I teach in a fabulous school system, Lexington, MA., though I am just a substitute teacher. I take my job very seriously and try to add to each student’s experience. The two things I most frequently do is to remind them of the tremendous opportunity afforded them in Lexington Public Schools, one of the best in the state. But I also try to reinforce in them that they are both intelligent and up to the task in front of them. Most recently a young man who was struggling with a classroom project kept calling himself “stupid.” I did my best to assure him that he is not stupid, that some things do not come as quickly to one student as another. I told him that at his age I was just such a student.

But I write this article because of an 8th grader, a very bright young lady, whom I have been mentoring for the last several months. She took the time to show me some of her writings which I found to be both well-written and thought provoking. She is obviously a young lady who grasps concepts far beyond her 14 years on this planet. But one of her most important questions to me, in general terms, is “why are things the way they are?” As someone who possess a Masters in History, I encouraged her to look backwards at least 100 years and, in time, I will encourage her to look back further.

What concerned me most about her question, though, was its inherent fear of a questionable future. I spoke to her briefly about my generation’s efforts to change society for the better, the late 1960s and early 1970s. I did not go deeply into it, not because I doubted her ability to understand my generation, but because context is required and so I gave her an assignment to look at women who were improving their lot in the late 19th and early 20th century. I explained her that to understand where you are, you must know from where you came. I narrowed that to include only women so that gender identity, her own, would focus her thoughts on certain historical facts about women, suffragettes, Margaret Sanger, Emma Goldman, Jane Addams, Lucy Stone and other women who found their niche and worked hard to improve the lot of women of their day.

It concerns me that any student should fear for their future but, considering the times in which we live, it is quite understandable. Today’s youth is bombarded with negative news, the prospect of uncontrollable climate change, political upheaval, losing the “American Dream,” among many other things.

I see it as my generation’s imperative to encourage young people to become involved with changes that will brighten their future. We need to encourage young people in their 20s and 30s to become politically involved. We need them to become outspoken critics of the status quo and to be instruments of change. My generation helped bring about many changes but we forgot to pass the idea of continuing change to our children. And so it is time for our children’s children to take over, to be the ones who define their future, and to reject any idea which runs contrary to their own well-being.