By: Hannah Kapitaniuk
The creator of Kid President, Brad Montague, is attributed with the quote, “Absurd times call for absurd amounts of love.” Absurd feels like the correct word for our world today. I have been struggling to be present in the mundane and beautiful parts of my life with a seemingly infinite news roll in my brain of tragic current events, reminding me of the brokenness of the world. You may be feeling that weight, too. My pastor, Andie Pellicer, recently wrote, “There are a million little fires burning everywhere, and you can’t put them all out. You can, however, be faithful to what falls at the intersection of your ability, your resources, and your control.”
Teaching with Faithfulness
In the past few months, I have had the privilege of being a witness to someone who exemplifies this type of faithfulness, our very own Cohort 3 MA grad, Bing Parks. For those who have not yet had the privilege of meeting her, Bing teaches in a juvenile correctional facility in Mart, Texas. Dr. Eckert, Sahira Kodra, and I recently had the opportunity to watch her in action, and I can safely speak for all of us when I say we have been thinking about it ever since. She sat beside the boys in her class, leading a discussion on the impact of weeds in a garden and how that might connect to weeds in our own lives. She walked with them through the garden on the grounds of the facility, where they picked weeds and tried a few of the grown vegetables (such as a radish, which was promptly spit out).
As part of an article Dr. Eckert and I are working on, I interviewed her and a few of her colleagues who share in this good work. She spoke with a hopefulness I found remarkable given the day-to-day realities she faces. For her, showing up each day and being present with her students is indeed an act of faithfulness as it is a response to a sense of calling: “This is it. This is where I’m supposed to be.” Her conviction is a source of motivation, but it certainly does not insulate her from the pain and trauma her students have experienced at the hands of a broken world and a broken system. She stated, “You go there to teach. And you believe that kids can learn. And that education is a way for them to make it. But the system is what it is. And that’s the hardest part of staying hopeful – is that you know that you don’t have a say in that part.”
An Educator of Hope
Perhaps, then, a significant part of being a person of hope, and even an educator of hope, is being faithful to the intersection my pastor was writing about. In Just Teaching, Dr. Eckert suggests the same in the classroom, framing his work through the lens of teaching each student, rather than every student: “The solution is for each student. To get to the solution, we have to stop thinking about all students as if students are faceless components of an amorphous blob…We need to see, hear, love, and respect each student.” (Eckert, 2023, p. 2). Those involved in any improvement work with the BCSL have experienced this approach, choosing, for example, an adaptive challenge to address that is ripe, ready (see Anna Bryan’s blog post here), and can be addressed, in part, by something within our locus of control.
Our jobs, then, are not to find solutions for everything. As many of us know all too well, this will only lead to frustration and burnout. Our jobs are to be faithful to that which has been given to us, and to act in love in every way we can. We cannot, no matter how badly we wish it were true, end the violence toward children happening across the globe. We can, however, make every effort to make sure each child in our kitchens, classrooms, or schools is nourished, included, and loved during our time with them.
Bing is an embodiment of Bryan Stevenson’s four principles for creating change that Dr. Eckert often mentions:
1. Stay proximate.
2. Change the narrative.
3. Remain hopeful.
4. Do uncomfortable things.
Stop, Look, and Listen
Whether she realizes it or not, Bing gives us an example of each of these four principles each day she walks through the doors of her school building. When I asked her what advice she might offer to someone interested in the work, she talked about avoiding the “savior mentality”: I’m not here to ‘help’ them. I’m here to live this life with them.” She went on to say, “Stop what you are doing and listen to them.”
In Dear Writer, author Maggie Smith talks about attention as a form of love. She includes this quote by Rae Armantrout: “My best advice is the advice they give kids at a crosswalk: stop, look, and listen.” As I wrestle with how to move forward in a world full of so much pain, it is easy to become paralyzed with grief. I am increasingly compelled by the idea that my attention is a form of absurd love, and the choice to stop, look, and listen is one I am called to make each day.
References:
Eckert, J. (2023). Just teaching. Corwin.
Smith, M. (2025). Dear writer: Pep talks and practical advice for the creative life (1st ed). Atria Books.
Stevenson, B. (2018, October 30). Creating Justice [Forum presentation]. BYU Speeches, Brigham Young University.
About the Author
Hannah Kapitaniuk is a PhD student in the P-12 Educational Leadership doctoral program at Baylor University. She serves as Dr. Jonathan Eckert’s graduate assistant.
Kapitaniuk joined Baylor University in the summer of 2024 from a position in Midway Independent School District, where she previously worked as a middle school math teacher.