Tech Cleanse

The limits of being happy

Last Friday we began our winter clubs session. Since the installment of clubs in our upper school division a handful of years ago I've cast a wide net in the clubs I've offered.

Right Brain Boot Camp
Freestyle Rapping Club
Sign Language Club
Arabic Club
Infographic Club
Ultimate Frisbee Club

This year, though, I am trying something different in establishing the UPWORTHY club.

Our first session began with a discussion of why we'd chosen to join the club. My hope was to come to an agreement of our purpose over the course of the next 10 weeks.

"I want to make people happy," one girl said.

"There's too much sad, frustrating news," another boy remarked, "and I want to be reminded that there are uplifting things, too."

Finally, another student added, "Everyone just seems so anxious...I want to help spread the idea that there is good in the world."


Each of these reasons made me grateful for the students and for the group's existence. I found it encouraging that these students truly wanted to find ways to uplift and inspire those around them. It was the first comment, though, that caused us the greatest discourse.

We talked about what it means to be happy.

Bobby McFerrin sang, "Don't worry, be happy."

Joy, in Pixar's Inside Out, blindly pursues a world devoid of problems and negativity.

Yet both of these examples present happiness as a binary measurement. You are either happy or you are unhappy.

How many other things could you be, though? With a hearty dose of inspiration from the online comic, The Oatmeal, I have thought lots about what it means to be happy in the past week. Parents often remark that their hope for their children is "that they will be happy." Yet there is something missed there. People who are engaged and passionate in the most meaningful ways tend to not be happy. But they're not unhappy, either. Instead, they are energized, joyous, exhausted, depleted...they are in pain, they are frustrated, they are driven and absorbed, ecstatic, euphoric, and on the verge of combustion.

Criss Jami, in his book (well, two books) Killosophy, writes that

"...excellence is made constant through the feeling that comes right after one has completed a work which he himself finds undeniably awe-inspiring. He only wants to relax until he's ready to renew such a feeling all over again because to him, all else has become absolutely trivial."

Is the artist, the poet, the performer, the educator, the politician happy during these moments caught in the presence of true awesomeness?

Perhaps not, but they are certainly driven. They feel a sense of purpose. They are whole.

There are so many things to feel in the world, but--as my students in the Upworthy Club began to teach me--happy cannot be made the endgame of adolescence. If it is, then people who are not happy begin to feel as though there is something wrong with them, that they carry an emotional burden, the weight of which is too great for their network, their community,

There is so much passion, so much energy, so much simultaneous hope and despair and exploration in the life of a teenager. It's unreasonable to expect them to be a single thing all the time. I often share this image with parents and students as a means of illustrating all of the ways an adolescent student is prepared to engage with the world.

Is the student above happy? Probably not. But what if they stand for justice, seek freedom, look within themselves, question authority, and tether themselves to a cause for which they care? They're smiling, yes, but they're probably a little frantic, a little romantic, and very overwhelmed.

But, then again, are people who change the world usually happy? 

I don't think so. Instead, they are the kind of people who grieve for what they know is possible, for what they believe we--as a collective humanity--are capable of becoming. In short, they are engaged. And they are struggling to explore their capabilities...they are expanding their ceilings.

In our first meeting of the Upworthy Club we weren't happy. We were a little sad, a little realistic, but we were each wholly present and honest with each other. Most importantly, we were in a room where we felt known and heard, and where we saw the future history of the difference we want to make in the hallways and classrooms of our school beginning to take shape. We were grieving for the present, and we were hopeful for the future.

It reminds me of a favorite Faulkner quote: "Given the choice between grief and nothing, I'd choose grief." I used to think this quote was grim, but as I consider it now, I wonder...what other choice is there, really?

Poetry

A few weeks ago I found myself in New Haven, Connecticut standing before a stack of books at my favorite used book store in the city, Book Trader Cafe. I always gravitate toward poetry when I'm in a bookstore like Book Trader. Always. There's something I just find so mesmerizing about selecting a thin volume from the shelf, leafing gently through the pages and finding a poem to read. By the time I'm done working my way through a number of volumes I almost always purchase an author's poetry.

My process, however, is a little unorthodox. It goes like this:

1. Pick a collection of selected poems by an author with whom I'm unfamiliar.

2. Read two poems.

3. If they both resonate with me, I buy the book.

4. If one of the two resonates with me, I read a third. If that one stirs something within me, I buy the book.

5. If the the first two, or two of the first three, poems fails to churn my heart or mind awake, I begin again with step number 1.

I remember buying Vice by Ai and the selected poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge at the Stamford Library bookstore. I discovered Hettie Jones's Drive in Salt Lake City. Winter Sky by Coleman Barks and The Complete Works of Hart Crane fell into my lap somewhere in Vermont. Hayden Carruth's Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey was at a garage sale in New Hampshire. 

Of course, some poems came my way by other means. I have my father's copy of e.e. cummings' poetry, and my wife introduced me to Tony Hoagland one winter. Jay Parini took me to the far fields with Ted Roethke and Ezra Pound, and Robert Tisdale bought me Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan. Matt Cheney encouraged me to read Joel Brouwer's The Way It Happened and bought me The Poems of Paul Celan. 

Still, the first poems that won me over were the ones Karen Budde made me memorize in sixth grade: the Shakespearean sonnets ("...thou art more lovely and more temperate..."), the Emily Dickinson ("the pedigree of honey, does not concern the bee..."), the John Donne ("and in this flea, our two bloods mingled be..."), the Edgar Allen Poe ("'twas many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea...").

As a high school student I created an elective with an English teacher and an art teacher called "poetry and painting." Half the class would paint, half the class would write. When we had a product, we'd trade with someone and the second group would write a poem inspired by the painting while the first group would create a painting inspired by the poem. We did this a third time and presented the three-piece set to the community. I think there were six of us in the class and I remember one of my poems was entitled, "Hey Mister Green Faced Man, Why You So Ugly?" and one of my paintings was about burning flags and was inspired by my friend Allamary's poem, "Shadows."

It was awesome.

My English teacher, Matt Cheney, once read us a poem he wrote about the way we ruin poems when we try to decipher them. I think it was called "To the English Teacher Weilding A Scalpel."

My heart exploded for poems. And it still does. Poems are the way I make sense of the world. Sometimes, if I'm stuck in the doldrums, or I'm particularly inspired, but I don't know what to do next, I'll stop what I'm doing and find a poem.

"Sometimes you just need a poem," was a phrase my wife quickly learned in our early weeks of marriage as we struggled to learn how to live alongside each other as one.

Julia Alvarez, one of my inspirations in college, referred to the art of poetry as "putting to words what can't be said."

