The Student Who Taught Me I Have Room for Thankfulness

by | Nov 23, 2016 | Children, Community, Education, Parenting, volunteer | 4 comments

 

lesson, teacher, thankful, thanks, yong homeless boy holds a cardboard castle, dirty hand, dream concept, portrait

As I drove from my house in the country, fields and green lawns gave way to rows of colorful single-family homes and then to enormous gray warehouses and boxy brown garages. The buildings, encircled  by towering chain-link fences with signs that read “Keep Out”, in large red lettering, whirred by my window as I drove towards the shelter. The car was silent, but my mind was full of worries. After months of practically being consumed by graduate work and slowly chipping away at the insurmountable pile of plans and preparations necessary for a three month leave from teaching, I was finally starting an unpaid internship. This required me to take a leave from my paid teaching job, causing some financial stress.  

I pulled into the parking space in front of the long gray cement building that housed the shelter. I heard the dull buzz and sharp click as a resident hit the button that released the lock on the front door. Bright florescent lights beamed from the ceiling and the sound of many voices echoed off the walls. A girl with braids ran back and forth across the length of the room as a little boy chased after her.

“Sign in there” a tall woman said, gesturing towards a crumpled paper at the empty front desk. She had mid-length brown hair and wore a boxy suit with comfortable shoes. The smell of spaghetti and garlic bread wafted faintly from the visible open kitchen towards the center of the room. Dinner was over now, and a resident wiped the counters and brushed a broom in random directions across the tiled concrete floor. A television hummed in the small family room, broadcasting news that no one was really listening to.

A fellow teacher and graduate school colleague accompanied me as we followed the woman to a door in the corner of the building.  “This is where you will be working with the children” the woman said as she left.  We were there to watch the children while their parents attended free GED classes.  

As we set down the heavy bags of craft supplies on the large plastic folding tables and began to sort through them, kids ran into the room and parents arrived to drop off their little ones. Soon children from babies to middle-schoolers filled the space around us. The pent-up energy of kids who had sat for far too long in the chairs of quiet classrooms reverberated off the cinder block walls.

After a bit of play time, we gathered them around the long table. The younger kids and toddlers scribbled with delight on paper using the sharp new crayons we brought with us. I held the squirming baby as we explained the activity to the older children.

Then I fruitlessly tried to use the sparse array of toys to entertain the group of toddlers and preschoolers who were currently running zig zags across the room pushing each other in a small red toy car. A middle school boy who had finished his project joined me to assist in distracting the little kids from all activities that bore the risk of head injury.

He pointed out his siblings who were in the room and then asked me about my family. This was before I had kids myself, so I told him I had a husband, but no children. He asked whether I lived in an apartment or house (house), the number of bedrooms (3), and bathrooms (3). To me, it was a modest house, smaller than the one I grew up in. We bought it a few years prior in as-is condition and were working diligently to renovate it. I saw it as a work-in-progress. There was always another project to be done.

I was partially distracted from the conversation by the constant task of entertaining several toddlers, when I heard him ask with curiosity, “What do you do with all of that extra space?”. The bright lights cast a blinding glow on the dirty baby toy in my hand. The noise of the over-crowded room grew to a deafening roar and pounded in my ears as the kids ran around me.

I thought of my quiet house with just two people and eleven rooms, how we had replaced all of the old carpet with shiny tile and wood flooring, and how disappointed I was that we had to wait to replace the old bathroom fixtures due to our budget. I looked around at the dingy tile in the shelter and the shelves lined with rows of bags, overflowing with shoes and stuffed animals, kitchen appliances, and pictures in frames.  The items considered important enough to be gathered up before leaving a home, possibly forever, lie here on a shelf, waiting.  “I don’t know” I said softly. I could see him envisioning the space and luxuriating in the quiet that was currently available only in his imagination.  His thoughts transfixed on the thing he didn’t have that he wanted the most.

We said our goodbyes until next week, him smiling and me wondering who had taught whom a lesson that evening.  Sometimes we are so close to our blessings that we just can’t see them.  Maybe we lack the perspective to notice invisible things like space, quiet time to ourselves, or privilege.  These are as imperceptible as the borders that separate the tree-lined suburbs from  the gray industrial buildings where the homeless shelter is located. But occasionally, we have an experience that allows us to see our life from a different vantage point and our invisible blessings become visible to us, if only for an instant.   

I think about this every time I drive to where the houses end and the warehouses begin, past the road to the shelter.  And I am reminded of that boy and how our conversation about space and home showed me I have plenty of room for thankfulness.


                                       ~Nina

Nina Parrish, M. Ed.

Nina Parrish, M. Ed.

Co-Owner and Director of Education

Proud mom of two adorable girls. Teacher who has developed an education business that started at a kitchen table and has grown into a thriving small business... Click here to Learn more about Nina.

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Pam Cantrell Burton
Pam Cantrell Burton
2020-10-14T16:15:51+0000
Parrish Learning Zone helped my daughter with on-line SAT and college essay preparation. She not only scored in the top 90 percentile on the SAT after working with Lauren Cannavo, she especially benefited from the tutoring she received for her admission essays. My daughter was accepted at Notre Dame, UVA, William and Mary, and received scholarships to George Washington University and the University of Alabama. She was initially deferred at the University of Chicago and waitlisted at University of Michigan and Emory University. She eventually chose not to remain on the waitlists and committed to UVA.Lauren also advised our daughter regarding her submission of a 20 page essay on community service for DECA, a high school business club. Our daughter, along with her partner, won second place in her category at the DECA state competitions in 2019 and 2020, and received second place at the DECA international competition in 2019.Lauren was not only a top-notch professional, she really cared about our daughter and was so pleased about her accomplishments. We are so very grateful to her and Parrish Learning Zone.
Marijayne Kruus
Marijayne Kruus
2020-05-11T21:51:37+0000
Mr. Chaves is an extremely gifted chemistry teacher. It's such a difficult subject--my son was drowning by the time we found PLZ. This was truly a last ditch effort on our part. Mr. Chaves was able to turn that ship around after only 4 lessons and my son passed the SOL! He was able to distill difficult concepts in a way that made them comprehensible and he was patient and kind and gave my son the confidence to succeed. His actual eacher expressed surprise and made a point of telling him he didn't know how he did it but he was impressed. It takes a gifted teacher to get results like that.I only wish we'd found PLZ and Mr. Chaves in the beginning of the school year.
Wendy Zelazny
Wendy Zelazny
2018-06-08T02:05:15+0000
Highly Recommend
Anne Kater Reeves
Anne Kater Reeves
2018-06-07T22:46:05+0000
I highly recommend Parrish Learning Zone. My daughter was able to achieve the SAT score she was aiming for with the help of her Math (Mr. James Slane) and English (Mrs. Lauren Cannavo) tutors. Not only did they help her with practice tests but they also boosted her confidence in taking the SAT. The owners (Nina and Jay) were always prompt in answering my emails. They are very accommodating and worked around my daughter’s schedule (thank you Shiela for all your help in finding available dates for my daughter to meet with her tutors). Thank you Parrish Learning Zone for helping my daughter achieve her goal!
Beth Yankovich
Beth Yankovich
2018-03-23T20:29:18+0000
I can't say enough good things about Parrish Learning Zone. My son has historically suffered from low reading comprehension. I felt he needed a little extra help so I contacted Parrish Learning Zone. The owners at Parrish matched my son with the perfect tutor for him, they developed a rapport almost immediately. He is now in 8th grade and doing well in all his classes. My son is very active in school sports and the staff at Parrish are always very accommodating. They always reschedule with no problems. My son even likes to go early to chat with Sheila.
Beth Kent
Beth Kent
2017-11-08T18:59:11+0000
Awesome! Very structured and student focused - they identified the areas of weakness and turned those into areas of strength in a very short amount of time. I loved the communication from the tutor and the company. I received a specific report of my child's tutoring session including improvements and areas that needed continued work. I received reminders of upcoming tutor sessions - which I needed!! I felt the individual attention and service was worth every penny AND found the prices to be much more reasonable that other tutors in the area. I would HIGHLY recommend Parrish Learning Zone to any parent that needs to find highly competent tutoring help for their child. Parrish is simply the best!
Michele Hiltbrunner Freemyers
Michele Hiltbrunner Freemyers
2017-03-14T15:53:50+0000
An excellent place to take your kids for any tutoring needs! PLZ is a very personalized and hands on service! Both of my teenage boys have been through here for various reasons and I know we will continue to make use of them!
Tammy Elms Mosco
Tammy Elms Mosco
2016-06-02T12:20:59+0000
I am extremely thankful to Parrish Learning Zone. I have a son that is a freshman in college majoring in mechanical engineering. I am so glad that we found out about the Parrish Learning Zone because they were very caring and really worked hard around my sons high school football schedule to ensure that he received all of the needed instruction in order to do well on the SAT testing. It was a great investment for his future. I believe this experience prepared my son for the transition to college life. He was able to attend a top engineering college and to play football there. My daughter is a senior in high school now and was admitted into two of the top ranked public schools in Virginia. She will be a freshman at one of these schools next year. She also was enrolled in the Parrish Learning Zone for preparation for the SAT. I am again thankful to the Parrish Learning Zone and feel that this was a great long term investment into their futures. I would strongly recommend the Parrish Learning Zone to anyone looking for an environment that offers a caring and knowledgeable approach to educating students. They are the best.
Angela Jackson
Angela Jackson
2014-05-15T00:39:39+0000
Andrew Powers
Andrew Powers
2014-02-09T12:32:29+0000

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