The Things We Carry
by Joe Forsythe
Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.
-Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
While attending the Philadelphia Teacher Action Group’s curriculum fair two years ago, I was struck by the words of a community organizer from the Point Breeze neighborhood, when he was asked to introduce himself as part of a panel discussion.
“I believe that when we walk into a room, we carry certain people into the room with us,” he said. He revealed that he carried his two siblings: his older sister, a NYC teacher, who had to take sleeping pills before going to bed and Xanax in order to get ready in the morning; and his younger brother, a special-needs student in Philadelphia who—when he received the intensive personal assistance he needed, couldn’t wait to leave for school in the morning—and when the funding for that position was cut, wanted nothing but to crawl into the corner of the classroom. He couldn’t put these people down when he walked into a room, he explained, and he didn’t want to. They informed how he responded to the world around him.
Though I hail from a far different situation than this man’s brother, I too felt blindsided by a learning disability as a young child, and I still carry those struggles with me now as an educator.
Bits and pieces of my memory of the exact day have fallen away from me, but I recall vividly the feelings that shot through me as I was pulled out of my kindergarten classroom during reading for the first time—hot, deep embarrassment, shame, and anger. Beneath these feelings swam the unutterable thought that something must be wrong with me. Though my parents had done everything that parents were told to do—read to and with me, shared their love of books and radio shows with me, invite me into conversations—still I couldn’t read with nearly the fluency and comprehension of my peers.
There was nothing terrible waiting for me in that classroom at the end of the hallway in the basement of my elementary school. In fact, the teacher whom I met that day—though I cannot recall her name—received me not with derision, but with hope. This was, after all, a private school with a unified and progressive vision which my parents were paying for me to attend. If my parents didn’t have the means to get me extra help, I’m not sure what would have become of me, dramatic as that sounds.
The feeling of worthlessness was incredibly unsettling; it is unsettling still. I was frustrated with my lack of progress at first, kicking the walls in the hallway as I made my daily visits to the reading room, but slowly I improved, more due to the personal support of a caring adult who read with me than any computerized reading program. The teacher grew to know me as a child. She found out where my interests lay, and along with this extra attention my curiosity and confidence blossomed. By the third grade, nothing could keep me from getting at books.
I still carry my five-year-old self into the classroom with me every day. I’m reminded of what it felt like to finally think of myself as competent and capable, and that there wasn’t anything wrong with me. Beyond theories, strategies, and goals that I have grown to adhere to as an educator, I continually ask myself, “What kind of experience am I offering my students today?”
Later in my educational career, my curiosity would lead me into my own intellectual inquiries, and through reading, writing, and speaking, I began to feel not only competent, but powerful. I want my students to feel this same power—the ability to become language’s master, and the joy that comes with reading and writing for their own sake. I carry this bit of hope with me, a reminder of what I try and offer my students as an educator and an adult.
Joe Forsythe is an English teacher at Prep Charter School. Joe joined the Philadelphia Writing Project in 2014 attending the Invitational Summer Institute.