I've always hung on to that.

And I've written literal thousands. I still have every journal of poetry I've ever filled (except for one that tragically slid off the roof of my car somewhere between Salt Lake City and Mount Pleasant, Utah...but there's a poem waiting to be written in there somewhere). Sometimes they rhyme, other times they don't. They cover a litany of emotions. They help me put words to the things I feel that can't be said. To loss. To gain. To struggle. To sacrifice. To soaring. To failing. To growing.

Between running and poetry, I find my way to navigate, to cope.

Yesterday was parents' day at my school. Many parents were there. We've been studying the Middle East, and specifically we've been looking at the geopolitics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yesterday, though, I wanted to put a face to it...to get past the "us" and "them" of it all...to help my students see that when you have humans who feel things as deeply as they do, you get things that can't be said in words...and you get poets who are brave and beautiful enough to try anyway. So from deep within the pain of war and heartache, we explored poems together.

I would live in that classroom forever. Hearing my students with poems on their lips, their parents watching proudly, their hearts pressing firmly against the subtle wrinkle of human existence as tomorrow's history begins to rouse.

I asked the parents if they had favorite poems. Many did. It was neat to watch the parents struggle to explain what it was about the words that drew them in, and awoke something inside.

Later I watched two boys--9th graders--reciting lines from Romeo and Juliet in an empty room. The weight of the words was beautiful as I watched them. The boys took turns reciting, correcting, watching, and listening. They found joy in the lines and in their ability to express them loudly, deeply. I snapped a photo and told them I was inspired by their energy.




I wonder when each of my students will read that poem that changes them, that inspires them to look deeply within themselves...hopefully it will coax them toward the effort required to struggle some emotion of their own from the tip of their pen.

I hope, above all else, they'll realize that sometimes you just need a poem.

Sweet Laughter

I've been thinking about Aristotle lately. 

He was born in the 4th century in Greece, but the perspectives and philosophical beliefs he proffered resonate in today's world as much as ever. He was one of the world's most impressive lateral thinkers, finding inspiration in all that he did and thought, and seeking to better understand his world--the world--at every step, turn, and conversation. His life was ripe with OPPORTUNITY (as all of our lives are), and he plucked chances as though they were exotic fruits to be tasted and devoured, seeds and all.

Whether it was epistemology, geology, physics, psychology, biology, ethics, or any other variation of conceptual consideration, Aristotle wanted to feel everything and to understand more. He was insatiably curious in the ways we hope our students become. He valued thinking (and questioning) in ways we need our world's leaders (and "followers") to be. He operated in a world devoid of silos and safety, dwelling instead in conversations with those who disagreed with him and pushed him to better understand truth.

I've discussed Aristotle's theories of human nature with my 8th graders this week as we continue to navigate William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Aristotle believed that humans were naturally-inclined to be conjugal, political, and mimetic. He felt this was our human destiny and that it separated us from most other species in the animal kingdom. 

Still, he recognized that there were animals that partnered for life and developed clan-like relationships, gathering in flocks, or herds, or packs. There are also animals that form elaborate hierarchies and systems of self-governing organization. There are even animals that can be creative and innovative in moments of necessity. While survival tends to limit opportunities for creativity and imaginative thinking, it still happens.

But here's the thing: After all of his work, observation, research, conversation, meditation, and pontificating, Aristotle ended up ascribing human's unique nature to their propensity to laugh.

A baby, Aristotle claimed, does not have a soul, until the moment it laughs for the first time.

This week, in the midst of floundering alongside my students in a punchbowl of emotions, my students reminded me to laugh. They produced videos and presentations about the Five Pillars of Islam that were highly informative; that showcased both their creativity and their intellectual depth, and that pushed their understandings deeper toward the realm of being culturally competent.

Yet they also relished in the bloopers. They highlighted the moments where they'd cut each other off, where they'd dabbed, tripped, spilled, squealed, shrieked, heard their voices crack, seen their wardrobes malfunction. They'd had their computer stepped on by an excited fifth grader, their filming had ben interrupted, their lines had been forgotten. And it was the best. It was the moment their souls were revealed, and it brought lightness to the room.

We talked about how good it felt to laugh--to lose control of our ability to look cool. But it was so much better when we did it together. Of course, we talked about memes and gifs and YouTube, about the danger of resorting to humor when real action is required....but we also recognized that laughter might, in fact, be the best medicine.

Yes, we laugh when we're nervous.
Yes, we laugh at people when we're insecure.
And yes, we laugh when we've contrived a sinister masterplan.

But those are different types of laughter. I know, because we laugh the sweetest laughter when we forget--for just an instant--about who we are and how we're supposed to act, and we return to the gleeful moment when, as Aristotle remarked, we first squealed in delight at the nonsensical folly of a world filled with joy.

Here's to laughing that sweet brand of laughter, and finding those people with whom we can do it well.

Lifting our hearts from the dirt

It is a Wednesday and my students are beginning a new book.

It is a Wednesday and my students are beginning Lord of the Flies.

It is a Wednesday and I will teach them about allegory, and about the origins of human conflict.

It is a Wednesday and my students are beginning the day with the knowledge that the freshly-minted president-elect of their country--the person who will be president when they turn 18 and earn their own right to vote--has uttered phrases that fill them with horror. They are phrases the singe them, choke them, drown them, and single many of them out as being worthless, dispensable, filthy, unattractive, undignified...and worse.

It is a Wednesday and I talk to them. I try to hold space. To allow for openings, for connection, for confusion, and for pain. But I'm grasping for something hopeful...where is the light?

I decide, halfway through class, that I want to scrap my lesson. It's the one where we discuss William Golding and how "writer's write what they know." Instead, I want to show them an allegory. I want to share with them Plato's Allegory of the Cave. 

I tell the story.

I draw for them.

(They smile at my fumbling whiteboard failures)

I ask them what it all means.

I don't tell them what to feel. 

I don't tell them what I feel.

I let them teach me.

I embrace silence.

They tell me that we're the ones chained in the cave.

That we owe it to the world to explore, 

to reject passivity, 

to question authority.

They impress me and they inspire me.

I am hopeful that this experience of being alive, of existing, in 2016 is one that shapes my students into something greater than the status quo. I hope they will heed the mission of my school which ends, by stating that we aspire to equip our students"...to have the courage and confidence to make a positive contribution to the world."

I found an old poem I wrote once. I wanted to find it because I knew I'd had these thoughts before...these thoughts about being human.

