Here to be here

I really enjoy reading, but the book I've been reading this week has been particularly touching. You see, my mother shared this collection of essays, a word from the field, that her friend Brendan compiled a few years ago. I was drawn to Brendan's words because, firstly, they were beautiful reflections on adventure, life, art, self-exploration, and the thin line between nature and humanity.

There were three moments, however, that struck me most deeply. The first was the following passage.

Like Brendan, I too am still much the same kid I was twenty years ago though I often fear I've changed. Like him I am excited by beauty and a little too easily hurt by the world. I still need to be cared for and, yes, I am still searching for poetry in daily life.

It made me happy to read Brendan's words and to know that others reflect in the ways I do. We grow and we stay the same. We take baby steps forward, we shed our skin, our hair changes, our joints grow creaky...but at the end of the day, we are still the little children we once were if we allow ourselves to be.

I was also touched by the words he shared from Peter Matthiessen: 

"I am here to be here."

I shared these words with my students today as we prepared together for their final exam in my world cultures course. "What," I asked them, "would a Taoist say about this line?" "How about a Buddhist?" "And a Confucian scholar?"

In essence, I wanted them to prepare for the exam by looking through the lens of this statement...by asking "Why are we here?" because that's what belief is...and it is so central to the ways we build culture.

Culture answers the question, Why are we here?

I also encouraged my students to read these lines as they prepare for their English exam...which characters about whom we've read this year would identify with these words? Who stays the same? Who changes? Who, over the course of the novels we've read, transforms and loses themselves? Who finds themselves?

Everything can be an opportunity to think deeply about what we are learning. Everything is a lens into our minds. Everything is connected. And when my students ask "Does this matter?" during an exam review session, I always say, "It all matters! Yes!" then I add, "but it won't necessarily help you get an A."

In his next essay I was reminded that I am here. Teaching at my school. Learning alongside my students. Befriending so many in this community. We have boarded a ship together and we are tacking for the horizon, whatever it may bring.

These are uncertain times. But I am certain that our ability to cling together will sustain us, whatever the storm may be.

On a deeply personal level, this notion of "sister ships," those "parallel lives" we didn't chose, but that have still left a mark on us resonated with me. 

I reflect often on decisions I've made and circumstances in which I've found myself. I daydream sometimes about what might have been. Not because I wish for a different outcome, but simply because I am a dreamer and I wonder where those ghost ships are and who may have taken my place at the helm of that story.

Brendan wrote these words as he navigated Escalante, one of my favorite places in Southern Utah. I happened to have walked the same steps he walked as he wrote about these "sister ships." I even slept beneath the same outcropping of rock he described, gazing up at a ribbon of stars and the ancient petroglyphs on the wall of stone behind me. I walked and slept among these magnificent rock canyons of Death Hollow with my father just before I moved to Connecticut in 2008 to take the job I now love. That hike was my swan song to southern Utah...that ship sailed off in another direction. But the beauty was that my father had also left Utah when he, too, was in his twenties. He embarked on a new adventure, one that included my arrival to the world.

There's something magic about space and time. I am aware of that with a week to go until my students are no longer my students, off on their own ships, navigating new seas.

And here I am. Here to be here. Glad to be aboard this ship, churning slowly forward alongside these shipmates, ready to face the mysteries of the deep. Here to be here.

How We Think About Power

At the recommendation of one of my students, I decided, instead of requiring my students to read the same novel to conclude our time together in English class, that I would instead invite each of them to select their own "choice reading" book from a list I compiled in collaboration with our school librarian and the incredible support of the #NCTEvillage hashtag on Twitter.

The eleven books we ended up with were united by their connection to POWER as a literary theme.

On Wednesday of this week I decided to encourage the class (and their grandparents who happened to be on campus!) to lean into an opportunity to think laterally.

This was a different way of thinking for them, but it represents such an important skill in their lives. I asked them to take the scientific formula for power (one with which they were quite familiar from their work this month in Physics class) and ask, "is this formula the same for societal power?" Can we metaphorically think of the power that humans wield (political, social, familial, etc.) in such a simple output-based manner?

 

As always, my students took the bait and off they went. They didn't settle for "yes" and "no." 

Instead, I listened in awe as they discussed the nature of manipulation and circumstance and luck and birthright and inherited power and fear and mentorship and courage and relationships...none of those elements are evident in the formula above. But they also were able to acknowledge that if Archie (the newest royal baby at Buckingham Palace) was like a bouncy ball, his starting point was simply higher than others...that he was likely to bounce higher (i.e. have more power) than others because he needed less force...the gravity of circumstance would simply propel him by merely existing.

It was so neat to watch them all being lateral thinkers. They applied their scientific understanding and slid back and forth from the literal to the figurative, from the physical to the metaphorical...from the quantitative to the qualitative. 

I was proud of their thinking, sure. They are more than ready for the final exam, and they are more than ready for 9th grade. But the pride I saw in the eyes of their grandparents and special friends was even more exciting. They have the long view on their grandchildren's lives and they know that an ability to think so flexibly and to courageously take risks in the classroom will be skills that support their growth and achievement...because knowledge, after all, is power.

A Mindset of Scarcity

Yesterday I found myself in a car for two hours and seized the opportunity to listen to an audio version of Brene Brown's The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings on Authenticity, Connection and Courage.

