• I believe in what Lincoln refers to as “the better angels of our nature.”

• I believe in Sojourner Truth declaring, “and ain’t I a woman?”, as Rosa Parks looks on from the front of the bus.

• I believe in education not to help my students climb the hierarchal ladder, as much as to help them tear that hierarchy down.

• I believe in admitting my mistakes before my students when I am wrong.

• I believe in the other cheek.

• I believe in the engaging and relentless fight for women’s rights, minority rights, and blue-collar activism. 

• I do not believe in the terrible injustices gay Americans endure from an unacquainted American politic. 

• I will work consistently to inform my students that they are resolutely, perfectly human.  I will always teach with patience and good humor, and redouble my efforts when I forget.

• I believe in helping my students think beyond their comfort zones, to comprehend that a system of logic informs the opinions of those, politically or ideologically, they might otherwise violently oppose.

• Again, I will always teach with patience and good humor, and redouble my efforts when I forget.

• I believe in unpopular regiments of mental exercise.  I believe in the infinite mind, and I believe in the finite personality of failure.

• I believe in physical wellbeing augmenting the mental. 

• I believe in not picking children last in kickball.

• I believe children should be both seen and heard, and I also believe in always holding hands when crossing the street, no matter how old you become.

• I will not teach a liberal perspective, as much as I will allow that interpretation to coexist within the larger preferences of my students’ individual free wills.

• I do fervently believe in the essential importance of what we do with representation as educators. 

• I will not use my position as a bully pulpit. 

• As an educator, however, I do believe that homophobia stands as a shameful treachery against our magnificent American Constitution, and will work tirelessly to combat this violent prejudice, liberal or no.

• I believe in the human condition, and I believe the effective tutor of literature teaches the student to sympathize with suffering and sadness and the ugly Breakfast at Tiffany Reds. 

• I believe in the goodness of falling in love, and I believe in fidelity to the soul, but I do not believe in the wicked being the only ones who do not sleep.

• I believe in personal narrative, the purpose of emotionally important journal work and anecdote, Nat King Cole’s “Stardust” and sleeping cats on my sweatshirt while I correct papers and compose my lesson plans, never leaving my humanity at the door before engaging in the circles, and not the ladders, of teacher-student discourse.

• I believe in repetition of verbs, belief and believing, when done with an invested sense of purpose, namely the promulgation of ethics and the holistic sense of everything, that at any time my believe can verb itself to want and dream and hope and cry and meditate and love.  And it is love, after all that codifies my belief in my students.  Loving against the angry reds, Tiffany and the window which hopes our promises for when we need them, for when the world gets too large, and when we look back to our Father Murphy and Mr. Isham, and the first-grade teacher whose name we can’t remember but we still remember the crush we had on them, our own diamonds in the window don’t somehow seem so distant from where we would like to take the better angles of our students, tomorrow, always and again invested in the sense of goodness which makes us a fine conspiracy of minds with which we share our lives, every last kickball child someone’s diamond, our angels holding our hands while we share coffee beneath Blake’s infinite windows of perception to which we are all eternally students before.

          Shane Sanchez is an adjunct instructor at the University of Montana.