I wonder now, as I reread it, how I can revise it. How I can rewrite it in such a way that begins, "How we unite tells us lots about ourselves..." I don't know how that poem begins, or middles, or ends because I haven't seen it yet. I don't yet know how we unite, or what it will tell us about ourselves. Poetry puts words to what can't be said, but in moving on, I don't even know where to begin. I've lifted my heart from the dirt, yes. But now, alongside my students, comes the noble venture of joining hearts in such a way as to ensure that their collective, resonating thunder will drown out the cries of fear, mistrust, and hatred.

Humans

How we fight tells us lots about ourselves;

about the ways we crumble,

spill, and fall apart.

And when we fight in groups

where unity and cohesion are paramount

and predicated on the drawing of our souls

like water into that vast shared bucket we call consensus,

we fail.

We fail to hear,

to coat ourselves in sufficient enough a lacquer

as to protect our gentle selves from being dented.

We fume. We pace. We eat.

Because, in our fury,

we know not what to do.

Or be.

Or how to do or be it.

We fail ourselves again.

And again. And again.

Overcome with tremors, we clamor to understand

whether we want to put something into ourselves

or get something out.

And so, instead, we lift our hearts from the dirt,

ground to pulp and left in pulsing piles

and mash them back inside our chests

where their burger shapes beat our blood thick

just for the sake of being boiled again.

Pitchers or batters?

As I watched the World Series last night, I got to thinking...baseball is intense. It's beautiful, with it's moments of glory and celebration, and awful in its moments of defeat and error. Someone comes up short while someone else rises to the occasion. It's never both.

It reminds me of a conversation I had out in Texas with another teacher as we watched the Cubs play in their first game of the playoffs last month.

As teachers, do we treat our students more like pitchers or like hitters?

Let's start by looking at the differences.

Pitchers
In baseball, the pitcher begins with an Earned Run Average (ERA) of 0.00. This is perfection. Every batter the pitcher faces, however, poses an opportunity to make a mistake. For a pitcher, perfection is expected and once they make enough mistakes, they get pulled from the game.

Batters
In baseball, the batter begins with a batting average of .000. This is the opposite of perfection. It is a number representing an inability to effectively do that thing that the game asks you to do: hit the ball. Every time the batter steps to the plate (and they get a turn once every nine times) there is an opportunity for success. The hope of glory. For a batter, batting below .200 represents futility and nobody has hit .400 since Ted Williams did so in 1941. Everybody else is somewhere in between. Success is getting three hits for every ten at bats.


So there it is. Both pitchers and batters are called upon to play defense, of course, and sometimes to run bases. And they also need to high five one another and add to the clubhouse chemistry. But my question is this: When we work with students, they come to our classes with an opportunity. Is each assessment, however, a chance to succeed and praise, or a chance to drop them down from perfection?


In my class this week my students are beginning to write essays about Prajwal Parajuly's collection of short stories, The Gurkha's Daughter. I am working with each of them to learn from the recommendations I made on their last essay (in response to Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men) and to set some goals for themselves. For some students this means working on developing their narrative voice; for others it means using stronger verbs and avoiding the verb "to be"; still other students are working on comma usage, or transitions, or a crafting a more universally-relevant conclusion.

This is kind of like a pitcher honing his/her craft. Can a student throw a perfect academic game? Yeah, sure they can. A+ grades happen and so do perfect scores on assignments. Students thrive and sometimes the pressure gets to them and they struggle mightily...just like a pitcher giving up a home run at the worst possible time.

Pitchers can close the gap toward perfection, lowering their ERA with each pitch. It can never get back to 0.00, but what is a teacher if they tell their students that they expect perfection?

Are there times, though, when batters are the apt comparison? Those same English students in my 8th grade class are required to choose three vocabulary words (from anything they read) that they want to learn each night. Of those three words, they then set one singular goal for themselves (e.g. "I want to understand the meaning of the word aesthetically" or "I want to use the word wrought in my essays." In essence, by asking them to choose one of their three words and add it to their accessible vocabulary I'm trying to dissuade them from the rote memorization of 100 vocabulary words that they'll forget moments after the test. 

Instead, I want to send the message that batting .333 is good enough, and if you can actually embed one word each night in your "useable" vocabulary, that would be awesome, it would be Hall of Fame worthy, and it would be so much more valuable than earning a 97% on a vocab quiz.

So maybe this metaphor is broken. Maybe I ask my students to be both pitchers and batters. At the end of each game, though, ballplayers leave the ballpark at the end of the day and go back to being human. And that's the same for my students, too. My hope, as a teacher, is that their performance in the classroom does not define them, no matter their batting average or ERA. My hope is that they feel whole and that their understanding of themselves stretches beyond the statistics and sabermetrics. I hope my students don't dwell on the numbers on the back of their baseball card, but instead that they each get to feel like the little kid who takes their first swing and feels the satisfaction of connecting bat with ball and says, I love this game because it's fun.

Doorways and Barriers

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about how every encounter you have with someone results in the two of you moving toward good, or away from good. Now I didn't mean to sound overly Zoroastrian in my suggestion, but I did want to make a point about the impact we have on others.

The choices we make, the words we use, the ways we make people feel, matter. Yet at the same time, we are not just producers of emotion, we are also recipients of positive and negative messages and stimuli as well.

After being inspired by a fellow educator named Marlena Gross-Taylor's use of the terms "barriers and doorways," I decided to encourage my students to think beyond their own impact by also noticing the messages their worlds were sending them through this idea of metaphorical "barriers" and "doorways" in their day.

I wrote the words above on the whiteboard, answered a handful of questions about what a metaphorical barrier or doorway might look/feel like, and the students were off and running. It was 1:30 in the afternoon, so they'd had plenty of stumbles and successes, yet nothing prepared me for reality: students were able to recall more than twice as many barriers as they could doorways.

Was this true? Were their days full of stumbles, or did they just remember it that way? Did barriers require more of their attention, whereas doorways merely asked them to sprint through, catch their breath, and frantically search for the next trial demanding their attention?

Well I'm certainly not a trained professional in conducting psychological studies, but it awakened my mind to buzzing.

There has been plenty of press in the past five years emphasizing grit and resilience as necessary components of long-term success.  Accordingly, I wonder if, perhaps, my students see barriers not because they are pessimistic or perfectionist, but because they recognize these as opportunities to better themselves, and to learn. Just as we learn little from those with whom we agree, perhaps we grow most from the barriers.

What I wonder, though, is how we--as teachers and parents--can rebrand barriers to think of them as doorways through which we simply can't figure out how to maneuver.

I once read a story about a Scotsman who lived in the 19th century and dreamt of becoming a discus thrower. At the forge by his home he created an iron discus after having read a description of one in a book. He had never been trained, nor had he seen anyone compete in the event...he simply loved the idea of the competition. So there it was, in empty fields of the Highlands that this young man began to throw his disc into the air until he felt he was reaching the distances outlined in his book as being world-class. When he ventured to the city for a competition, however, he learned that the discs had a core of wood, and only the outer shell was made of iron.