In the first 30 minutes or so, Brown explains that we live in an age of perceived scarcity. From the moment we wake up ("I didn't get enough sleep!") to the moment our head hits the pillow ("I didn't get enough done!") we have grown to adopt a mindset that we aren't enough or haven't done enough.

The same is true for my students.

But as Brown explains, the solution to the scarcity mindset is not abundance. Instead, it's the opposite...

For my students, I believe it's about being present. About finding joy. About reading for pleasure. Finding things to be interested in. 

In short, as Cathy Vatterott noted in a recent Educational Leadership article entitled "The Teens Are Not Alright," teens need, more than anything, "Time to just be teens."

This week and next my students are working together to turn their research on independent World Congress topics into collaborative speeches. The World Congress Symposium takes place in another twelve days and their task is a big one. But it's a task that is so similar to the projects they will undertake when they are older. Whether in high school, college, or their careers after graduation, they will be parts of teams and they will need to incorporate their skill sets into the complex chemistry of the groups of which they are a part. They will have deadlines and they will need to manage their time. 

But they won't be required to be on task 100% of the time. Their energy will ebb and flow. They will need comic relief. They will need breaks. They will need to be doing things for pleasure outside of the workplace, pursuing their interests, finding pleasure and joy, and connecting with other humans.

So as I watch my students working hard, I am not so myopic to think that they need to be on task all the time. What I can do for them, though, is name and affirm these strengths when I see them. I can ask them questions based on how I perceive and observe their energy.

"I notice how much you value humor...that's such an important part of who you are."

or

"You seem so genuinely excited about timing your speech...that's a really cool thing. What do you think it is about revising and rehearsing that you enjoy so much?"

or 

"So when do you think your group will need a study break? Let's look at the clock and be realistic about how much you can get done before you reward yourselves with a few minutes of down time."

By discussing time and the ways that energy shifts in a group, I hope I can help them gradually shift their awareness of the scarcity mindset. Maybe I can help them hold their perfectionism more loosely, and relax in the midst of their excessive workloads (whether perceived or real). 

I think teens can be reflective in the midst of being teens. Sometimes they just need a gentle nudge to believe there's enough time for it.

Naming our Gifts

Back when I was in college I worked for Red Bull.

My job title was student brand manager and my role was to make connections on my college campus with people and groups who were "on brand" with the Red Bull identity.

It spoke to many of my strengths as an enthusiastic extrovert who loved making connections with people, was optimistic and found great joy seeking fun in the outdoors.


Among my responsibilities I was also supposed to "seed" Red Bull to people at the exact right moment when it would have a positive impact on them (at the gym, in the library, heading to a campus job, etc.)

Oh, and once a year I would attend a retreat for all the other American Red Bull SBMs. At these retreats we would do many activities, but one of the most memorable was when we were asked to watch potential commercials for Red Bull. The commercials were all over the place. Some were funny. Some weren't. Some were offensive. Others were crazy.

And the purpose? Red Bull wanted to see where their guardrails were. They wanted us to say "Hey, commercial A is way too offensive, but commercial F is right on the border between funny and going too far."

We were their focus group and the experience of sharing hundreds of ideas with a group of people without concern for the terrible ideas was just incredible. It was Brainstorming in a way I'd never brainstormed before, and I imagine Red Bull ended up with the best ads that straddled the self-mocking, fun-loving, risk-taking nature of their brand.

Weirdly, I was reminded of this annual retreat today during my time with my students.

We have been learning about Japanese culture and today I had the chance to share some insights about the Japanese verb ikigai. I've written about it before, but it literally is made up of two Japanese words: iki (life), and gai (purpose). It is, in essence, the reason you get up in the morning...the thing you were meant to do.

As we talked about this I wrote some verbs that Tim Tamashiro uses when he discusses ikigai.

To Serve
To Create
To Delight
To Nourish
To Provide
To Teach
To Heal
To Connect
To Build

I asked students to write the verb to which they feel the greatest sense of connection...the one they feel like they instinctively do when they want to do good.

Then, on the other side of the card I had them write some element of our shared experience here at school that they saw as an opportunity to serve/create/delight/nourish/provide/teach/heal/connect/build.

And the result was amazing. They were so brilliant and so thoughtful and they care so much.

They truly are servers and creators and delighters and nourishers and providers and teachers and healers and connectors and builders.

All I did was gave them permission to (A) affirm their own strengths and gifts in an area of human connection, and (b) asked them to identify opportunities to use those gifts.

Then, we shared all the ideas. And we discussed the idea of "low-hanging fruit" and the small ways that cultural shifts can begin. And they all got so excited to be 9th grade leaders next year, or--for the students who will be heading elsewhere for their first year of high school--they became so excited about imagining what their classmates will do next year.

It felt a little like those Red Bull sessions when we'd ask, "Who does Red Bull want to be?" and "Where are the guardrails of what works and what is possible and effective?" "What are we capable of?"

This is how we impact culture, right? We find ways to empower people to use their energy, their gifts, to dig into transforming relationships slowly...one at a time...until a movement happens. Perhaps our life purpose--our ikigai--is actually a collective purpose toward which humanity is always moving. It requires each of us to use our strengths to impact the world around us.

Only my students are better than Red Bull because they're not selling anything...they are trying to make tomorrow better than today. You can't put a pricetag on that. And you certainly can't serve it up in a can.