Math and Mentoring
Date Posted: February 21, 2015
Posted In: Ideas,
Editor’s Note: Art McCoy will be the speaker at the July Construction Forum STL quarterly event.
From Huffington Post: One of my students shared this powerful plea with me nine years ago:
by Art McCoy, PhD
I am this person lost in the world,
And don’t know where to turn.
…Wanting to achieve in anything I do
I want to be treated like I exist.
I want to be seen for more than the outer me.
I want to be seen for the person placed inside of me.
I feel like I’m alone in the World.
I feel like there is no one out there in the world to run to when I feel like it’s the end of me.
Sometimes I want to run away to a place where no one can hurt me.
Sometimes I feel like life for me will never go right. As much as I try, it will never go right.
What should I do if the problems I face won’t come up from the deep, dark place inside me? Who should I turn to if I can’t turn to the person that gave life to me?
Then who can I turn to?
This existential expression rings with alarming truth in an awakening society. It speaks for countless children in a woeful whirlwind of life.
As a former superintendent of the deceased Michael Brown Jr., and also the youngest and first African-American in Ferguson-Florissant in that leadership role, I intimately know this sentiment represents millions of economically disadvantaged youth, especially African-American males.