These Should Be Their Wonder Years

courtesy of Pixabay CC0 Public Domain

Tonight I watched the first episode of the television show THE WONDER YEARS on Netflix. I remember occasionally watching the show then it was in its first run on network TV back in the day.

If you don’t remember the show, or never saw it, THE WONDER YEARS took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s in suburban America. Exactly where is never made clear. The first episode is set in the summer of 1968 when the main character, Kevin Arnold, played by Fred West, is twelve years old and about to enter Seventh Grade.

In 1968 I turned seven years old and was about to enter Second Grade, but many of the events depicted in the show are familiar to me, both the news of the times and the situations Kevin finds himself in.

One thing the show does an excellent job of is depicting the differences between the time period the show is set in and the times during which it aired. Even now I look back on both eras with nostalgia compared to what many of my own students have to live with today.

The pace then, in 1968, was slower. Us kids then were not as overscheduled and hovered over as kids are today. Our parents didn’t have to worry about us every second we were out of their sight. At least not us suburban kids. I know it wasn’t like that for kids everywhere.

I look at my students now, and sometimes my heart breaks for them. These are supposed to be their Wonder Years. By that I mean these should be the years filled with the wonder of learning, discovery, growing, and exploring. Sadly, for some of my students, these are years of wondering if they’ll have enough to eat, a place to sleep, if bullets will come flying through the window that night, if they’ll have a coat to wear when the weather turns cold.

Some of my students have it good. Mom and Dad are both around, and if they’re lucky, actually still married and living in the same house. For these kids there is sports, Scouts, church, vacations, cable television, a smart phone, a tablet, an X-Box, etcetera. They have so much and appreciate so little of it.

For some of my students, though, there is no Dad in their lives. He left as soon as he deposited his contribution to their conception and has never been around to provide for them or guide them through life. These students may have half-brothers and sisters with the same Mom, but with several different fathers. They probably also have half-brothers and sisters through their father they know nothing about.

It is these kids, who see no future beyond the ‘hood they’re growing up in and no way out of the life their mothers have chosen for them, who I wonder about the most. These are the kids who see no value in education, who become the discipline problems, the disruptions, the dropouts, because they have no hope for a future, no sense of wonder about what the world has to offer them if only they would strive to reach for it.

As a teacher, I try to instill that sense of hope and wonder in all my students, those with the advantages and those without – especially those without, because they are the children who need it from me the most. They aren’t going to get it anywhere else.

So, I watch old episodes of THE WONDER YEARS on Netflix, nostalgic for my own Wonder Years that, while they had their not-so-pleasant moments, were for the most part rather good years, and I hope for my students that these years will be better for them somehow for having had me as a teacher.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator