As the winter harshly coated the city streets with frost and chilled winds, I won’t say I was disappointed to get outside duty, just more anxious to stay inside to scoot scholars outside the building; however, on my second day out, the care and concern scholars modeled despite the cold, made me honored to blaze the cold with them.
Being an educator, I am always amazed at the compassion and discernment of students; especially given, as an adult, you are cultivated to be vigilantly overseeing the surroundings of students. Pacing 27th & Capital Drive to manage student traffic to city buses, I observed a crowd of students hovering over a slowly moving figure attempting to waddle across the street in the dead of traffic. Anticipating a harmful accident, a student swiftly grabbed the elderly man from being hit by an oncoming car.
Rushing over, I observed scholars Preston and Raheem were asking the elderly man if he needed help crossing the street. The man, with an inaudible voice, points to the other side and protests to go without crossing signals that had changed twice since him attempting to cross. Without thought the two scholars grab the arms of the elderly man on each side, to steady his walk, and began to wave traffic to help him cross the street.
Though it took ten minutes to safely walk the elderly man across the street and escort him to Wendy’s restaurant, my heart warmed to see a man over 70 years old confided in scholars 53 years his junior. The overall compassion created a society consciousness as well as one scholar iterated, “Ms. Cross, that man shouldn’t have to be out here alone. It’s to cold for him…” As I shared a few words with them both on elderly care, we walked away with a seed planted that social change happens with discerning the small things to change our part of the world. #WhatI'veLearned
"Our human compassion binds us the one to the other - not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future."
Nelson Mandela
Being an educator, I am always amazed at the compassion and discernment of students; especially given, as an adult, you are cultivated to be vigilantly overseeing the surroundings of students. Pacing 27th & Capital Drive to manage student traffic to city buses, I observed a crowd of students hovering over a slowly moving figure attempting to waddle across the street in the dead of traffic. Anticipating a harmful accident, a student swiftly grabbed the elderly man from being hit by an oncoming car.
Rushing over, I observed scholars Preston and Raheem were asking the elderly man if he needed help crossing the street. The man, with an inaudible voice, points to the other side and protests to go without crossing signals that had changed twice since him attempting to cross. Without thought the two scholars grab the arms of the elderly man on each side, to steady his walk, and began to wave traffic to help him cross the street.
Though it took ten minutes to safely walk the elderly man across the street and escort him to Wendy’s restaurant, my heart warmed to see a man over 70 years old confided in scholars 53 years his junior. The overall compassion created a society consciousness as well as one scholar iterated, “Ms. Cross, that man shouldn’t have to be out here alone. It’s to cold for him…” As I shared a few words with them both on elderly care, we walked away with a seed planted that social change happens with discerning the small things to change our part of the world. #WhatI'veLearned
"Our human compassion binds us the one to the other - not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future."
Nelson Mandela
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