He threw the discs as though they were tea saucers, winning every competition in which he took part for the remainder of his life.

Perhaps my students are like this young Scotsman...they are maneuvering barriers now to prepare them for challenges later in life. Maybe they know that life will be hard and so they're piling pressure on themselves because of that.

But what are we teachers to do? How can we convince them that they don't need to hurl discs of iron for the horizon? How can we convince them to see the wildflowers in that very field? How can we help them look for shapes in the clouds, and learn to be still in the peaceful presence of nothing? Is there a place for this? Doorways don't always need to open toward winning or success. What if they just open toward being comfortable in our own skin and knowing that how we are is enough, and worthy of celebration?


Yesterday, one of my students volunteered to share her religion with the class. She prepared a presentation, brought props, and she spoke from the heart. We learned of her beliefs, her alphabet, her traditions, her values. We held artifacts that matter deeply to her. We struggled to pronounce words in her language, and she calmly smiled and urged us to try again, but with our lips like this.

It was beautiful, and it was hard for her to stand up there. For her entire time as a classmate, perhaps her faith has been a barrier, but by sharing it, by trusting us, she created a doorway.

Here's to turning barriers into doors and celebrating them--and ourselves--as we cross each threshold.

The Art of Going There

7/14/2008

"The most romantic of all things is the walk to the mailbox in hope of a letter."

Those were the words that got me. There stood the woman I had only just met--my future bride--speaking words rich with eloquence and glowing with truth. All those in attendance at the writing conference were audibly moved as a hush fell over the hall. While she'd answered a question about why we write, she'd done so much more: she'd revealed to us a granule of that which makes us human. The desire for connection, for a wholeness we cannot accomplish by ourselves. 

Of course I'd be lying if I suggested that, at that very moment, I knew...but the honest answer is that I was too overwhelmed by the power of words to even know what I was feeling. When she and I departed four days--days spent writing, confronting, exploring, and savoring one other's words--later, we exchanged addresses and began an old-fashioned chain of correspondence. Writing hand-written letters to one another.

4/4/1984

Truth be told, my love affair with letter-writing, though, began much earlier. My parents used to refer to mail as either "anybody mail" or "whobody mail." We lived in a tiny schoolhouse in northern New Hampshire and the postal workers' lonely sojourn by our house on Lost Nation Road represented one of the highlights of each day. The 90 degree turn on which our mailbox made its home was often overshot by a late night driver and my father got in the practice of repairing the rusty old mailbox's scrap wood post every couple of months. My mother would eventually paint the words "Good News In Here" on the front.

We loved mail. I loved letters.

4/22/2001

At 17, the testosterone-laden mosaic of my adolescent ethos centered on my passions for sports and writing. So it was no surprise that Sports Illustrated found its way into my lap each week at the local library. I loved the work of Rick Reilly and wrote him a letter.

To my shock, Rick wrote back.

Nothing compared to receiving this letter as an aspiring writer.

10/19/2016

When I shared this letter, these stories, with my students yesterday, I was revealing a part of myself...I was sharing with them more than a letter, or a passion. I was telling them that I trusted them. I was pushing past the awkwardness of emotions and going there.

I'd gotten the idea to focus on letter-writing for 10 minutes a day in English class because I read the four thank-you notes to Michelle Obama published in the New York Times earlier this week. I was moved by the unconventional nature of their wisdom, their gratitude, their beauty. Each reflection (because that's really what they were) brought such enigmatically beautiful poetry to our First Lady's existence. My students and I then embarked together on a detailed scouring of the website Letters of Note, looking for letters, for wisdom, for emotions, for words and phrases, that inspired us.

My students recognized that when people are writing to those they love and admire, they become better writers, their vocabularies swell, they avoid the commonplace cliches and ordinary verbiage of their colloquial vernacular, and seek to put words to what can't be said.

And so it was that we began considering the people to whom we might compose a note of gratitude.

Here are some excerpts.

"...I want to tell you about the first time I went fishing..."

"You probably don't remember the advice you gave me one Thanksgiving, but I do. They're words I'll never forget."

"I don't know how to say thank you."

"There is something about your smile."

"Thank you. Thank you. THANK YOOOOOU."

"I love doing nothing with you."

"We learned a lot more than we realized in second grade, didn't we?"

"There is nobody in the world like you."

“A week later, you died. Cancer stole you away”

“You taught me how to be brave, how to be happy, and how to let go.”

“Hearing stories about your childhood, and everything you’ve been through, made me realize how lucky I am.”

“I’ve always been nervous about doing things.”

“Your smile and laughter is something that people everywhere will never forget.”

“That’s when I found out exactly what you were: an inspiration.”

“The moment I heard the first song, I immediately realized my passion for music.”

“You increased my love for it so much.”

“It’s more than fair to say that this trip really opened up my eyes.”

“When I think about how you risk your life every day, for people you don’t even know, I know you are a real hero.”

“You are a genius!”

“You were a frequent visitor, even though I didn’t see you much.”

“I didn’t notice how much I would miss you until now.”

“Even though we only spent 55 minutes together each day, we always shared a connection.”

“There are so many things that I take for granted that you do.”

“The only way that you can achieve your goal is through hard work, just like anything else.”

“I’d never sought their wisdom or wanted to know what they thought...they’d never given me a reason to.”

“When you first came to my door many years ago, I slammed it in your face and ran away.”







Watching my students shed the bravado of adolescence and embrace an attitude of appreciation was pretty remarkable.

"When you leave the classroom," I added. "Try to look for other moments of admiration in your day. Who do you notice? To whom could you write your next thank-you note?"

I said these words, but I didn't have to. The tone had been set, and it was contagious.

I think I owe them a thank-you note for their tenderness, their courage, and for pushing past the awkwardness of emotions and going there.

the it-ness of each of us

Here's the way this usually works:

I think all week about my own growth, my reflections, my beliefs, my students, my children, my life. 

My life.

I remember being little and looking in the mirror and looking into my own eyes until I looked like a stranger; I recall saying my name aloud until it sounded foreign, weird, inaudibly bizarre as the syllable (for there was only one in my case) fled from my lips, disappearing moments later into the ether of silence. I wondered if what I saw as purple matched the version that other's had, and questioned whether apples tasted the same to everybody, and--if not--how would we ever know? 

And then I would consider my life. I would question myself, my existence, and the indistinguishable it-ness (the essence of just being it) of what it meant to be me.

