The End-of-Semester Letter I Wrote to My Students in My Social Justice Class

Dear students,

I have been trying to write you a letter for almost a month, and have discarded every draft so far. But tomorrow I’ll be busy grading your final projects, and I’ll be out of time! So, here is the letter I’ve been trying to write. Read it whenever you need a study break or have some time. It's long, and maybe a little convoluted! Sorry/not sorry!

I want to thank you, first of all, for your work this semester. I hope you know it matters. You did 20-30 hours of volunteer work, showed up to class, read some essays and a pretty boring/dense textbook, wrote some stuff. It may not feel like much, but even if you can’t see it now, some of what you did mattered or will matter in ways you can’t see yet.

Please know that I want to be a part of your support system as you continue to dedicate your lives to making the world a better place. (Am I being presumptuous? Maybe. But I believe you signed up for this class for some reason, and I’m hoping you have even more resolve now to do just that!).

I feel I have not been a very good educator this year because of the extraordinary personal losses and challenges in my own life and the fallout from the election, and for that I am sorry. One of my New Year’s Resolutions (really, I make them and actually try to follow them!) is to be more present in other people’s lives. So in the new year, I hope you’ll show up at my office or at an OCE event and say hi. And if I seem too busy to listen, interrupt me anyway. If I seem too overwhelmed to think clearly, tell me what’s on your mind anyway. It will be good practice for me! I want to get better at this.

For those of you who stayed in class when I invited you to talk about the election, I want to thank you for sticking out that difficult, tearful conversation, for not running away when I broke down, and for telling your sacred stories and listening to others. We need to go through hard changes, personal and political, together, or we won’t get through them. 

In my spiritual tradition, this is the time of waiting in the darkness, getting comfortable with what it means to be there, and having faith that the light will come. Sometimes we have to be aware of what is not in our control. In addition to the election results, I had to learn this lesson in incredibly concrete ways this semester. Because so many of you have entrusted so much of your lives to me, and because I think my journey may be relevant to you, I want to share a little of what I have experienced.

Just before the election, my wife’s beloved grandfather died. To me, he represented the possibility of people with different world views finding a way to love and understand each other. He'd given up his long-held beliefs about queer people when my wife fell in love with me. And, when my family decided to open our home to people in need of a safe place to live three years ago, he was one of the first to support us. How does one make sense of his death at this particular time? 

We were reeling from this loss, and the election results, when we got a call the week before Thanksgiving that a representative of the Standing Rock tribe was coming to take our girls the next day. This requires some back story. In 2005, I had a student in class who was struggling. We remained connected, and three years ago, he entrusted his girls to my wife and I, at first just occasionally, and eventually for the long term. They became a part of our family. We had no idea when we took them in that their community, Standing Rock, would become the site of one of the greatest social justice movements of our time. We had no idea we would be called to teach them to be proud of who they were during an election season that seemed focused on demeaning them (and so many others). 

The tribe's decision to take the girls was likely made at least in part out of fear. After the election, how could these girls be raised to love justice and to love themselves in a small, mostly white community like ours by white women with no blood connection to Standing Rock? The long history of Native American children being stolen from their people by whites is horrifying, and the laws that were passed in the 70s to allow tribes to determine custody of Native children when their parents cannot care for them exist for good reason. Nevertheless, we are grieving deeply, and the holidays will be hard. We wonder, even as we understand the context of their decision, how could they take our girls from a safe and loving home? How does one make sense of such a decision? 

  

How was I to deal with all of this transition and fear and still do my work? The truth is, I can no longer honestly look at my students and say, “We’re all going to be OK” or “there is hope, even in hopeless situations” or “if we work hard enough to make the world more just and more inclusive, we will see the change we want to see--eventually.” 

For awhile, I wasn’t sure I could go on doing the work I do if I couldn’t say these things to my students. And my family was not sure we could go on letting survivors of trauma into our home if we couldn't be in a place of hope ourselves. 

I knew I had to do something to get back on track. My morning routine had been to get up very early, go to the gym, get ready for the day, then return home to drag the girls out of bed and get them to school without any major calamity during the time of my day I referred to as “the hour of hell.” (I’m sure all of you got up and to school with no problem whatsoever—if I’m wrong, please thank your caretakers when you see them over the break!). Here is my point, and I do have one: not having the girls has freed up an hour of time in the morning that I’d much rather use to sleep in. Instead, I’ve been sitting in the darkness and just trying to breathe and feel gratitude for all that I have for an hour before heading to the gym.

