4. My Heart Knows Its True Name

 #66Challenge

Today in my journal I wrote a long letter to myself.

It seemed like a perfect entry to include as part of my #66Challenge

 

Dear Helen,

It's dawning on you more and more that this school year is about love and safety and kindness. But you can see we can't get there directly. It has to be done from several directions.

One is the overall focus school-wide, which is community. Good start. 

Second, the classroom FLOW which includes how we listen, speak, and conduct ourselves. This has been the current focus and it will probably go on for a while. 

Next up -- empathy and power through reading. Getting a book in the hand of every student. One they want to read, above or below their "level."

Essentially, Helen, you've been given a gift -- these kids you've taught before, those who have been affected by the pandemic for the entire time you've known them, need you more than ever. You have a chance to make an impression on them in roundabout ways. The Read 180 program is what we DO. The WHY of what we do will need to be addressed, and not just once, but over and over again.

You joked about coming into the school year a hot mess and finding a beautiful direction. But look -- it's working. Over the summer you would have never gone this direction, taken this path.

This is the crux of it all:

BEING PRESENT.

Thursday was a turning point -- when you broke through the reliance on the program. It isn't the curriculum.

Kindness is the curriculum. And caring. And believing.

You're being reminded of your first year at Lehigh, how it was a few weeks in when you got the grip of what to do with those seniors to provide what they needed. That year, too, you didn't come in with preconceived notions because you truly did not know how you were going to reach and teach them.

But you sat down Labor Day weekend and made a plan to help them comprehend text and by October some were passing the FCAT on the fourth try, leading to the promise of graduation. And more followed.

You put their interests first. You made it accessible. You took the difficulties of studying British Literature and lightened it up. Made it about being a hero of your own story. Doing right. Not shying away from poetry.

And you believed in them, and they knew it.

This is still the message we need over and over and over again.

They were far from easy.

The kids in front me you now...far from easy.

See the rainbow path.

It is always there for you.

It is real.

It is accessible.

Do not resist.

BELIEVE.

Signed...Your True Heart