-Isms: Views on life in rural America

It’s either black or white. No gray area exists.

A former student - we’ll call him B - once told me the above-mentioned statement. From his perspective, things either happened a particular way or they didn’t. No mishmash of emotion was involved. Things simply were or weren’t.

B spent a lot of time in my classroom. He was enrolled in two courses I taught, and for one period a day, he worked as a student aide. And then there were the other hours of the day, the times when fellow educators sent him to my room because he pushed their thinking with his conclusions and neither would budge or conside...