This I Believe

I believe all students need school to be a place they can be seen, heard, and understood.

When I close my eyes and think of how high school felt, I remember this: the bell had just rung. I was passing through other students in the hall, bodies rushing past me like water, when I suddenly realized I wasn’t in my body. I was looking down on myself from above — my awkward t-shirt and army bag. I was outside of my own body like a ghost.

Because I had no concept of who I was; the sprawling building, the cold, tiled halls and metal lockers, the hundreds of faces I didn’t really know. There was no place for me to settle and be. Instead, my identity ricocheted against the walls endlessly, asking: Who am I? Is this me?

If you had told me then that I would become a teacher ten years later, I never would have believed you. The last place I wanted to be was back in those halls where I felt disembodied. But here I am, beginning my second year of teaching, and the reason why I’m back in the halls is because I see how lost I was then, and I’m worried for some of my students now.

I’m worried that they are not being seen. They spend eight hours with us and then slip out of the school doors and into lives they do not always share with us. Lives that are sometimes painful and traumatizing. When we could have helped them find a place to be seen.

I’m worried that they are not being heard. They have separate lives, thoughts, dreams that they do not bring to school. Some of them write poetry in secret, some of them care for siblings, some of them are homeless. And those halls can be deafening. It is hard to hear a quiet song or plea for help over all of that noise.

I’m worried that they are not being understood because they are not being seen or heard. Because they need a safe space and they need some one to show them the way, through the halls.

I believe that we must find a way to make school feel personal in a time when school is increasingly impersonal.

I believe students want someone to ask them how their day has been, even if they seem standoffish.

I believe students want to share their personal stories, even if they hurt.

I believe students want to feel like they matter and are valued in their learning environment and their community.

I believe students need someone to help them be seen, heard, and understood.

This is a hard thing to do in an academic era of data and numbers. We are all being measured. But I believe I have to ground myself in this principle: School should be a place where students want to be. Students should feel they can connect with teachers and each other so that they can learn how to share the best of their stories and skills with their community.

And I believe, now more than ever, we need to ask ourselves: what is the purpose of school for our students? Or else we might lose some of our students in the halls.