Tag Archives: education

I Believe In Storylistening

I'll let you dissect the meaning between my paragraphs and the reason I've ended the sentence here. Instead of here.

I thought I wanted to be a peace-keeper. Say the right thing at the right time and always, always, tell the other person they were right.

I went through the last 21 years believing this. Believing in giving up pieces of myself because it was easier to nod and agree than to fight.

Maybe, in another life, I was a hippie with all that love. But then I read this tweet by Blair and I got thrown off kilter. Big time.

“What sucks is when you’ve written a post with the best of intentions & you know that no matter what, someone’s going to get butt-hurt.”

God yes, I thought.

That is right. So right.

Where has that little piece of insight been all my life? All this time while I’ve been sitting inside the lines of the coloring book, afraid to step outside the page. All this time while I’ve held my breath and waited for the storm in the next room to pass over. Where I’ve stopped myself from putting a fist in the wall because it’s easier to hurt inside than to tell someone else how I feel and risk hurting them.

Before I continue, let me say one thing: I am not advocating complete and utter selfishness.

I am advocating learning the difference between keeping your mouth shut and entertaining the possibilities.

Because change, ladies and gentlemen, cannot come about without the conflict of opinions I’m so afraid of. And the first step in the march toward forward progress is telling someone else what you’re thinking and waiting for a reaction.

Maybe it’s because I’m non-confrontational and maybe it’s because my dad lends me his Easy Pass to commute to New Jersey every week. But I’m more inclined to keep my lips sealed.

And a lot of times, that’s great. Smart. Reasonable.

Other times, it’s not.

Other times, I’m willing to break my hand. Make it swell into a black, blue, purple mess. See if the cast wrapped around my arm is any inclination that I’m not happy with the way things are going.

That’s unnecessary. We write about the tough stuff because it happens and it cannot be ignored. We discuss heartbreak and depression and bullying and family problems and try to debate the best way to handle a difficult parenting situation because there is no best way.

Because there is no right answer.

But the fact that I can offer my suggestions and you can offer yours is a beautiful freedom. A freedom that sparks conversation and facilitates progress and makes us stop and think about how we live our lives in the world where dropping a single bomb solves a multitude of problems.

So I’ll write. I’ll write my heart out on this screen for you and let you critique it and tell me what I’ve said that’s wrong. I’ll let you dissect the meaning between my paragraphs and the reason I’ve ended the sentence here. Instead of here.

I’ll let you interpret the unspoken thoughts running through my head because you cannot know exactly what I’m thinking but not knowing, not being sure, will lead you to ten thousand different conclusions. And all of them will bring about a more educated future.

All of them are worth entertaining on some level.

Dear WSJ, you've forgotten about childhood.

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When I read the book review written by the Wall Street Journal about teen literature, I wanted to scream. Take my laptop and chuck it out the window. Let it land in the hard earth beneath my second-story window and smash into two pieces.

But I knew that wouldn’t accomplish anything. I knew that my best bet, or my better one at least, would be to march straight up to the offices in New York and let the journalists know something fundamental:

That there are two types of educators.

There are those we recognize each year for outstanding achievements. For helping a child learn to speak English or bridging a relationship between two people using sign language. For crossing boundaries with test scores and setting the bar higher.

And then there are those who open our eyes by exposing the world’s injustices. Those who write stories of families who don’t function the same as the ones we see standing on the cover of real estate catalogs. Teens whose hearts break in the middle of the school hallway when the person they love kisses someone else in front of their locker between classes. Kids whose first lesson in separation is not going to sleepover camp but learning how to pack a bag to transition between a mother and father’s houses each weekend.

And I’m concerned the Wall Street Journal doesn’t know that. Or, if I’m giving those journalists the benefit of the doubt, I’d say this:

“You’ve forgotten. You’ve forgotten about childhood.”

“What are you talking about? Of course we haven’t.”

“It’s okay,” I’ll tell them. “That’s what we’re here for. To remind you.”

