The Profundity of Parents as Teachers

Child of the contested reality of being black in America. I was born and grew up in the south. Early in my life during a period when segregation was the norm, my early schooling was attended to by a great grandmother, great aunts, a neighborhood, a community of extended care givers and an institution where care was present, even as I rebelled against the nature of that authoritarian care. There was no sense of my Blackness being a thing. However, as I moved from those familiar places of knowing into a world where not knowing was detrimental to my growth and ultimately to my sense of having a choice about my life, I fell into the trap that so many urban youths find themselves.

It is this not knowing that drives me to access as much knowledge as I can and the desire to share it with those who also may not know. So, what was it that I did not know? I did not know that I really had choices in my life. I did not know that kindness, brilliance and love was the underlying beauty and function of my way of being, therefore, I found myself denying the brilliance, beauty and the kindness in my spirit, which became filled with self-doubt, feeling unworthy, feeling unlovable and empty. I did not know that I was trying to fill up an emptiness, that was not real. I did not know that I was brilliant and had something unique to offer the world. I did not know that not having a sustained relationship with my father or mother affected the way in which I entered and exited intimate relationships. I did not know that having children would not fill the illusion of not feeling loved. All these things that I did not know is only a fraction of all that I still don’t know. However, what I have come to know shatters all the illusions about who I thought I was, what I thought I needed and the delusions that I internalized about myself, my family and the society.

Parenting is the most significant task that I have had in my life and the one that I thought I failed at the most. I had little conscious understanding that I was my children’s first teacher. This too was an illusion. I never considered that when I was having children, what it would take to be a parent and to love unconditionally. I was not conscientious of what it meant to be a parent. I did not know that having 8 children required more than just feeding and clothing them. It would require me being responsible for educating them and ensuring that their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual development was being cared for. The truth is that as a parent I did the best I could with where I was in my own development in these domains of being. My not knowing would deny me the beauty of consciously watching them grow. However, my seeking to know even in my not knowing was teaching them something about who I was and what my aspirations for them were. My seeking allowed me to pursue intuitively what I needed to be present for them and their children now. My children have been and continue to be my greatest teachers.

Teaching is the most profound experience of sharing knowledge and it’s what gives me the most fulfillment. The teaching that I am speaking of is not the transfer of information that I have gained that served my own self-interest, growth and development but to inspire others to translate the information they receive into understanding about themselves and those whom they serve. I see teaching as a service that supports the growth and development of humanity. For professional teachers, engaging directly with students becomes an opportunity for cultivating useful knowledge that can make a difference in the lives of other human beings. The challenge in the experience of being a “professional” teacher is that we forget that we are perpetual students and in every instance of our interactions with others and ourselves we are teaching and learning from one another and our environment. Once I discovered this manner of being in the role of a teacher, I recognized that being consciously aware of being student and teacher, that I could learn and teach from all forms of interactions, it does not matter if it’s observing a newborn child or listening to a 100-year-old elder; whether it’s a situation of tremendous loss or small gains, a circumstance of emotional upheaval or an interaction with nature in some mundane or profound way. The lessons for my growth are boundless. It is only in this recognition that I have come to know the profundity of being a parent — teacher.