Caring is the most important aspect of teaching, author says
Despite many awards and recognitions as a teacher, Stacey Bess said what her students will remember most that she cared.
Bess, author of the book “Nobody Loves Nobody,” spoke to Utah State University students Tuesday as part of the Education and Human Services Week. Bess spoke to the students about her experiences teaching homeless children in the Salt Lake City School District, which she made a compilation of and had published in 1994, in “Nobody Loves Nobody.”
She said she learned one of her most important aspects of teaching when Utah Jazz forward Karl Malone visited her class and she asked him if he had prepared a speech to give to her students.
“He said, ‘These kids don’t need Karl Malone the basketball player, they need Uncle Karl,'” Bess said. “He taught me you can’t hide behind a uniform.”
She said she watched as the 6-foot-9-inch superstar sat down to play with the homeless children, who immediately jumped on him and completely covered him. When two of the children, who were fascinated with his black hair, began to run their fingers though it, she said she attempted to stop them and Malone told her to let the children do what they were doing.
She also spoke about how homeless children consistently have to deal with leaving them or having to move themselves, and how they deal with it.
“Homeless children are such pros at the loss process,” she said. “They would never say goodbye.”
When her students would find out they were going to leave or were going to lose a teacher, she said, they would tell that teacher that he or she was the worst teacher ever and they hated him or her.
One of the most amazing students she said she had was a boy named Zachary, who she said would constantly make rude comments to her and disrupt the class.
“He was powerful, he was gutsy and he was beautiful,” she said, “and he hated me.”
One day, she said she had enough and she confronted Zachary and asked him why he was being a disruption in the class. She said he told her he hated all women, and she didn’t have to be his friend, she just had to teach.
Bess later found out he had moved 27 times and always became most attached to his female teachers. Bess said Zachary told her every time he trusted a teacher, she would leave him, so he chose to not get emotionally attached to his teachers anymore.
She promised Zachary she would be the teacher who never leaves, but shortly after she made that promise to him, she was diagnosed with cancer.
“See, it’s magic,” Bess said Zachary told her when she told her class she would have to leave for surgery. “As soon as I trust you, you leave.”
She said she promised Zachary she would be back after the surgery. After the surgery was completed and she regained consciousness, she said the doctor told her to look straight up, and she saw Zachary and another student, Jenny. Bess said the doctor told her he could tell she was upset, and she asked them what they were doing out of school.
“He told me, ‘I came to make sure you would keep your promise,'” Bess said.
Bess said after she recovered from the surgery she went back to teaching at the school for the homeless, and stayed for 13 years.
After Zachary graduated, she said she asked Zachary if he remembered how they would play games to learn math, and the other things they would do in class.
She said he told her he couldn’t remember learning math or any of the other things they would do in class.
“What I remember is a teacher who said to me, ‘Zachary, you’re an incredible kid, and I care about you,'” Bess said was Zachary’s response when he told Bess about the most important thing he remembered from his education.
-cmoffitt@cc.usu.edu