reading this knows this is not about anything that I did right because I made several mistakes with this young man and leading with love was not at the forefront of any conversations we had. This is about the change we can see in our schools, our community and our city if each child had someone take time out of their day on a regular basis to lead with love. I am not talking about love the emotion or buying presents, but rather the love that requires action and our presence. Being present is not easy. It requires us to get a little dirty because we have to share not only in the joy and happiness of life but also the hurts, pains, challenges and struggles.
I am left to wonder what our schools, communities and city would look like if each of our kids had someone take the time to be present in their life and lead them with love?
Thank you for your support of Fields & Futures and all you do to make life better for those we serve. Our kids need you.
Keith