If you grew up like I did, Black History Month had no real meaning. It was simply 28 days when your grade-school classroom teachers hung up their posters of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. At most, we might take a second to appreciate those who fought in the Civil Rights movement. Most of us just pat ourselves on the back, talking about how far we’ve come as a country.
As many College Park juniors and seniors become emerging young professionals, they begin to cultivate values, passions and core beliefs that will shape the rest of their lives. I am sure many of you are considering your next moves like graduate school, the job market or trying to be Instagram models. I would like to offer a few words of advice as a Terrapin alumnus.
I encourage you to take a moment and find new personal meaning by sharing this anecdote that helped inform my postgraduate decisions as well as core parts of my identity.
When I was a junior pre-med student at College Park living in the Knox Box apartments, I was questioning whether I wanted to make the immediate jump from college to graduate school. There was an altruistic drive that led me to seek an experience serving my community as well as to build character and perspective.
I stumbled upon a quote from Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Jewish rabbi who marched with MLK during the Civil Rights movement. In an interview, when asked about why he made the war in Vietnam a religious issue, he replied, “How can I pray when I have on my conscience the awareness that I am co-responsible for the death of innocent people in Vietnam? In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”
He had not fired a single shot or killed anyone, yet he was assuming at least partial responsibility for the travesties in Vietnam and all over the world. I was jarred by the idea of taking personal responsibility for not just one’s own life, but also the state of the world. This was truly the stance of someone with complete devotion to righteousness and social justice. What would the world look like if everyone took such a stance and what role would suit me to take responsibility for my community? I began to recall my love for working with children and education and decided to apply to the alternative teacher certification program, Teach for America. I felt this organization would empower me to pursue that passion and be aligned with these values.
Upon graduation, I said my goodbyes to Cornerstone and Bentley’s and began teaching middle school science in Northeast Washington, D.C., while working on a master’s program in education, as well as coaching the middle school football team.
To avoid the danger of being cliché and romanticizing, I want to share one of my biggest failures as a teacher that also shaped and solidified my eventual career: his name was JR. He was a 7th grader and the kind of kid who is every new teacher’s nightmare: defiant, volatile and unpredictable. From profane insults, graffiti, starting fights and throwing desks, JR earned a suspension virtually every time he set foot in my classroom. I had no idea how to handle this particular child. When he entered my classroom, I was overcame by a sinking feeling in my gut fearing what he might do or say next. For a large part of that year I was consumed by a profound sense of incompetence and futility for my inability to manage him and others in the classroom.
There was no culminating moment when he turned it around. There was no revelation that he or I had that changed everything for the better. We struggled together, me trying to persuade him to learn and him trying to rebel, all the way until the day his mother decided to move out of the neighborhood. I would never see him again. Several months later, I would read about him in the crime section of The Washington Post, being accused of attempted murder, tried as an adult and eventually sentenced to jail.
As I wept, alone with the newspaper, those feelings of futility once again stirred. I realized then that taking a stance of responsibility is a tremendous psychological burden, but can be deeply fulfilling. I had to learn to acknowledge the unique opportunities and limitations of my role, take time to appreciate the small daily successes, as well as ground my expectations in the road ahead being long and hard. As failures are inevitable, we must always be cognizant that significant change is slow and we may not see the results in our lifetime. As T.S. Eliot wrote, “For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
My years as a teacher were some of the most formative of my life and taught me lessons that I practice today as a resident physician at Yale University’s Department of Psychiatry. It has inspired me to specialize in child and adolescent psychiatry, to hopefully further the field that seeks to improve the lives of children living with mental health disorders.
As we all reflect on the meaning of this month, we should think about the Civil Rights movement as a template for how society must advance social justice when ordinary citizens place core beliefs and values into unrelenting action, despite setbacks or a lack of immediate results, and take personal responsibility for being a part of the solution. We must keep in mind that these actions will look different for each individual, as we should strive to be true to our own talents, strengths and background.
This month in particular, I hope that my fellow Terps can take a minute from cheering for Melo Trimble and challenge themselves to think about responsibility in advancing social justice and truly take this time to interrogate and cultivate their core values, as they will last a lifetime.
Dr. J. Corey Williams is a resident physician at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He can be reached at jwilli17@gmail.com.
