Consent

"Inappropriate touching" has become a reoccurring issue in my classroom over the past week or two. Today, one of my students stood in line with his hands inside the back of a female-bodied student's skirt.

Instead of scolding him for the umpteenth time for what is quite honestly a developmentally normal process of body/gender awareness, and yet again shaming him for his sexuality during a time that is critical for establishing early sexual attitudes on such things as the opposite gender and nudity, I decided to provide him a lesson on consent.

The lesson was a simple one. If you want to touch or hug a friend, you have to ask, first. If he or she says "yes," you can go ahead and touch or hug them. If he or she says, "no," you must keep your hands to yourself. By the end of the day, the word had somehow spread without my knowing, and I was amazed at the conversations I was overhearing.

"Can I touch your shoulder?"
"No."
"Okay, can I touch your head?"
"Yes, you can touch my head."
"Okay, I'm going to touch your head!"

"Can I give you a hug?"
"No, I don't want a hug."
"Okay."

Okay.

"When life is sweet, say thank you and celebrate.
And when life is bitter, say thank you and grow."

Shauna Niequist

The Real Thing

"Oh, so you just watch babies all day."

"No, I teach all day."

"Yeah, babies. So you're like a babysitter."

I am a teacher. In just three weeks, I will have a classroom of twenty incredible, young human beings. In my classroom, they will make friends, explore, learn, and gain the tools to navigate their expanding world. 

It is for them that I wake up every morning at 5:30am and embark on a daily 4-hour-long commute. It is for them that I overcome my fear of public singing and learn to recite children's tunes by heart. It is for them that I bite my tongue and politely explain to my family that I am in fact a "real teacher" and that this is in fact my "real job". 

It's hard work to be doing something that your family openly disapproves of and, on a good day, considers a "break" before medical school. 

But this is not a break. This is not a gap year. This is not service work that I'm doing in the inner city. This is my job. This is my daily commitment. And thanks to my students, this is my joy.

I'm writing this as a reminder for myself to return to on days when I feel defeated and completely spent; days that feel like shit and quite possibly involve child-sized shit. And the reminder is this: Whether they feel like it or not, regardless of what went on at home, every child who steps into my classroom has come to learn. So whether I feel like it or not and regardless of what goes on in my own home, I will be there for my students.

There will always be the temptation to treat whatever I'm doing as a "break." Just something I'm doing until the next thing―the real thing. Just something I have to push through until Friday... until summer... until it's over. 

So I think we have to fight to find the joy in every day. We have to fight against the exhaustion that makes us look forward to the weekend and the dissatisfaction that makes us dread Mondays. Of course, shit days will be shit days―always. But I believe that even those days have joy that can be fought for and won. And it is a joy that is beyond our circumstances and satisfaction. It is one that gives us the advocacy to say, "I take ownership of my life. I am alive." 

I am living my life. Life is not merely happening to me. Time is not simply passing me by. I am here. I am present. I am alive. 

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company...a church....a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude...I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you...we are in charge of our attitudes.” - Charles R. Swindoll

We need to change.

There is a quote by Mary Oliver that has been sitting on my desktop for many months now.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

I used to think that I loved that quote. 

Lately, I read it and the words leave a faint, bitter trail on my tongue. They linger there and make me wonder if it isn't a privilege that I am able to ask myself that question.

Last week, a young boy in my class said that he would amount to nothing because he was "too dark." Earlier the same week, he turned four years old.

I don't know if he truly understood the implications of what he said or its severity. A part of me doesn't want to know. A selfish part of me wants to believe that he didn't. 

But it doesn't matter what I want. 

The reality is that our society does not see black children as precious. We do not value their bodies and their minds the same way we do others'. Meanwhile, police brutality rages. Schools close. Prisons expand. The death toll rises.

Meanwhile, I pray that I will learn to be a good teacher to my students. I pray that we will not tire of learning our history and acknowledging its brutal injustice. I pray that our society does not tire of change.

God knows we need to change.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over again announcing your place
in the family of things.

By Mary Oliver

Spring

Spring dropped by this morning and teased us with visions of green grass and breezes warm enough to thaw the glacial mounds heaped in the corner of basically every parking lot ever. I edged my potted succulents toward the window where, at last, I didn't have to worry about it catching frost.

Good Morning. Are you hungry?
A light sprinkling of water, just enough to dampen the soil.
Lots of sunshine today. Things are looking up.

