Binding Off

[Note: yesterday my school welcomed Marc Brackett, Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence to campus. Our time spent with him impacted much of my conscience as I wrote this post]


I've been learning lots from my students lately. Lots. 

This sort of thing always happens in the spring. Just as we begin preparing to bind off this experience we've created together (just as my Granny Ros used to bind off her knitting projects); as the synapses are firing; and curiosity and subject matter converge; and the classroom culture is manifest; and we're all steaming forward alongside one another; and we've hit our rhythm as a unit...the year ends.

Final exams are administered, grades are earned, and this experience we've shared together becomes a heap of feelings, events, and growth, that quickly bursts into summer. And it's over.

Yet never in the year do I learn more from my students than in the final six weeks of a school year.

The other day I asked my students to write personal vignettes on the topic of "Speaking Up." It fit with To Kill a Mockingbird, and it represented another opportunity for my students to write from their hearts--an activity that almost always yields their best writing. I'd borrowed the idea from The Sun Magazine, an amazing ad-free literary publication that allows readers to submit short, autobiographical pieces on a common topic. So, we read a handful of "Speaking Up" submissions from  The Sun that dealt with pretty heavy topics and talked about what the stories made us feel.

These were stories that hurt. Stories that were hard to tell.

As I presented the assignment to the students, I added, "now your 'speaking up' stories might not be as intense or emotionally raw as these ones, and you might consider using an instance when you wish you'd spoken up, or where you saw someone else speak up and gained respect for them..."

I kept talking.

But, as usual, I said too much. In an effort to scaffold for my students, to provide differentiated structure for the ones who wanted options, I underestimated both their creativity and the breadth and depth of their own life experiences.

I forgot how much a 12 or 13 year-old feels.

I'm particularly embarrassed by this because I think about my students' emotions all the time...I care about them...I genuinely try to listen when we talk. And still, I forgot how much they feel, how varied their experiences are.

The answer is everything.

They feel it all.

And, frankly, this assignment wouldn't have been as rich in September as it is now. The trust we've built--the conversations we've had--have carved a channel from their wounded, courageous words to my heart that they could not have fabricated nine months ago. Writing can do this. It can put words to what can't be said. It can illustrate feelings. It can be a way to heal.

They have been hurt, and they have shown amazing courage in the face of hurt, but it's the process of writing that really allows them to get right with their feelings.

I often think of my role as a teacher as one of those scouts from old westerns who rides his horse to the hill, scanning the horizon for threats in the distance. As the wagon train sleeps in the field below, he (for they're usually men) ensures that everyone is safe, and he surveys the landscape for all that is to come, both the good and the bad. He looks ahead. He literally has pro vision. He is the provider.

As men and women who teach, we must see ourselves as emotional providers for our students. This doesn't mean we have to give our students anything other than an opening to share, and an opening to admit that there's more to the world than school. That their education involves everything they see, and hear...but it also is everything they feel. We provide in a curricular sense by seeing them as learners, and by supporting their development, but that can't be all.

Jamie Tworkowski wrote a book entitled If You Feel Too Much. It's really good. In it, he writes this.

“If this world is too painful, stop and rest. It’s okay to stop and rest. If you need a break, it’s okay to say you need a break. This life –it’s not a contest, not a race, not a performance, not a thing that you win. It’s okay to slow down. You are here for more than grades, more than a job, more than a promotion, more than keeping up, more than getting by.This life is not about status or opinion or appearance. You don’t have to fake it. You do not have to fake it. Other people feel this way too. If your heart is broken, it’s okay to say your heart is broken. If you feel stuck, it’s okay to say you feel stuck. If you can’t let go, it’s okay to say you can’t let go.You are not alone in these places. Other people feel how you feel. You are more than just your pain."

My students reminded me of this. 

I knew it, but I had to relearn it.

Sometimes quiet can get you there. Sometimes a conversation can do it. And sometimes, it helps to write.

I have a photograph of myself as a 7th grader that sits on my desk. As I glance over at myself now, I feel silly for forgetting how much I felt back then. I forget that I am the person who felt like they feel. Who still does. That I still feel too much sometimes. And that we all need to take a second to stop and rest to survey the horizon...because even when we bind off into the sunset at the end of our school year, the story isn't over. We're always feeling. And in our feeling, we can learn. And in our learning we can grow toward the next horizon.