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[jarridwilliamsblog-blog]

When I made the decision to become a teacher I thought about the impact that I can make on others, I never thought about the impact that teaching would have on myself. I thought about the leaders that I could develop, how I could help students develop skills to change their reality, and expose them to a life that they could never have imagined. i would have never thought that because of teaching these things would happen to me. Teaching has been a rollercoaster ride filled with adventures of learning the science of teaching, learning content, learning school culture, learning students, learning myself, and learning how to develop people to help create the best version of the world that we can. Teaching is more than just different subject matters, teaching is a relationship between students and teachers learning from eachother. 

A student was bullied in class today and that experience has led me here to create my first ever blog post. A young man in my World History inclusion class shared that he asked his group what the meaning of a word was, another student commented, “Of course you dont know what this word means, you are in Special-Ed classes.” The student shared with me that he recognize that he needs extra help but the comments of that student hurt his feelings. It was at that moment that I praised the student for sharing his feelings with me and I let him know that I would handle the situation. As an educator you make hundrends, maybe thousands of decisions that have serious implications on children’s life experiences. It was in this moment that I wanted to that young black male to know that he was worthy and to encourage him to share his feelings. I thought it spoke magnitures to the students strength to share that he was sad and his feelings were hurt. As an adult male, I still struggle with this at times. This feeling of insecurity, that you are less than but because you are a man that you need to be strong and interanilize your problems and feelings. 

Tuth is, although I am an educator, I do not view myself as a scholar. I believe that I am good with people, I people I work effeciently, but I don’t believe in my heart that I am academically steeped with the acadmically ability of my colleagues, peers, and friends. I grew up in a high school that graduated 50% of it’s students, and for some reason I love telling people that fact. I think it makes me feel better, that I actually made it but I thing it signals to others that I didn’t come from a strong academic background and the fact of the matter is I didn’t. College was an adjustment but with most things I figured how to play the game and attempted to do it better than everyone else. I viewed college as a game of networming and not necessarily studying. In hindsight, I don’t think the two or mutually exclusive and feel that I did myself a huge disservice. Growing up playing football and being charasmatic I have always had the good forune of being well liked. I used these things to my advatage. 

Black Student Union president, Founding member of an organization that gives student athletes internship experience, Co-Founder of a minoirty mentorship program, an NFL canidate, Teach for America corps member, KIPP 9th grade World History special education teacher, School Operations manager, and fiance’ to a lawyer and Chief of Staff to a member of congress. How is it that I could have accomplished all of these amazing things but still not view myself as “intelligent”. I recognize that life is a process and that you must continously work to improve and maybe thats why I am so hard on myself. I recognize that there are also things that I need to work on and I believe that writing is one of those things. I recognize this post lacks cohesion and lacks an unifying message and is somewhat of a moshpit of ideas and thoughts. 

So as I am, I will leave this post, incomplete, UNFINISHED, #STILLBECOMING!