"It would take at least another dozen apologies to other students before I’d be able to decipher the reaction [my student] gave me that day.""We fail our students often. Even when we give them their well-earned A's and Exceeding Standards, we can still fail them."
The student explained that when she was asking questions about how I planned on grading their big writing assignment, I joked that she was worrying about her grade for no reason. That she was getting anxious when she’d probably end up with another 95 or maybe even a 100. 'Had a teacher apologized to me ― just once ― it would have changed my entire school trajectory,' Lizette Morehead, a social worker and lifelong New Yorker, told me.
As someone who now has an advanced degree and a flourishing career, Lizette can understand what led her teacher to decide not to deal with her. “She didn’t know how to teach me,” she said. “If I could get an apology from her now, I would want her to just say that. Just admit that she was scared and didn’t know how to do her job when she had a kid like me in her class.”
We fail our students often. Even when we give them their well-earned A’s and Exceeding Standards, we can still fail them. Lizette’s reaction to my story about apologizing to the student who felt embarrassed by my joke in class was to comb through her memory for times when any teacher said they were sorry. Of course, she never got apologies for their inability to teach a child with special needs. Even when not factoring in that specific disregard, she came to realize that most often when a teacher was in the wrong, the language they used to correct it was weak and non-committal.