Values

My friend Crista created this list of values and the other day I had the pleasure of talking with her about it. Among many other things, Crista is a "life coach" and has helped many to better understand themselves, their trajectories, their purposes, their identities. One of the exercises she conducts is to ask people 

"which values would you want to impart to your teenage self to guide you to a successful future?"

As both a teacher of adolescents and someone who was once a teenager myself, I love that question so much. We don't have the opportunity to literally revisit our pasts, but we can revisit them in an effort to reflect upon what was missing and how our values now could be influenced by both the values we had and those we lacked in our youth.

But the exercise also allowed me to think about my students and the young people with whom I interact. It made me consider the wisdom I've developed as a result of many mistakes made in my younger years.

This morning I sat at a diner with my friend Greg, who asked me if I could identify the people in my life who serve as my mentors, as well as the people I mentor.

"Will, you need to know who they are...and they need to know that you view them that way. How do you communicate that you see them in these ways?"

I do have mentors, as well as people I see as being influenced by me, but I'm not certain I do a good enough job of communicating that. On the list above connecting with others represents one of my core values in life. I love it, I need it, I feel the most myself when I connect with others. But I want to be more intentional in the ways I connect.

Today I wrote six cards to the six 9th grade students who spoke at yesterday's student-led walkout. They were simply stunning, elegant, and borderline prophetic in sharing their words. They are the product of their great teachers who have given them opportunities to speak, to write, and to get in touch with their emotions...but they also have great hearts. In life, mentorship, I learned (as I watched them speak), isn't binary. We enter into relationship with people and wisdom can be bestowed, and we can become inspired, but it can work both ways. We connect with others by dwelling in a place of mutual respect, and by listening with a goal of finding meaning in each other.

Yesterday I saw TRUTH and FORTITUDE modeled by my students. I am grateful I had mentors in my adolescence who were able to model those tenets for me as well.

The final words I wrote on those letters to the 9th graders?

"I hope there is a version of you in 9th grade when when my own children arrive in the Upper School in another seven years."

I can't rely on my own parenting to guide my children...for they will seek their own relationships with others; they will have their own values; and they will one day reflect back on their own adolescences and say, "I wish I could impart that value upon my teenage self."

My students are ahhhmazing

On February 15th, the morning after 17 students and educators were killed in the midst of their school day at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, three of my former students--current 9th graders--stood before their classmates and spoke. Their topics weren't focused solely on the events of the day prior, but I ripped out a piece of paper and jotted down a few of their words. I was simply awestruck. I wanted to save their words. I wanted, thirty years from now, when they are running for president, or raising amazing children, or teaching 8th graders, to have these words be a part of my memory of them.

But then it occurred to me that I don't have to wait thirty years. They are amazing right now. They deserve my attention. They are AMAZING. RIGHT. NOW.

And they are ready for their moment. They are not giving away their shot.

Say, did I mention Alexander Hamilton was 19 in 1776?

Nineteen.

Right now as I write this, they (and some of their classmates) are literally outside my classroom in the hallway talking about what they want their response to be, and how to pull our school together in a moment of unity on March 14th when they participate in the national walk out.

It makes me think of the Hawaiian phrase, Na Kuleana. It means "Our Responsibility," but has deeper implications about a collective responsibility to the earth, its people, and ourselves.

Too often, we place curricular ceilings on our students based upon the textbooks we use, the rooms in which we teach. We talk too much, and we ignore the world; we place ourselves at the center of our worlds, and--by default--that centers our classrooms around us, the teachers.

My responsibility is to listen better, and to invite my students to take over.

Today one of my students asked, when referring to a Clay Shirky TED talk we'd watched in class, "Wait, why can't we create something like that?!"

Tonight I am doing some research so that tomorrow I can tell her that we can.

After all, as my brilliant former student so beautifully said last week, "...we can't resign to believing that this is how the world should work." I should take his classmate's advice and tell him how I feel.