“We don’t need to be reminded. We remember. That’s why we’re doing this.”

“That’s why?” I’ll shake my head at the floor and wait for them to backtrack and say it’s not true.

They won’t.

“Yes,” they’ll say. “We’re trying to keep kids thinking positively. Clearly. They have enough problems.”

Kids have enough problems. They don’t need us to stack the problems of the protagonist from their favorite novel on top of the family issues and fights between friends and therapy sessions. They just need to pretend that life really is guaranteed to come tailor made with a white picket fence.

They need a promise that tomorrow will be better.

The Wall Street Journal seems to have forgotten that that’s why we write these stories. That’s why we breathe life into these characters whose problems might, at times, frighten us.

We need to remember that change is possible. That these stories and these problems are real, yes, but the transformation within them is, too.

Being a teen sucks. And maybe that sounds juvenile but that’s exactly what your 15-year-old son or daughter will tell you. Your heart will break for a thousand different reasons and not all of them have to start with a crush. Not all of the heartbreaks have to take up permanent residence in their bodies.

Some of them can be healed.

Some of them can be exposed for what they are and worked through and someone in this world’s got to shine light on those situations. Someone’s got to believe in the lost causes.

“Maybe,” I’d tell those journalists, “that’s our job. To write what’s real and make it better. To give these kids hope. Do you want to cut down their hope?”

And I’ll stand in front of these professionals with tears streaming down my eyes because I’m scared they won’t understand. I’m scared they don’t want to.

Education might start in the classroom but it ends in the streets.

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my sister doing math homework

Last spring, I got a 4.0. I’m not telling you this to brag or even to suggest to you that it’s possible. In fact, I’m telling you for the exact opposite reason.

For six semesters, it’s been the only number worth memorizing. And at the expense of my sanity and well being.

I was the girl who spent Sunday afternoons in a study corral at the library. Hunched over a statistics textbook, redoing problems until my answer matched the one in the back of the book.

Someone needed to stop that girl. Grab her pencil and textbook. Take them hostage.

Because a spoken word poem about a 9-year-old boy with cancer stopped me dead in my tracks Monday night. And I realized that education is not two numbers separated by a period on my official transcript.

Education is the realization that getting an A-minus is not the end of the world. Because I’m alive and my heart is pumping and there are hundreds of injustices in this world. And I work this hard for what? For a number that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

Tears streamed down my face as I watched the video. Because the girl in the study corral, she missed out on the sun shining outside that day. She missed out on the hundreds of other people in this world with a story to tell and pain in their hearts and nobody put that girl’s actions into perspective.

I used to think education was a classroom full of kids, all in ruler-straight lines of desks, perfect posture and hands folded over hands in laps. Waiting with eager eyes and antsy feet tap-tap-tapping until the bell rang and then silence for 46 minutes.

Education equated to discipline. To perfectly written five-paragraph essays and math tests with no red lines scribbled on them. Grades with three digits.

I want you to know that it’s not true. I have two semesters left. One year. I’ve been in school since I was five years old. That’s 16 years of believing one silly little thing. And it’s not true.

That poem I watched was just the first of a whole stampede of experiences and ideas and insights that I’d sheltered myself from. I didn’t know how to save the world or raise my voice above the cacophony of sounds radiating from the universities around the world, filled with people who all wanted to help and be heard and volunteer and give back.

I didn’t realize that the only thing I had to do was start by breaking the mold. Start by being honest with myself and then spreading that honesty like peanut butter. Letting that gooeyness stick into all the crevices.

You’d be amazed how people can relate to honesty.

There’s a world outside the box, outside the doors of the library, outside the entrance to the university. Education might start in a classroom but it ends in the streets where kids are playing and getting caught up in violence and parents are sitting them down at the kitchen table to impart life lessons. And those parents go to bed praying they’re doing something right.

The first thing they can do? Tell their kids to break the mold. To find balance between school and everything else. To give themselves a break.

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