Dear ......

To the students I work with at the school-

I don't have any formal teacher training, and I have never been taught how to deal with kid's emotional problems. But I was once your age, and I had many problems of my own, sorry mom....

In retrospect I realize that I would have benefitted from a mentor, so that's why I'm here, I see a little of me in you. Someone recently told me that working with kids like you, although I refuse to stereotype you, is impossible to do forever, because apparently it kills dreams. I don't believe that for a second, but I think I may know why some adults feel that way. I think it's because you have an unusual strength, a strength built by you in response to your surroundings, it's necessary and won't be conquered. You know more than we give you credit for, and you have already realized that this world you are being built for is hypocritical, unfair, boring, and demeaning at times. You have an energy that was long ago purposefully diluted in us, and some of your adult peers find yours inappropriate, and want to water you down. I suggest you fight that, run, yell, move, laugh, and wiggle so that your smile never fades. I'd like to apologize if I seem like I know more than you all the time, because I don't, and I don't intend to pretend like I do. I won't falsify things for you. I think your natural state is of a natural progression and the real world fills you with synthetics until what's natural is extinct. Don't be the death of your race, work hard to understand healthy, fair, positive, constructive, happy, valuable, and you. If you do, you will remain strong and unbroken, and within you will grown the revolution that is longed for.

A new friend, a true revolutionary, told me the the other day that "education and knowledge is your weapon," so don't be mislead by a world who labels you destructive, a menace, a lost hope, a stereotype, at-risk..Don't fight back with the negativity that is instilled in you by society. Fight back by proving them wrong---like when they tell you NO, and you say YES....that's what I'm talking about.

Never would I have thought that I would end up here, working with you, working at the school my parents went to. They told me "It was bad back then..." I don't think it's bad...and my parents turned out to amazing, intellegent people, and so can you. Yo prometo.

"If education should really mean anything at all, it must insist upon the free growth and development of the innate forces and tendencies of the child. In this way alone can we hope for the free individual and eventually also for a free community, which shall make interference and coercion of human growth impossible."

-Emma Goldman on Youth Liberation

In solidarity,

Mari