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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: General Interest
- Published: 04/26/2022
Teachable Moment!
Born 1950, M, from Sparta, il, United StatesMy wife and I have been together for over fifty years, learning from and teaching each other. That’s not to say we didn’t and don’t have struggles. Staying together that long is hard work. We made a commitment to each other. Understanding, accepting, and fully committing to any commitment is, of course, important to achieving it.
The opportunity to talk about making and keeping commitments came to me a few years ago,as an educator for the Illinois Department of Corrections. That moment occurred in my GED classroom.
I would say the average age of my students was thirty-five. Many of them came from broken families. They had no fathers at home. Some were fathers, themselves, but had no contact with their children. Their environment was harsh. The life of fists, knives, and guns was what they knew.
One day during a history lesson, I mentioned that I could personally relate to some of the history we were discussing. I told them I could do that because at sixty I was around when some of it was actually happening.
In the back of the room, I overheard an inmate say, but not to me, “Sixty, he’s old!”
Many of my students were hard men. I suspected that living to my age, for some of them, was not something considered possible. Having a father and mother living together with them under the same roof was an experience most of them did not have.
I responded to the young man’s comment. “Yea! I’m an old guy. I’m so old that my wife and I are about to celebrate thirty-nine years of marriage.”
One particularly confused student looked up at me and asked, “To the same woman?”
And there it was. The Teachable Moment!
I had been married longer than most of my students had been on this planet. What a great way to explain commitment.
“Yes, to the same woman. It takes hard work to be married thirty-nine years. When we got married, we made a commitment to each other to make it work.”
I was speaking to the entire class, but that young man was having a problem.
He turned to his buddy, and I overheard him say, “He’s been married thirty-nine years! Women get ugly at thirty-eight.”
I know he didn’t intend for me to hear that. But since I did, I had a choice. Get mad and discipline, ignore it, or turn it into a teachable moment. I, of course, chose the teachable moment.
I remember doing some quick math in my head. I surmised, “This kid’s in his mid to late twenties. His mother could have been fifteen or sixteen when he gave birth to him. Fifteen plus twenty-five equals forty. That would make her ugly to him. Surely, he doesn’t think of his mother that way?”
The guard was in the hallway and the inmates knew it. The likelihood of him reacting as he might back in the “hood” was greatly reduced. So, I took a chance and turned his statement on him.
I asked him a rather risky question. “Are you saying your mother is ugly?”
The room went silent. That kid got the “deer in the headlight” look.
After a few seconds more, he said, sheepishly. “Uh! I don’t think of my mother that way.”
Since he didn’t throw a punch, I decided I wasn’t going to let this go. “OK, would another man think your mother is ugly?”
I knew I could really be pushing this point. I could sense all eyes in the room were looking at the two of us. No one knew for sure where this was going to end up. Me included.
Had I said too much? Would the young man take offense at my statement? Would I have to rely on the guard to break up a physical confrontation? There was a reason why my students were getting educated in a prison. I had no idea why that young man, or any of my other students, were sentenced to prison life. Consequently, I was always on guard. It’s hard to predict how inmates might react.
I found myself studying the kid’s eyes searching for a clue of how he was taking this interaction. Fortunately, I could see that the kid wasn’t angry. In fact, it appeared as if he was trying to process what was just said to him.
He finally broke his silence. “You know, Mr. DeRousse, I understand what you’re saying to me. My mom is actually pretty and she’s forty. So, to say all women are ugly when they turn thirty-eight is wrong.”
I could have gone on and tried to get more out of this life lesson, but in that learning environment you take it one nugget at a time. Hopefully that was a gold nugget that young man just found.
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