My life.

So somewhere in the midst of my week (in all its itness, because, like, what else could it possibly be?) I find something to blog about. But this week was different. So many things stimulated and inspired me. Flooded, inundated by ideas and visions and possibility, yesterday came and went without me knowing what to write. Truth be told, yesterday was also one of the busiest spans of 24 hours I've experienced, but nevertheless I spent the day feeling as though the vessel holding that gorgeously impossible broth of ideas in which my brain floats was brimming with a meniscus that was sure to overflow.

But it didn't, and here I am. At a desk. Writing. And because I can't write everything, I'll have to just embrace the spirit of this blog and write something and spend 30 minutes doing it.

It doesn't usually work this way, but today I just need to answer a question, posed to me via Twitter during my time in Austin, Texas at the AMLE (Association of Middle Level Education) conference:

 While I was a student in the course, and assuredly not the teacher, here is my memory of 6-8 grade Latin.

Above the huge marble fireplace in my middle school Latin classroom there was an oversized chart made of graph paper. Each student's name was written along the left side of the chart. Every time a student finished a chapter in our Latin textbook we would fill in a box on the grid. Now, normally, students would progress through the textbook en masse, with teachers delivering lessons and students achieving various degrees of mastery along the way. Karen, my Latin teacher, however, was different. She felt that one-on-one Latin instruction was preferable and that each student should teach themselves the text, leaning on her for support when it was needed. Everything had to be completed, and corrected if necessary, until it earned a grade of 100%. Once a student earned 100%, they could move on.

If a student finished four chapters in a marking period, they earned an A.

Three chapters earned a B.

Two chapters resulted in a mark of C.

And one chapter earned a D.

Oh, and if you had a perfect score on your end of chapter translation you earned a cake. Like a real cake. Like a whole, big Pepperidge Farm personal cake. To eat. During Latin class.

One quick look at the chart, though, in--say--the spring of 1997 would have quickly alerted a classroom visitor to two clear realities: 

1. Will McDonough had four colored boxes filled in next to his name.

2. Two girls in the class were closing in on chapter 30 and would be starting the Latin II textbook by the end of the year.

Yes, that's right. I earned a B during my first trimester of 6th grade and a D during my second trimester.

Now here's the thing: I was a bright kid. I was earning mostly Bs and As in all my other classes. But I didn't care about getting 100% on anything. I would often finish the chapter, but never correct anything to 100%. I was so excited to see what the fortis legatus was going to be doing in the next translation.

Furthermore, we were tessellating the walls with original tessellations in math class; we were building hot air balloons out of Ty-Vek in Science class; we were memorizing lines for Bye Bye Birdie; we were memorizing Emily Dickinson and reading Hamlet in English; and we had just returned from a trip to Quebec City where we'd practiced our French; I'd just mastered a between the legs dribble on the basketball court!

School was so fascinating. So inspiring. So Alive!

And then there was Latin class. Latin class where a perfect translation could earn me a cake? 

Where the entirety of class was spent reading a textbook? 

Alone?!?! 

I was a raging extrovert. I loved my friends. I was curious beyond measure. 

For anyone who was self-motivated and felt deep wells of satisfaction at constructing the perfect translation, this was great. I'm sure those two girls loved their cakes and their perfect notes and their achievement. But those carrots didn't work for me.

So, with two minutes left in this blog, why was I so quick to praise this practice on Twitter if I didn't like it?

Well, I think self-pacing is great when it works. I think students should be able to progress at their own pace, and to master material. What I don't like, though, is the public nature of the graph; the awarding of baked goods; and the one-dimensional teaching model. If a curriculum can be self-paced and dynamic, I'm all for it. But I am a firm believer that middle school needs to be an experience. That it can't just be a student and a textbook and the pursuit of perfection. As Chip Wood remarked, middle school should be a little like summer camp and a little like the Civilian Conservation Corps of the Great Depression: active, project-oriented, and always with a unifying goal of the entire group.

We've got to meet students where they are as both thinkers and learners: as thinkers, they are students who are developing toward adolescence, but as learners they are each unique by that very same ubiquitous it-ness that makes their lives their own.

Movement

My daughter and I share many similarities. We are both the oldest children in our families; we both love adventure; we're both extroverts who thrive off of human connections; we both love morning and autumn and the hopeful anticipation of a letter in the mailbox.

We also both have an insatiable curiosity, a thirst for learning. And along with that desire for new discourse and information comes a penchant for learning something and immediately applying it to our lives. Like, right-at-that-very-second that our synapses fire like pistons and the cerebral cortex starts to chuff up the great mountain of fascination and opportunity, we are ready to teach our new insight to anyone within earshot.

We were born for soapboxes, yes, and I know it can cause some nightmarish tremors with the introverts in our family that feel like some sort of dystopian, endlessly-energized TED talk; yet this gift (or curse) also means that we don't have to plan as much as other people. We can improvise and wing it without a detailed course laid out before us.

Oh, and my daughter is five.*

In any case, I had one of these lightning quick learning experiences last week when I read skimmed something that caught my attention.

The excerpt that caught my interest was by Dr. Larry Crabb, and my understanding of it went like this:

Any interaction you have of more than a few seconds either moves you in a direction that is toward GOODNESS, or away from it.

Now, most certainly, in the 21st Century any notion of goodness as defined by a universal morality has become shockingly ambiguous. One need not look any further than one of America's recent presidential debates to understand that we are dwelling in a world of opaque subjectivity on the matter.

Still, this notion of movement caused me to think deeply about the words our Head of Upper School posed to our community at the beginning of the school year. He encouraged us to ask ourselves, 

"What would my best self do?"

Well, we all have varied views of each other's best selves, but it's likely, at our core, that we know ourselves. We know what it feels like to wake up each morning and simply FEEL GOOD about ourselves.

This morning, in fact, my daughter--that one who loves teaching stuff immediately after learning it--dragged me from bed and into the kitchen: "Dad, look the sun isn't even up yet, but the sky is getting pink...this is the perfect time of day to do the cumbia."

"The what?" I ask, half asleep and putting on a pot of coffee?

"This dance I learned in music class! It is from Latin America. Here, let me show you!"

And there was my daughter in all her glory, teaching me something. Her brain was awake, her heart was awake, and...most importantly, she felt so good about herself.

And this is the heart of it. Our best selves know what it feels like to be humming on all cylinders. We know when we're making good decisions, feeling proud, feeling connected; we know when we're being challenged and being brave, taking risks and surpassing new milestones.

