This week as part of my Masters in Teaching program, I had to interview members of community-based organizations: organizations like the Boys and Girls Club, Rotary Club or Optimists Club, that interact with the students and public school system in our county. The assignment was to begin to understand the relationship the schools have within the community and to begin to learn how the community views the schools.

While interviewing one of my subjects, I asked him if his own schooling experience was similar or dissimilar to those of the at-risk youths with whom he interacts daily. He said, “Great question!” and then proceeded to share with me some of his own past and history. “One of the reasons I can connect with these kids,” he said, “Is because I can look at them and say, ‘I understand,’ and they know I know what they are going through.”

I understand. Not the experiences of being an at-risk youth; I was blessed to have been raised in a stable household (both emotionally and financially). But I understand what it is like to be able to connect with someone with those two words: I understand.

Also this week, I travelled to Waynesboro, VA, to run five workshops - most of them within the Waynesboro Public School District. After one of these talks, I met a young boy named Joseph. Having Joseph hear my story and being able to say to him, “I understand” is a gift that not many can give him. Not many people understand being confined to a wheelchair and the stereotypes and struggles that come with his physical limitations. They are physical, but do not in any way limit who he is as a young person - nor do they limit his dreams and future.

Just as at-risk youths may be limited in their financial resources or in having their emotional needs being met. But that does not limit their dreams and their future.

As with any child, they just need someone to care for them, to believe in them, to understand them.