And you know what? Every single morning, you (you, specifically—sorry this is a little generic) have come to my mind. I really mean that! I imagine you all sitting in a circle doing your best to wrestle with ideas that are likely new and maybe even a little scary.  I imagine you teaching a group of pre-schoolers or teenagers, running around the RFC with a kid half your size, teaching ESL, meeting with your community partner to go over the next week’s tasks in your quest to raise awareness of domestic violence. I see you talking to your elders, gathering food that would otherwise go to waste, serving food at community meal, harvesting seeds, sorting donations and cleaning up cat poop. I see you going to your residence halls or your families and talking about some of the ideas we've talked about in class. I see you at protests, dialogues, community gatherings. I see you voting, reading the news, signing up, going the extra mile. It has been remarkable to realize that when my heart and mind are in the right place, I am literally overwhelmed by hope because I have had the privilege of being with you two days a week for the last 15 weeks. 

The truth is, the world is very broken, and I am not doing enough to heal it, and neither are you. But what matters is that we are sitting in the darkness, asking the hard questions, engaging in the difficult conversations, and looking toward light. What matters is that we act out of a desire to bring that light to others, and to keep it alive in ourselves. That we stay awake even in dark times, and pay attention, and live with love and courage, one day at a time, even if we are having trouble finding our way. 

As one of you so wisely said during our difficult conversation two days after the election, “Our ancestors went through worse than this. They will help us know what to do to go on.” Some of our ancestors suffered more than we can imagine in their quest for making the world better for the next generation, and never saw the fruits of their labor. Some of our ancestors contributed to the world’s suffering. (Most of our ancestors did both). Whatever their stories, we can learn from them, and write our own stories in their honor.

We all have that in common—we get to write our own stories, even if some of the plot points are not in our control.

We can cause suffering, and we can generate healing.

We can be afraid of the darkness, or we can be willing to sit with it and learn what it has to teach us.

We can hunker down, take care of our own small spheres when we are afraid—our families, our group of friends, our people, whoever they are. Or, we can open our arms wide and broaden our communities, like Grandpa did when he chose to love and support us, like my former student did when he signed his girls into our care.

We can be afraid of what we’ll have to give up to see light in ourselves. We can be afraid of what we’ll have to give up to bring light to others. Or, we can be willing to sacrifice some of what we have (time, resources, world views, comfort, etc.) to change the world.

We can allow our souls to wither away from too much hurrying and doing and guilt and hate. Or, we can learn to take care of ourselves. We can do things that inspire us, keep us healthy and grounded, and bring us joy.

It is up to us now.

In the meantime, the water protectors at Standing Rock will keep protecting our water.

The Black Lives Matter movement will keep protesting white apathy. 

The Dreamers will keep dreaming and fighting for a better future, even now that their future is in jeopardy.

Advocates will keep caring for survivors. Teachers will keep teaching. Farmers will keep growing and raising our food. 

Wherever you end up fitting into the great social justice movements of our time—and the ones that will come in the future--I hope you’ll keep doing your work, quietly and behind the scenes or out front, loud and proud, even when it seems hopeless or like it’s not enough.

I’m counting on it. The world is counting on it.

Like many of your ancestors, you may work your whole life for a cause you believe in and not see the fruits of your labors. The important thing, though, is that you get started somewhere, and stick with it. As one of you wrote in an extra credit assignment about your realization that you can’t do everything right now to save the world, “Patience takes great bravery.” I have been carrying that simple sentence around in my heart and saying it to myself ever since you gifted it to me. 

Yes, I actually read your extra credit assignments. And everything else you write. And I hear what you say, and I see you, even when you don’t want to be seen. And like I said, when I’ve failed to do all I can as an educator, there’s that New Year’s resolution I mentioned in paragraph four, which, if you’re still reading, probably seems like a long time ago! Whatever you've failed to do, whatever mistakes you've made, the important thing is to pick yourself up, ask forgiveness, forgive yourself, and keep going. 

Your generation will likely have to give up more, dream more, and work harder to save the world than my generation has. But I believe you are up to the challenge. And I plan to stick around to accompany you on your journey if you'll let me (and maybe raise a little hell myself!)

Be brave. Be patient. And be grateful. 

If you are still reading this, and even if you’re not: Thank you for a great semester, good luck on finals, and have a great break! See you tomorrow for the final presentations, and again, I hope, in 2017!

With great gratitude!
Argie