Our brains all wake up in different ways, but having a grasp on ourselves and what wakes us up is important. I loved starting my day with my daughter, being guided toward a deepened understanding of her, and of myself. Her love of dancing in the predawn light of our kitchen was contagious, and in that interaction--one that lasted no more than two minutes--she moved me in the direction of real, tangible goodness.

I know because it made my heart glad. Glad to know her. Glad to be alive. Glad to have today with the movement of the cumbia in my every step and action, and the movement of GOOD in the rhythm of my heart.

*In her words, last week she tipped the scales from being "five and three-quarters" to being "basically six."

Dear Student,

Sometimes words fail, and you just need a poem to put words to what can't be said.

With gratitude to these two students, and all of the others, from whom I learned so much this week.



Dear Student,

There you are
to my left,
and you are crying.

Fat, round tears slipping down your cheek
from beneath your glasses
and you can't hide it
and you won't hide it.

And you shouldn't.
You are brave.

And we hear you now
in your hurting.

"I'm sorry,"
you whimper.
"I've never cried
about a book before."

And we are all crying,
but none of us have tears
like yours.

Your neighbor rubs your shoulder.
Everyone is with you,
together in your tears.



Dear Student,

You and I had never met,
and yet
there we sat,
in your kitchen,

that deadly blinking cursor
on a white screen
beckoning you to write what was on your heart.

"A college essay?" you ask.
And this is how they'll judge me?"

"Just make them feel something."
It doesn't have to be everything.
Just a glimpse. Don't tell them who you are...
show them."

And you do.

You take a tomb full of broken ideas
and biographical pain
and gnarled genealogy
and you make magic of the cracked mirrors.

Hours later, your mother tells me
that you knelt,
empowered by the truth of those mirrors,
alongside a teammate
before a game,
shuddering under the weight
of a world of eyes,
a cracked mirror in a sea of lies.

And in that kneeling,
you are winning:
winning a game
where no one loses.

Unknown Unknowns (what I told my students today)

I started class today with this clip. 

There was nothing political about the topic. Nor was the lesson today about weapons of mass destruction, or Baghdad, or the Middle East, or diplomacy.

And it wasn't about Donald Rumsfeld.

It was about the most foundational component of my 8th grade world cultures course...it was about recognizing that our own experiences are an aberration from the norms of human experience.

This classroom needs to have a culture of its own. It's already starting to take shape, but it needs each of us to have a sense of heightened awareness...heightened sensitivity.

There are things we know. 

We know lots of things.

And there are things we think we know.

We think we know lots of things.

And there are things we know we don't know.

And there are things we don't even know we don't know.

We are naive, oblivious, and completely in-the-dark about most things in the world.

And I include myself in that statement.

And all of those things matter. 

You see, my hope for this class is that you will grow to trust that each of us comes into this classroom with the best of intentions. That we are here to learn, here to share, and here to listen. Nobody wants to offend, alienate, or provoke. Nobody wants to make anybody else hurt.

I believe this.

But in order for us to do that effectively, we have to trust each other and recognize that if someone doesn't know something--if they have literally never learned it before--that's not their fault. If somebody has a stereotype about a group of people, or thinks they know something, but your experience differs, it is your responsibility to help them understand it better; to illustrate the oppositional perspective. 

In this course, we need to aspire to be more culturally competent, more aware, and more curious versions of ourselves. We can never learn it all. There will always be unknown unknowns...but this course is about raising our awareness so they can be known unknowns...so we can begin to recognize that the things we know--the lenses through which we experience the world--are such a smidgen of a much bigger human story. 

Most of the world is an unknown unknown. If we can recognize that simple fact, perhaps the mere shifting of awareness can orient the world toward grasping that our planet can be a  known unknown, meaning that our own ethnocentric perspectives are but one version of reality; "other cultures are not failed attempts at being you" (Wade Davis).

The Fire of Adolescence

It's Friday.

There is a perfectionist that owns a bundle of the real estate deep within me. And right now, all those perfectionist parts in me are berating me with criticism for having watched idly as Thursday passed without having written a new post.  But you know what? I wasn't idle at all. Note remotely.

Instead, I was living alongside my students. Nothing compares to the experiences of watching young people become better versions of themselves; watching them carve away the passive parts of themselves, only to find that there are amazing, capable, brave, and mature young men and women waiting in the wings of their life.

Today I told my students that the past week we spent together in the Adirondacks was equipping them with the ability to become the heroes of their own lives.

Nobody wants to grow complacent.
Nobody wants to be a passive participant in their own lives.
Nobody wants to be cast in their life as "third blond boy" or "girl with the backpack."

But we do it all the time. I find myself reverting to auto pilot on my commutes, my routines, and my interactions.

We need to break form. To take risks.

My students were made to be the heroes. They are protagonists. Their stories are written with deep dreams and meticulously developed character traits. There are internal struggles, foibles, challenges, and climaxes. There are moments that require real heroism, and that elicit deep sorrows.

The shapes of my students' stories are varied and REAL. They are different and they are the same.

And just like that, I am reminded of a moment .

The students looked into a fire, huddled close to one another, and forgot about themselves. Their gazes bled into one another's, and they saw the impossible beauty of the flames, the gleam of the light, the reflection of the moon on the water around them. They stopped being themselves and transformed into a breathing, living organism with its own energy.

Like fires, adolescence can gleam and spark, but it can also grow dull, cool, and turn to ash. This past week reminded me that all fires need three things

Heat
Fuel
& Oxygen

I think, in both a literal and figurative sense, the same is true of human beings.

The origins of their physical heat, their physical fuel, and physical oxygen matter; and so, too, do the sources of emotional heat, emotional fuel, and emotional oxygen.

For four days, we got it right. Now that we return to the classrooms, to the routines, it's all about maintaining the fire triangle, because fires don't work on auto pilot. And I'm pretty sure there's no app that gathers the kindling.

The Both

I love people.

I always have. I enjoy being around them, connecting with them, and being real with them. Which is why I always find it funny that I have such an aversion to my return to school each September.

You see, as I mentioned before, I love the people. I also love the anticipation, the school, the content, the hopefulness, and the rebirth. I love the conversations, the colleagues, the students, too. What I don't love, though, is the simple question that seems to begin every interaction during our first week back:

"How was your summer?"

I used to think that it was because I never went anywhere on vacation. Vacation was time off, but it was never time away. Growing up, I always felt a sense of embarrassment at this fact. "Oh!" my friends would sometimes say, "A stay-cation! That sounds awesome!"

But it wasn't a stay-cation...it was just life. Life happening in my back yard, my world. And it was good--awesome, even--but it certainly wasn't impressive or postcard-worthy.

