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.