CONCERNED CITIZEN: COMPASSION IN EDUCATION

Throughout our many years of education, as students, we come across some of the world’s most influential, and often life changing, human beings: teachers. A good teacher has the power to make a child feel loved and wanted when they don’t feel that at home. They can enlighten a student to their own potential and show them that there is more out there than they ever dreamed possible. They can influence the way we view different cultures, different people, and different communities, and they have the potential to mold our minds for the better from a young age. We owe a lot to these good teachers, and we need more of them. We learn most of our basic human skills in the home by simply observing and mimicking the actions of our parents and siblings, but our imaginations, creativity, and social behavioral skills largely come from what we learn and experience inside the classroom. This area is a place where children should foster their own creativity and feel safe enough to begin to discover who they are as a person. In Goldbard’s article “Human Rights and Culture: From Datastan to Storyland,” we find that “…the mutual recognition, interaction, sharing and connection that can be nourished through the exercise of artistic creativity are more powerful guarantors of peace than any number of prisons, weapons systems and human rights restrictions.” What students learn inside of the classroom by teachers who truly care about their student’s success can become the most influential and effective way of providing peace between communities.

For our Concerned Citizen Project, we chose to highlight Kristin Hardester, a young second-grade teacher at Spring Creek Elementary School in Provo, Utah. Kristin has taken it upon herself to know and love her students as individuals rather than as a general diverse group, and this has made her stand out as someone who is influencing the community for the better. Spring Creek Elementary School has taken in a diverse group of children and provides help and hope to many low income families. Visiting the homes of her students, Kristin has seen the difficult circumstances in which some of her students live and has taken it upon herself to give her students what they might not get at home: someone to cheer for them. More so than just teaching these kids their numbers and their letters, Kristin places a significant emphasis on letting her students know that anything and everything is within their reach if only they work hard enough and believe in their own potential. She provides a sense of safety and security for these students who may be dealing with tough family situations, all while making sure that each child has an equal opportunity at a successful future. Kristin has excelled at going above and beyond her role as a teacher and has shown our community that sometimes loving a child is all it takes to guarantee the success of a future generation.