How Do I Get That Job?

Last week I attended the seventeenth annual National Congress on Rural Education. My role at the conference was as teacher advisor to a team of nine high school ejournalism students from Prairie South Schools. The students were successful; this means I was responsible for frequently refilling my coffee cup.

I sat in on the keynote speakers and the entertainment following the banquet. As well, I made certain to attend all session where one of @yourgeeksquad was sharing their work.

My role was not only to listen to kids, but to offer my students a platform from which to share their experiences.

The conference began on Sunday evening, March 25, and ran until Tuesday noon, March 27. Driving home on Tuesday, my kids and I reflected about what went well and what they would do differently if given the chance to report at another RCEd, or during their next ejournalist gig. The students’ big take-away was: let kids lead more.

Sunday night my students gathered on the second floor common area of the Delta Bessborough. There, we collected and reviewed our interviews and summarized our notes from the first day. The adrenaline was running. We had just met and interviewed and been photographed with Craig Kielburger; also, we had just come from the local coffee house. 

A night of collaboration was in full swing. Then the elevator doors opened.

See the Geek Squad were not the only kids who had met Craig. My kids, the-at-first-glance-what-appear-to-be-white kids-from Prairie South Schools were not the only kids who had attended the conference.

Around 11:55 pm, from out of the elevator stepped Jake, “So what are you all doing?”

A few of my students looked up from their pieces and began to explain their role as a team of ejournalists at the event. But deadlines won out, the kids returned to their work and at midnight the hotel security ushered my kids into a private room 30 feet away.

My coffee and I stayed with Jake.

“Have you seen the App for our virtual wall?” I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, and I handed my phone up to him. As he began investigating the wall, he sat down beside me. Instantly, Jake and I were connected.

Jake is a vlogger. He had watched the Geek Squad all night. I had seen him hanging around. My legs tired, I soon curled up into the comfy green sofa. Jake, in his spiffy jeans and sport coat sat with legs a bit too long yet for the rest of him, sprawled out in the common area, in the arm chair at my side. Here, we shared stories.

Like the Geek Squad, Jake too was attending the event. Jake however was also presenting at the congress. With me he shared the story he’d be sharing the next day, the story of the lasting legacy of residential schools in the North. Jake paused, asked me if I understood about residential schools. It was important to Jake that I understood. He shared that what many people fail to understand, that when residential schools were closed, and in the north that wasn’t too long ago, there were few if any financial or educational supports in place for First Nations people. He shared about the results the lack of supports have had on his community. He shared about the challenges, specifically access to educational services and systemic racism, which continue to affect First Nations people, his home community, his family and him.

Jake spoke gently yet passionately relating his narrative. We laughed, and we cried. I shared my story too, being a single mom to a teenaged daughter and the understandings many assume they share of me.

Jake and I also shared that we had never before stayed in such a beautiful hotel.

Jake talked about his sister. Jake shared that he is the first in his family, at the age of fifteen, to have never smoke or drank or fought or have yet had sex, all things to which Jake assigns much worth.  Jake shared that he struggles every day in a world that models, albeit falsely, that hero means doing and being something Jake is not, a world where hero means self-harm.

Jake shared that as he walked into the coffee house on his way to the hotel, a stranger grabbed him by the shirt collar and asked, “Hey, hey do you have a smoke? Hey?”

Jake thought about this a while. Then, he looked towards the white painted wooden doors where the Geek Squad worked, “Did anyone stop you?”

“Ya. Someone asked for change.”

“No one asked me for change.” He looked back towards me. “You know why they asked you that?”

Jake and I looked at each other a long time. He looked over my shoulder towards the door again. The door was locked for now; neither of us could enter without a key.

“How do I get that job?”

2 thoughts on “How Do I Get That Job?

  1. What an important moment amidst another important moment for you. It has been some time since I participated in Rural Congress. It is an exciting gathering and the student e-journalism is amazing. You will all be bringing something back from this… just as you have left something of yourselves behind.

    1. Thanks Alan.

      I really did bring so much back with me. I forget how easy it is to allow students to opportunity to lead, but the resonance of these successful moments keep returning.

      You know, when Dean asked if I was interested I was concerned I wouldn’t have the necessary skills help my kids be successful. Yet at the same time, I knew I needed to trust in my students skills and our ability to learn together. And we did. I wasn’t scared, but I was sure nervous that first meeting.

      Dean shared with me this week that kids work really hard to put their best work out there when their audience is big, global. I learned a great deal about how well and how quickly a team can create polished work. I know this speed is often lacking in my homeroom. I learned that access to technology and forms of technology made no difference to my students’ success.

      I learned that once the kids are excited about learning, I need to stand back and let them run!

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