Rethinking Cynicism

Why I refuse to believe that caring is weakness.

"You can't save them all."

I think teachers hear that sentence so often it stops sounding like advice and instead sounds like permission. Permission to stop trying so hard. Permission to stop carrying students home in the back of their minds. Permission to stop noticing the quiet kid in the third row who hasn't spoken in weeks. Permission to stop caring quite so deeply because caring deeply only hurts when you cannot fix everything.

And there is some truth in it. 

I know there will be students I cannot reach in the ways I want to. I know there will be students who walk into my classroom carrying years of hurt that began long before they every learned my name. Students who are exhausted, grieving, overwhelmed, angry, isolated, or convinced they are not smart enough to belong in mathematics at all. 

"I think teaching is partly about protecting students from becoming smaller versions of themselves."

I know this because it happened to me too. 

Slowly and quietly, over years of feeling different in ways I could not explain yet. Years of trying arder than everyone else for things that seemed to come naturally to them. Years of hearing subtle messages that effort meant deficiency. Years of feeling like maybe I was simply not built for the world around me. 

Then one day in college, I sat in an office while professionals explained me back to myself through charts, percentile scores, and clinical observations. There were numbers for everything, describing all of the ways I failed to align neatly with the "norm."

I walked into that assessment believing I was different but walked out wondering if I was fundamentally broken. 

That experience, along with many others, could have made me cynical. Honestly, maybe it would have made sense if I did. 

There were moments in my life where bitterness would have been easier. Easier than continuing to believe in people after constant misunderstandings. Easier than continuing to care after feeling invisible. Easier than remaining hopeful after hearing professionals reduce parts of your humanity into deficits and percentile scores. 

However, along the way, people kept believing in me anyway and I think that changed the course of my impending cynicism. 

Years later in college, where I ended up studying mathematics, another educator would unknowingly do the same thing. Another teacher whose enthusiasm filled entire classrooms. Another person who challenged students because he genuinely believed they were capable of more. Another educator who looked at me, not the insecurity, not the quietness, not the fear, and saw possibility. 

He spoke about me with pride before I could even see what people were so proud of. He encouraged my ideas. He treated me like my voice mattered. He believed in my future so naturally that eventually I started wondering if maybe there was really something in me worth believing after all. 

That kind of genuine believe changed me. 

Sometimes all it takes is one person deciding to notice you before your entire trajectory changes. 

"Sometimes all it takes is one person deciding to notice you before your entire trajectory changes."

I think we underestimate how meaningful it is to be truly seen by someone at the exact moment you are struggling to see yourself clearly. 

No, those teachers did not "save" every student, but they made a difference for me. 

That's why I have trouble accepting the version of "you can't save them all" that becomes a reason for giving up. 

Every teacher who ever changed my life did so through moments they probably barely remember now. 

• A lunch spent solving problems.

• An encouraging email.

• A conversation after class. 

• Someone staying patient while explaining something for the fifth different way. 

• A professor speaking about me with warmth and pride. 

• Someone noticing enthusiasm in me before I recognized it myself. 

None of those moments seem overly dramatic from first glance, but to the student receiving them, they were everything.

Cynicism is Easy. Hope is Harder. 

I think one of the easiest traps to fall into, especially in education, is cynicism disguised as realism. 

The belief that:

• students do not care,

• nothing changes,

• people never improve,

• systems are too broken,

• and trying too hard only leads to disappointment.

To be fair, I understand where that exhaustion comes from. Teaching is difficult. Teachers are given more and more responsibilities without additional help. Students are carrying more than ever. Systems fail people constantly. Burnout is real and pervasive. 

However, I also think cynicism can become a kind of emotional self-preservation. 

Because if you stop believing people are worth trying for, then you never have to feel the heartbreak of not being able to help everyone. 

The problem is that students notice that shift. 

• They can tell when adults stop believing in them.

• They can tell when teachers become detached. 

• They can tell when expectations disappear.

• They can tell when someone has stopped seeing possibility in them. 

I think it's important to keep trying, not because I think I can magically fix everything, but because I know how much it matters when someone refuses to give up on you before you have had the chance to believe in yourself. 

Biterness would have been easier

I chose hope anyway. 

"Bitterness would have been easier. I chose hope anyway."

The Students We Almost Miss

Sometimes I think about the students who are easily overlooked. 

• The quiet ones.

• The overwhelmed ones.

• The students who apologize before asking questions.

• The students who already believe they are "bad at math."

• The students who have spent years shrinking themselves to fit other people's expectations. 

• The students who think effort means failure because no one ever taught them otherwise. 

I know I can never erase every hardship they carry, but I can refuse to become another voice teaching them that they are not enough. 

I can refuse to become someone who mistakes cynicism for wisdom. 

Maybe someday one of those students will grow up and realize that a teacher's belief in them quietly altered the course of their life. Maybe they will sit years later in another classroom, another office, another stage of life entirely, and think back to someone who saw possibility in them when they could only see limitations. 

Maybe they will become teachers too. 

Maybe they will carry that same belief forward into someone else's life. 

And maybe that is how change actually happens. 

Not through grand speeches or when we finally find the "perfect" system, but through ordinary people continuing to care in a world where it would be easier not to. 

Rethinking Cynicism

I don't want to become someone who moves through life assuming the worst about people. 

I don't want to become someone who confuses detachment with maturity. 

I don't want to become someone who stops believing students are capable of growth simply because caring deeply is emotionally risky. 

I believe this because somewhere along the way, people chose not to become cynical about me. 

• Teachers chose to encourage me instead of dismissing me.

• Professors chose to see potential instead of limitation. 

• Mentors chose to speak life into me when I struggled to see value in myself. 

Slowly, that belief changed the way I understood my own future.

So no, I will not "save them all." 

But I think the more important question is:

What happens to the students we could have reached if we stopped trying too soon?

"What happens to the students we could have reached if we stopped trying too soon?"

Somewhere right now there is a student silently deciding who they believe they are. 

Sometimes all it takes to change that trajectory is one adult who refuses to let cynicism have the final word.