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Veritas vos Liberabit (The truth shall make you free.)
by Babak Mostaghimi

Since the beginning of the school year, I have had a policy of being brutally honest in all areas of life with my students. When kids ask about drugs or violence or make jokes about being thugs, Im quick to point out the horrible reality of the real world, the grit and grime behind the television glamour. My students know that a single hand made like a pretend gun will bring a long speech about its inappropriateness even in playing with each other and how words and play eventually become reality. All the allusions to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi were meant to convince my children that violence is not acceptable. Never in my life did I expect that my preaching would be backed by the doings of a lone individual in my hometown.

I am from Blacksburg, Virginia, home of Virginia Tech, where 32 innocent students were murdered in April. From when I was a month old until I left for college, I lived and breathed Virginia Tech. My father works at the university and most people I know have intimate connections with the university. On April 16, 2007, I noticed my phone had collected dozens of missed calls, voice mails, and text messages. Since I was in class I determined that I would wait until the end of the school day to see what was going on. At dismissal, one of the other faculty members approached me and asked if my family was all right and if I had heard of the Virginia Tech tragedy. Instantly, all the calls and messages made sense. I checked on my family members and soon students who had heard about the event started coming to me to make sure I was all right.

That evening numerous students called to check up on me and to make sure my parents and family were all right. One student, Korwin, called and left a message saying: Mr. Mostaghimi, Im watchin TV and they be showin your town. They put a picture of a man on TV that got shot. I hope it was not your daddy. Please give me a call back and let me know you are all right. The outpouring of sympathy by my students was incredible. My attempt at building a family in my class had really worked. Not only had students recognized my home town from the stories I had told, but they had finally learned that Blacksburg was a town and that Virginia was a state and that towns are smaller than states. I became sincerely proud of my students not only in their use of skills we had learned in social studies class, but of their kindness towards me as their teacher.

"My attempt at building a family in my class had really worked. Not only had students recognized my hometown from the stories I had told, but they had finally learned that Blacksburg was a town and that Virginia was a state and that towns are smaller than states. I became sincerely proud of my students not only in their use of skills we had learned in social studies class, but of their kindness towards me as their teacher.
The following day students had so many questions that I decided to have a 20-minute conversation about what students had seen on TV. The kids asked every question imaginable from why the event happened to who I knew that had been affected. My preaching about violence and its unacceptability was finally becoming concrete for my students. The kids truly realized the reality that violence and crime in the real world are not glamorous and my honesty finally seemed to pay off.

Charliesa pulled together my entire message of nonviolence and made it real for my students when she said, Mr. Mostaghimi, that man wasnt even right. It aint right to just go in some classroom and shoot on them students. He shouldve talked to somebody. I mean, that man couldve just come up in this classroom and I know that aint right. I smiled a little on the inside as it sunk in that my students were realizing that violence is no joking matter. After a year of preaching, my message was becoming real for at least some of my students.

As the year draws to an end, I have learned that the key to having kids learn is to gain their respect through honesty and by building the foundation of trust and the virtues of leading a positive life. While people say that the key to being a good teacher is to focus on academic progress, it is often forgotten that reaching any goal requires a holistic approach.

Having children learn to measure and read and write does not automatically make them good citizens; it is through an understanding of responsibility and respect that children can apply their academic skills to leave a positive mark on the world. Preaching right and doing right go hand-in-hand in teaching students, and even if it takes a year to get one message across, it is definitely worth it. In this single year I have grown more as an individual than I have in any other time of my life. Looking back on my initial feelings that teaching would be an easy job, I still smile and now I even chuckle a little to myself knowing what I got myself into.

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Article by Babak Mostaghimi
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Posted 05/16/2007