WHEN TEACHERS MEET STUDENTS WHERE THEY LIVE,
THE LEARNING FLOWS BOTH WAYS.
I was walking through Baxter Hall during the fall of my freshman year at Wabash when history professor Peter Frederick asked if I would be attending Chapel that evening. Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and author of Night, was speaking.
“No,” I answered. “I have a chemistry test tomorrow.”
Then Professor Frederick told me something I have never forgotten: that I should never let academics get in the way of learning.
I did attend Chapel that evening. Although Wiesel’s talk was powerful, it’s Professor Frederick’s words that have shaped the way I lead as principal of Lawrence North High School.
as teachers, we must stay true to our high expectations in the classroom, but we also must be ready to meet our students where they live, wherever and whenever learning may occur. Life happens. We must help our students comprehend the situation and navigate the circumstance.
One of those moments occurred at Lawrence North during September 2017. Attorney General Jeff Sessions called for the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy. Suddenly our undocumented and DACA students had to work to understand why a country they love may no longer accept them.
These students didn’t know if they were going to be able to pursue the lives they had hoped for. And it wasn’t just about them, but what might happen to mom and dad. Was the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency going to be at their homes that night?
We didn’t know.
Students across the country walked out of their schools to protest the decision and support the DACA students. Lawrence North students chose a different way.
“Mr. Crousore,” several students told me, “we would never walk out of your school. We’re fighting to be here.”
flagpole before classes started in a united show of support. We cried together as a school community and empathized with members of our school family. It was a powerful day, and our students were educated by the passion they were seeing.
Their teachers took time to speak with them. They let them voice opinions and fostered open dialogue. Whether in agreement or not, our students left school aware of a real-world issue that affected their peers. That’s learning.
And that’s the beauty of the students I get to serve. I have kids who live in $10 million homes and others who live in the highest-crime area in Indianapolis. Think about reading Elie Wiesel’s Night in those classrooms, with those perspectives.
interaction and collaboration are essential—I learned that at Wabash. Sitting in a classroom with 15 to 20 gentlemen, being challenged to speak about your beliefs and listen to others do the same. Right or wrong, agree or disagree, we needed to be able to talk to one another.
As teachers, we need to do the same for our students.
Some tell me that today’s students lack focus, don’t engage in learning, don’t respect adults. Maybe a few. But not the majority. Yes, they will question our practices, analyze our comments, and may work to prove us wrong with the click of a button.
But they need us to listen to their findings, question the validity of their own work, and challenge them to consider multiple perspectives before drawing a conclusion. Perhaps they just need us to give them permission to explore and take risks.
Do this and you’ll find these students are innovative, passionate, and compassionate. They can and will do things better than we do them. We need to let them.
Years from now, students will remember some of the content we teach them, but what they’ll really remember is how we treated them. That’s what we all remember. I will never forget how Professor Frederick treated me—it’s how I try to treat my own students.
when i was at wabash, though, I was one of the close-minded. I wasn’t very accepting of those different from me because I didn’t know them. Now I get to be surrounded by these students every day, and they become my kids. We learn from one another; we learn to appreciate one another.
Our children today understand this better than most. Their world is so different from the world we grew up in, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
At Lawrence North, our school colors are green and red. At graduation, boys have always worn green and the girls have always worn red. That has put some of our students in an awkward position.
Last year I had to make some tough decisions. I didn’t want to play that game anymore. So they all wore green this year.
When I announced that to the senior class, I said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I will never make a student choose again. Not in front of me. Not on my watch. And that’s just what I believe.”
The senior class stood on their feet… and applauded.
I walked out of that school that day in tears. Happy tears. My kids understood. They appreciate things like that. They’re well educated.