Becoming Ms Fannin has not been simple, will not be simple, and will surely be the death of me. It has taken me every experience I have ever had to prepare myself to teach the seven students I taught this summer. It was suggested we have embarked on this mission with the motivation of teaching poor children. This sounds like a saviour mentality mission if there ever was one. But that is the green algae film sitting atop the slow moving lake. Beyond this, beyond the politics and the meager desire to be the kind of person who others perceive as good, there is the depth that comes with being yourself. I’ve never been naturally good at a single skill in my whole life. So when I began tutoring science freshman year of college, I was shocked to find that my strange and often annoying love of collecting and sharing information, was useful. Not only that, it was fulfilling. This may seem narcissistic, to look for a career that makes you burst at the seams with purpose. I feel that instead of a cesspool of individualism, this is a journey for me towards collectivism. “It’s not about you, it’s all about you.” Debates on pure altruism within this work, are no longer useful. I have come with my strengths and limitations to this place and found that I am needed and that I need others. I see that my students will have upwards of 50 teachers and that each and every teacher’s strengths and differences create a more rounded student and human being. The students don’t need me, they need every member of their community. The most important thing I can do as a teacher is to show up as myself. I have found time and time again that authenticity is the most difficult thing to fake and the hardest thing to bring to class each day. When I am my authentic self, I have no armor against my students perceptions or corrections. Being Ms Fannin means I have to be more than I was yesterday. It means that some days, I will be human and put on the armor of professionalism and make check marks and leave. And I will be doing a disservice to everyone around me. It will be harder to take the armor off each time I put it on. When I fail I have failed in such a way that requires a dedicated falling. There will be pain from this falling and hopefully an indistinguishable line between who I am as a professional and who I am. This pain and truth create a growth mindset. The only way to recognize my failings and unfair motivations, is to feel them, and to change them the next day.
I was born to be a collectivist. I love community, connecting, and collaborating. These are my greatest joys in life. Community is not just this comfortable place you show up to on your day off, it is like nature; vast, sublime, dangerous, heartless, wholesome, and challenging. You will always grow in a true community. So when I decided to move to Colorado Springs and be apart of its community, I was really just falling in love. Miss June, the 80 year old woman who has been working for over 50 years towards safe housing, melted every other place in the world away when she spoke at induction. Her love and passion invoked in me a deep chasm of need to be apart of her community. “This is great leadership” I thought,”to have someone listen to what your actions say and create in them the need to walk alongside you.” Initially institute was a tragic place I had to go before I could be in Colorado. I fell in love with Colorado and instead had to go somewhere else with god only knows who and in, of all places, the buckle of the Bible belt. But I found here, not in the sessions, not in the discourse, but in the students, a life changing experience. I used to believe that LGB and trans rights were important. I used to believe in educational equality. I used to believe in the importance of making way for the undocumented, but know I believe in none of this. I instead know that all of these things are urgent. I’ve put faces to what before were just ideas. This is what changed me this summer. The love and urgency I found in my students needs. In the lovely young black men who don’t know they are in danger. In the sweet smile of a student who can’t write complete sentences at seventeen. In the brave nametag change of an intellectual transgender man. My kids, whether they know it or not, deserve so much more from the world they are about to enter. And this is my greatest sadness. But they are the greatest hope. They can change these things. I can hand them a few tools of the many they receive from their community and they can build with this the world they want. The evil that is in inequality will never go away, but the edge of urgency, the hopelessness can. When I came to institute I was a pull string doll. What I had to say, was truly what I believed, but it was mechanical. It wasn’t a true understanding. The experiences I have had here with my students, were a truer knowledge and a movement of what I knew in my mind to what enflamed my soul.
Being Ms Fannin, is not simple, will not be simple, and will be the death of me. It is not simple, because in front of me are not ideas but human beings with diverse needs. It will not be simple to create a space for each of these new selves and to also be apart of molding a true love of knowledge. Lastly, being Ms Fannin will be the death of me everyday, because who I was when I walked into institute, walked in Monday, walked in this morning, can never be as much as my students deserve. And for them I reflect at the end of every day on who’ve I’ve come to class as and I change and I become more like the kind of authentic teacher my students deserve. I connect them to the community that they need and that needs their voice, skills, passions. and strengths.