Yet here's the thing. Even now that I've arrived at a point of greater maturity and self confidence, I still don't like this question. It just feels like when someone says, "Hey, today's my birthday," and the only way to possibly respond is by exclaiming, "Happy Birthday!!" When someone says, "How was your summer?" the requisite response that spills out on cue like TGIF's canned laughter is "Great, how was yours?"

But this year, it feels like I finally figured it out.

I think this feeling comes from the fact that summer is never simple. Summer is never any ONE thing. Summer is everything. Summer is so good, but it is so darn far from perfect. It is great, and awful, and hard, and amazing...and we grow, and learn...but we also forget. We fail. We struggle. See, summer as a teacher or student allows us to get close to our own humanity. We get to spend time with ourselves. We have expectations and goals, some of which are manageable and others that are lofty. Yet when it's all said and done, the summer has happened and it's been SO. MANY. THINGS.

And many of them were things of the hard variety that grow us into wiser, calloused versions of ourselves.

So how does one answer, the "How was your summer?" question?

Well I decided this year to just go for it and acknowledge that my summer was a little bit of everything. As Hunter S. Thompson once remarked,

"Hopes rise and dreams flicker and die. Love plans for tomorrow and loneliness thinks of yesterday. Life is beautiful and living is pain."

I have a friend who once shared with me that, in his younger years, he and his friends had adopted the phrase "the both" as a way of acknowledging that he was feeling lots of different things all at once.

"Yo, that movie was the both!"

Or, "Yeah, we broke up...but it's kind of, well, y'know...the both."

So, I decided, when asked about my summer, I'd simply hint at the reality that my summer was the both.

"It was hard and easy, amazing and impossible. Thanks for asking. How was yours?"

And by doing so, I would silently acknowledge the dreamy beautiful days I had with my family and the love for my kids and my wife that deepened and erupted...but I would also acknowledge the reality that there were tantrums and accidents and dishes that broke.

I expected that by hijacking the predicted response of my colleagues and students I'd make things suddenly awkward, but you know what happened? People opened right up.

"Yeah, you're right...me too. Summer was great and hard."

"I know what you mean...my dad is really sick right now."

"My parents are separating."

"There were so many points in my summer that were great, but I didn't do half the stuff I'd planned to."

"I'm so grateful I found a really great therapist. I couldn't have done this summer alone"

It's easy to put on a mask and forget that everyone around us is human. And by holding space for the people around me--the people I care about--I now feel better equipped to be myself. I can now get to work doing the things I'm here to do...to teach, to learn, to connect. To rely on relationships. I can fully be myself while I'm doing it, and my hope is that this feeling is contagious.

Today in English class I asked my 8th graders to identify the strongest emotion they felt over the course of the summer, then write about that moment. They didn't share what they wrote, but as I watched their faces, their eyes, in writing, I could tell that summer, for them, was also the both.

"Their hearts are easy to find."

Thursday came and went last week. It was June 23rd. And for the first time in over two months, I didn't write anything on this blog. My reason? I was so immersed in my family's crazy acclimation to the first week of summer that the days of the week didn't matter. I'd forgotten it was Thursday (or if I knew, I'd forgotten what Thursday meant). It was all-out beautiful, messy survival mode for Team McDonough.

Yet now, as the dust has settled into some semblance of a routine, I am left reflecting on the past three weeks, and how much I've learned.

Here's a start.

The attack at Pulse, the nightclub in Orlando, happened 18 days ago.

My kids started swimming lessons four days ago.

The attack at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul took place two days ago.

93 human beings were killed.
292 human beings remain injured.

Innumerable lives have been torn torn apart.
Futures lost.
Dreams disbanded.
Love, buried in an aching tomb of pain
and chased by a cocktail of asphyxiation,
infused with
anger,
confusion,
forgiveness,
disbelief,
a litany of other emotions.
And grief.

And there was unity.

And there was division.

After the attack in Istanbul, I wrote this poem on a piece of paper. I felt like we have had our hearts broken so many times that there's got to be some cost...some collective destruction...some adverse impact.

On our hearts.

Oh, and in the midst of all this, my kids are learning to swim.

I watch them in the water.

They are learning to trust that their little, slippery, shivering bodies genuinely want to float.
That they are filled with air, and that if they just release themselves from fear--if they trust their teachers--trust their buoyancy, that they can lean back and literally lay on top of the water!

When I watch my daughter swim away from me, a look of simultaneous horror and jubilation spreading through her cheeks...I feel so much love.

When I hold my children in the water I feel their hearts beating--thundering--in their little chests. They are so scared, and so excited...but most of all, they are just so alive.

I re-read my poem.
I am hopeful for my children, and I am sad at the world they are inheriting. But their hearts are so big. They hear about dogs who are abandoned, and their little faces contort in shock and disbelief because they don't understand how someone could leave something alone in the world.

This week as my internet browser toggles between horror and hopelessness, between sit-ins and sinners, between unity and division, my children are teaching me that we need to seek out those moments that make us alive. We need to hear our hearts beat. We need to remember that they won't beat forever, but they beat today. And they are muscles that need us to keep loving so we don't end up with hollow shells that echo beneath our ribs.

Just as my children's bodies want to float, our hearts want to love.

A friend e-mailed me after Istanbul. The message ended like this:

"Enough from me, now go and enjoy your babies...their hearts are easy to find."

May we someday, in the midst of a painful world that is struggling--and far too often failing--to love us back, say the same about our own hearts.

"I wish you so much happiness"

The ninth graders at my school graduated yesterday. 

They looked so handsome, so beautiful, so grown up. 

They made us proud. They gave speeches. 

They listened to wisdom. 

We clapped. 

We swallowed hard. 

Felt lumps in our throats. 

Pretended the bright sun was making us cry.

We heard their words, about how we--their teachers--

had seen their weaknesses and made them strong.

We heard how they now have the courage and confidence

to make a positive contribution to the world.

The chorus sang two songs.

I heard them sing a new song.

"Once I was seven years old, my mama told me," the lyrics began.

" 'Go make some friends or you'll be lonely.' "

I heard them sing an old song, too.

"Imagine all the people..." 

The words of both songs wafted on the wind, gliding over the audience and into the air. When the last chords were played, we were left in momentary silence.

In that moment, the link between these two songs struck me.

People. 

We need people. 

We need them because they're the antidote for loneliness, but also because they're the hope for the future. We imagine people, crave people, and we grieve for a world where people are kinder to people.

All of the graduates, as they said their goodbyes, wanted to see the people. They didn't wander back to classrooms, they craved connections, eye contact, wisdom, embraces.

They wanted to thank the people, hug the people, lean into the people, and feel the warmth of their bodies. 