I once asked my mother why she talked to her plants and she told me that all things need to know they are loved in order to grow well.

It's been a long winter. Between applications, senioritis, and the never-ending wait to hear back, growing well has... well, it's been hard.

Which is precisely why I wanted to remember today. Sitting by the window, soaking in the warmth of a long-awaited sun, I was reminded of the sureness of certain things:

More opportunities.
The love of my Father.
The return of spring.

Dust

Someone spoke to me last night,

told me the truth. Just a few words,

but I recognized it.

I knew I should make myself get up,

write it down, but it was late,

and I was exhausted from working

all day in the garden, moving rocks.

Now, I remember only the flavor—

not like food, sweet or sharp.

More like a fine powder, like dust.

And I wasn’t elated or frightened,

but simply rapt, aware.

That’s how it is sometimes—

God comes to your window,

all bright light and black wings,

and you’re just too tired to open it.

By Dorianne Laux

Speech to the Young

Say to them,

say to the down-keepers,

the sun-slappers,

the self-spoilers,

the harmony-hushers,

"Even if you are not ready for day

it cannot always be night."

You will be right.

For that is the hard home-run.

Live not for battles won.

Live not for the-end-of-the-song.

Live in the along.

By Gwendolyn Brooks

Relish

It's been four weeks since classes started, three since I turned twenty-two, and two since October came around and brought with it the flurries of Fall. It's been one week since I started writing this which means I had to go back and change the number of weeks that have gone by. 

Time is flying by again and I'm afraid this will all be over too soon. 

Fall. Winter. Spring. Cap. Diploma. Farewell. Go on.

Did you notice what happened there? 

I fast forward eight months and filled the expanse between now and then with worry. 

I've noticed that when you live in such crippling fear of the future, it's hard to live in the present and relish the details of day-to-day life. It's like being on a train and keeping your eyes fixed so far ahead to where the rail blurs with the horizon that you completely miss out on the breathtaking scenery passing by to your right. 

I'll admit that it's a corny analogy, but it's heartbreaking to step back and realize how much I regularly neglect because of all the time and energy I lend to worrying about what may or may not (ever) be.

You climb aboard and find a seat. Untangle headphones. Nestle in for a nap. Maybe pull out that book you never finished. No doubt that in a couple of hours the whistle will blow and the chugging will slow to a stop. There's no doubt that you will get there. 

I have to trust that I will get there. 

In the meantime, it's nice to look out the window and relish the sight. 

I need to stop (and so do you)

I’m very fortunate to have had genuinely kind friends for most of my life and a loving mother for all it. However, growing up as a soft-spoken, bookish girl, I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with bullying, ranging from youth group teasing to explicit physical and verbal abuse. My most relentless bully was a girl who used to force me into secluded spaces and tell me things like, “You’re so ugly, you should kill yourself.”

I entered high school believing that I was finally safe from the senseless hate, only to be met with the craftiest bully of all: Gossip.

 Naively, I held my hopes up in college for a second time.

Lather, rinse, repeat. 

I’m starting to fear that there really is no magic number, no age at which bullying just quietly expires.

Now, let me call myself out: I gossip. And I’m of the evilest type of gossipers, the ones that think they’re clever and disguise their abuse with flowery language and feign innocence. I literally preface it with, “I don’t mean to gossip or anything, but . . .”

But . . . there’s just no excuse. I need to stop. And if you gossip, so do you.

Perhaps, it’s a matter of bad habit. As children, we tattled to our teachers and parents. Some kid would push us on the playground and, regardless of our actual hurt, we would unleash the waterworks and recite our dramatic telling of injustice and woe. Then, we would secretly revel in the subsequent satisfaction of watching our antagonist be pulled aside and chastised.

Isn’t that the same sort of satisfaction we get out of gossiping? Someone annoys us or hurts our ego, so we tell others. We exchange juicy details in “confidence.” We air others’ dirty laundry. We slut-shame. And for that very, very brief moment, by focusing on someone else’s humiliation, we hold to the illusion of feeling better about ourselves.

There is so much that is worth exploring and discussing in regards to bullying, but I can’t not highlight gossiping. In our fast-paced, media-driven culture where words spread like wildfire and hold incredible power, gossip is nothing short of devastating. In my lifetime alone, I’ve witnessed it burn down too many friendships and families, even entire churches.

Like all forms of bullying, gossip leaves in its wake the scars of its sullied victims. And there’s no way of truly undoing the damage, ever.