My Plea

This is my 27th year working at Inez, my first year I was a YMCA counselor. My Inez Story, however, began a few years earlier. Not long after moving to Albuquerque, even before deciding to become a teacher, I was leaving Winrock Mall, and happened to leave the parking lot the back way. As I drove up Indian School, a direction I had never driven prior, I noticed the sign outside Inez. Inez Science and Technology Magnet School. I was intrigued. As a kid science was one of my favorite subjects. I had both a microscope and a telescope, I always wanted to know how the world worked, and there wasn’t a piece of technology I couldn’t disassemble. (Putting them back together was a different story.) As I drove past, I wondered what amazing things kids were learning in that school?

Fast forward 3 years. I was now a physical education major at UNM, and because of student teaching, I was no longer afraid of elementary school aged kids. To get more experience with kids I applied to be a YMCA counselor. When I arrived at the interview, I was pleased to be greeted by a childhood friend. I was hired on the spot. I was to report to 1700 Pennsylvania to begin working. When I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed that sign that had intrigued me years earlier. “It’s the science school!” “I get to see first-hand what’s happening in that school.”

Over the course of that year as a YMCA counselor I met kids who I still tell stories about every year. I met “the girls” who became my daughters, and I met my future wife, Ms. Caine, who suggested to the principal that he hire me as the PE teacher.

To me Inez is almost magical, destiny brought me here. It has been my home away from home, my refuge when the outside world gets to be too much. I’ve met many of my most favorite people at Inez. I owe much of my adult life to this school.

This is the first time I’ve written this story. I do so not as a farewell, but as a plea. A plea to everyone who makes Inez their school of choice. I have always said that no matter what happens in the outside world we can make our little school on the corner whatever we want it to be. The nastiness and mean spiritedness that happens in the outside world doesn’t have to exist in our school. I don’t practice naivete, the reality is, schools reflect their communities. As a teacher I can have the expectation that students say please and thank you. I can suggest that kids assist and say sorry to the person they knocked over. I can even hope to hear a response when I say, “Good Morning,” to a student passing by. If we as our kid’s adults don’t show these behaviors they won’t either. The words Perseverance, Integrity and Respect are painted on my walls. They are words I think about every day, and concepts that I constantly talk to students about. Though in my mind these words are concrete actionable words that can be practiced, they are at best conceptual, and must be felt intrinsically to become valuable. In short, if our kids can’t see, taste, smell, and feel perseverance, integrity, and respect, how can they show it? 

As the nastiness and mean spiritedness of the outside world increases, so goes our little school. My plea is that we all push back. For better or worse, our kids reflect what they see around them. Though my girls are technically my stepdaughters I see both the good and not so good parts of me in each one of them. If we all expect our kids to practice politeness, we have to model it. If we teach our kids how to “fail and fix” gracefully they will learn to persevere. If we all attempt to do the right thing even when we think they’re not watching, they will feel integrity. And, as difficult as it can be at times, if we treat others how we would like to be treated, the “golden rule”, maybe they will expect to be treated with respect, and thus treat others with respect. 

Whether I only teach until the end of this year or for another couple years, Inez will always be my heart.  I will always love my students. I want every one of them to have a better life than I have, and I have a great life because of this school. We can make our little school on the corner better than the outside world. Our students can say, “Good Morning.”  They can say, “please” and “thank you.”  They can apologize with sincerity. Perseverance, Integrity, and Respect are abstract concepts that we all must make real for our kids. My plea is that we all work together to help our kids create a decent world for themselves. I’ve seen amazing things here at Inez, I know we can do this.

-Mr. Anderson