What it comes down to it we all do stupid things; make mistakes. Finding ourselves in a predicament. Many really. And what it usually boils down to is, the public and the personal. If you’re in or have ever been in any circumstance like the one I currently find myself, you bang your head against the wall so many times in an attempt to make sense of it that it soon stops making sense. You sleep through the hours you can because for in those silent moments, you don’t have to worry. You pray to the God you’ve claimed you don’t believe in, that he will somehow spare you of humiliation outside of what you’ve created yourself.

I work, teach and coach young adults that fight everyday to find themselves. They paint on faces, play dress up for themselves or others, and calculate every move they make – because perception is reality in their world. Identity for them lies somewhere between acceptance and confidence. It’s the question of: How much of the real me do I have to give up to make a “better” me? So they make choices, bad and good, about how they want to be perceived and how they want to define themselves.

So when their mentor, their big sister, makes a mistake that for most of their young adult lives they have been taught is unacceptable, you question what you’re doing here. You question how you expect to make an impact on their lives when that impact might be negative at times. Teachers and coaches are role models. We stand in front of the classroom everyday conveying knowledge about subjects we deem important. We discuss morals, ethics in hopes that we might be able to impart some sort of awareness of the world outside of high school banter. And I suppose we expose our own faults so that we reveal how they make us stronger – make us more human. But that doesn’t make it any easier. That doesn’t make the mistake I made ok.

How then, when you, yourself are having a learning experience of your own, make sure your students are as well?