They wanted their teachers, for they were the people who raised them, challenged them, watched them grow, and now stood like an aging forest of sturdy trees, so proud of the strong trees their saplings had become.

It's funny that schools are run by people; that teachers are one of the jobs that can't be replaced by machines. Sometimes I wish that I could. That I could be all things to all students. That I could be a pedagogical Swiss Army knife for their every academic and emotional need. 

But people can't do that.

People are flawed.

People mess up.

People are broken.

There is this machine called the Coca-Cola Freestyle that can dispense 165 different custom Coke drinks and flavors. From. The. Same. Machine.

Sometimes I wish that was me. That my students could hit a button and select the methods of instruction that work best with their learning style. I could connect to the auditory learners who love projects and music just as well as I could meet the needs of the multiple choice test-takers who love lectures and need to walk around while they think. Then, those kinesthetic thinkers who need to move around, and the auditory learners who need to hear things, and those students who struggle with executive functions and learn best with a graphic organizer and a teacher beside them, could all just hit a button and I could be that.

If someone needs corny jokes to relax? Presto, just hit the custom teacher button and the teacher fits the need.

If someone else needs a disciplinarian to keep them in line? Boom. The Freestyle Teacher is a master of restorative justice.

But people aren't like that. We can't be all things for all students. And, as teachers, graduation reminds us of this because, just as happy as we are to hug our former students and watch, admiringly, as they walk into the sunset of their future, there are also students who we think we might have missed; students for whom we could have done a little more, connected with more deeply.

But we're human. And we need humans. And there will be more humans to connect with those students, and that is all we can hope for: that the sum of a student's educational journey--whether it happens in a school or not--will include people who connect with that student. People who see them, and who leave them feeling fuller and more equipped to navigate the world where people are imperfect. And yet there is so much good in the midst of our mistakes, our risks, our flaws. Teachers bring out that good in children. They can see weakness and turn it into strength. And when they can't, they can trust that they did their best, and there will be other mentors and teachers and inspirations awaiting that child.

One of the graduates left a note in my mailbox.

It made me cry.

It ended with, 

"I wish you so much happiness..."

What a line.

What a good word.

That's my wish for my students, too.

That they would find their Coke Freestyle.

That their life would become the flavor that suits them.

I wish them so much happiness.

Freedom

The other day, something popped up on my Twitter feed that gave me pause.

If what it means to be 'educated' has changed, why hasn't the mechanism for becoming educated? #WednesdayWisdom

A response to this tweet soon followed:

Has what it means to be educated actually changed?

In all honesty, as I thought about this question, I became unsure...

Can someone actually receive an education? Is it bestowed, or is it achieved? Is it stalked like prey, or is it discovered like a treasure? Is it slain like a dragon, or liberated like a besieged castle? Is it built like a house, or conjured out of nothing like an alchemist's elixir?

Or, perhaps, an education is simply the sum of that which sticks.

When someone says, "I  got a crummy education in high school," what do they actually mean? What did they learn? If the answer is "nothing," who is to blame?

I don't entirely know where I'm going with this, but I saw a circularity to three interactions with students this week.

1. During a "This I Believe" speech, one of our 9th graders spoke about the reality that there's more to life than getting into Andover or Harvard...that getting over the pressure, embracing her own trajectory--one that was a complete rough draft, a work in progress--mattered more than anything else.

2. I watched a former student toe the line at Hayward Field in Eugene, OR last night. He had run on the cross country team when I was the assistant coach during my second year of teaching. He had been fast, but nothing extraordinary. I watched this student run 1500 meters in 3:41. He qualified for the finals on Friday. Surrounded by nearly 10,000 screaming fans, with the name of his Ivy league college adorning his chest, he breathed, strained, and exploded across the finish line in a blur of euphoria, sinews, and sweat.

3. I ran into the father of a former student last week. In 8th grade, the student had been in my advisory, and the family shared their plan for college: "[She] is going to get a college scholarship for field hockey," they said. "That is the plan." And it worked. Four years later, she enrolled at Quinnipiac University on a full scholarship. In the first week of practice during her freshman year, she tore her ACL. Over the course of the recovery process, she realized she wanted to play sports at a Division III school--there would be less pressure, more opportunity--and she transferred to a small college in North Carolina. A year later, she realized that in all of the pressure of making field hockey her life, of attending camps, practicing, practicing, practicing, it wasn't what she loved to do anymore. She had lost the love of the game that identified her. So, again, she transferred. This time, she wanted to go somewhere that was big enough for her to stretch herself, to reclaim her identity, to discover herself again...to be free. "So she's headed to Ohio State in the fall," her dad told me. "And she wants to be a teacher! Can you believe that...she loves it, loves the kids, the possibilities."

One of these students has carved his place in the world through sports. Another found that, once life humbled her--threw her a different direction, a new opportunity--it granted her the opportunity to explore her surroundings, to slow down and ask, "Who am I?"

One of my favorite educational theorists, bell hooks, wrote about this in the first book about teaching I ever loved, Teaching to Transgress:

“There are times when personal experience keeps us from reaching the mountain top and so we let it go because the weight of it is too heavy. And sometimes the mountain top is difficult to reach with all our resources, factual and confessional, so we are just there, collectively grasping, feeling the limitations of knowledge, longing together, yearning for a way to reach that highest point. Even this yearning is a way to know.” 

Sometimes, it's a different mountaintop.

When I was 16, I was in a horrible car accident.

Horrible.

I was driving, I became distracted, swerved, overcompensated, hit the snow at 65mph and went airborne.

It took them three hours to dig the car out.

Miraculously, all four of us survived this wreck.

It took a long time for me to heal.

Another thing this accident did, though, was it forced me to stop playing soccer and lacrosse. 

I took up running. I started writing poetry.

Suddenly, running and poetry were what sustained me. 

I wrote this--the beginning of a poem about what life was teaching me--a year later as I continued to process what it meant to have the view of my life change; what it meant to have my plan erased.

Here's what the unexpected does to us: it complicates things...it makes us hurt...it cauterizes our innocence...it curdles the sweet parts. But it also grows us, prunes us. It makes us free. 

As 17 year-old me once wrote, we've always wondered about this freedom, but we've never known to ask.

Freedom is scary, but it is new, and if we take the opportunity to reconnect with the present-tense version of ourselves, we gain perspective.

And that's when, as bell hooks goes on to explain, "education [is] about the practice of freedom."

At moments of rebirth, our education really begins. 

Education hasn't changed, it's still about the practice of freedom. If we can invite the personal into our educational narratives; if we can embrace the humbling moments of failure, struggle, and interrupted plans, then we can reclaim the mechanism for becoming educated, and liberate that beautiful, beating glob of muscle in our chests.