Please Don't Judge Me

     During the first weeks of class, Lisa always arrived late and chose to sit in the back of the small classroom. The first assignment, a narrative essay, perplexed Lisa, who did not understand why I preferred a student's honest effort over a plagiarized article from the Internet.
     One afternoon after class, Lisa asked me if she could write about her tiny daughter, born prematurely a year earlier. I encouraged her and watched her smile broaden as she pulled pictures from her purse to illustrate how far her daughter’s health had progressed. She promised to map out a narrative and bring it to the next class.
     As Lisa came back class after class during the quarter, I learned more about her. Specifically, I came to understand that she didn't have a “traditional” job, yet her job consumed much of her time. When I finally asked her about her work, her eyes fell downward. “I’ll tell you," she said, "but please don't judge me.” After several promises that I wouldn't judge her and that she really didn't have to disclose anything she was uncomfortable with, she confessed that she was a professional dancer who had never taken everything off, just most. The confessions that followed, accompanied by deep sobs, came from a place within her best defined as agonizing desperation that suddenly flared as if sprayed with an accelerant.
     “I can't earn enough money to care for my daughter doing anything else,” she said. “I can't take her to a regular daycare cause nobody will take her on. I have to pay for a decent place for us to live, or the state will take her from me. She has to have more surgery before too long, and her daddy is worthless, so please don't judge me. I like coming to school, but truth is I can't dance much longer. My body doesn't look as good as it once did, especially since my baby. I have to find another way to earn money, and I don't want to do it on my back.”
     Stunned, I nervously hugged her, thanked her for trusting me, and then we worked on her narrative. I hope she left class assured that I respected her desire to care and provide for her daughter. On the way out of class, with her back to me, she said simply, “Thank you for not judging me.” I left class altered.
      Since meeting Lisa, I have met many more students with similar realities: broken lives caused by addictions, criminal behavior, unhealthy relationships, unruly children, deaths of loved ones, and most profoundly, severe poverty. In addition to these problems, many students are often handicapped by severe academic deficiencies. Some students who enroll are so angry and mistrusting of “school,” and “teachers,” that the first thing I must attain is a measure of their trust. I make it my goal to see them each day with Lisa’s plea in my heart-- "Please don't judge me." I have discovered that what they are really asking of me is to see them worthy enough to be educated—worthy enough to be a student no matter what preceded, or accompanies, this new status. Isn't that what any student wants?