This week was a crazy one. If you’ve been on social media, um, at all, you’ve seen the story of the Texas boy who was handcuffed for making a clock and bringing it to school. It sparked a firestorm of #IStandWithAhmed all over social media. It needed to. And that night I saw that he had invites to the White House, MIT, and SpaceCamp. I smiled from ear to ear knowing that after being handcuffed in his own school, he was going to receive some pretty amazing connections.
But this morning I woke up and realized that I hope that people who tweeted, posted, shared, and blogged about this story did more than just share the story.
Our society loves a cause. We love to post rants about politics, get angry about the color of a dress, and even share fake stories about cake mixes. We tweet, blog, and share… a lot. Sometimes, without thought, and many times without action. Posting is easy and it can feel like we are doing something… raising awareness. But, are we doing enough? Are we looking at how to make real change, even if that means changing ourselves as educators?
I think of that boy, being handcuffed in his own school and I realize that I’ve known many kids who were “handcuffed” in their schools… not physically, but mentally. Told to stop asking so many questions. Ideas and passions that went unrecognized, unvalidated, and even treated as though they were “getting in the way” for not following the scripted curriculum. There are kids who think differently and many times, we decide the best way to treat them is to try to get them to think like everyone else. And when we do that, we are wrong.
And I just hope that we realize being wrong about a dress color is one thing, but being wrong about kids? The cost is far too great.
