"Are you crying?"
That was a question posed in my classroom a couple of weeks ago. And yes, it was lobbed my way. Actually, I was not really crying. I just had a little moisture on my lower eyelid that resembled a tear. If you had been in my room, you would understand.
At that point, I was laughing so hard, water fell out of my eyes. One student had just completed a reading of his Spoken Word Poem, a masterpiece titled "Mr. Kohls". One of the kids looked up at me and queried, "Mr. Kohls, are you crying?"
I answered honestly. "I've teared up several times this hour." Why lie? It was their fault.
We were wrapping up our poetry study as the school year wound down, and I had challenged my honors sophomores to pen a spoken word poem which they would then present to the class. Of course, "Do we have to say it out loud?" was the first question. I am not sure what part of "spoken word" the student was missing, but I answered, "Yes, but I won't make you stand up."
"Oh, ok then," he responded. It was the easy. As long as he didn't have to stand up, it was all good.
My kids are weird sometimes.
At other times, they are amazing. That day, I told them to get out their cell phones and place them on top of their laptops. I then told them to leave them there was we left the room and headed out to Crusader Field. I was going to lock the door, and everything would be all right. We were going outside, and we were going to write, on paper, with pencils. We spent the next 45 minutes scattered around the green turf and maroon endzones, kids sprawled out on the surface or leaning up against up against the goalposts. And, for the most part, they wrote. When one student said he could not come up with something to write, I told him to write about that. One young lady asked me to read what she had started; it was a piece on how the world might change if we didn't have cell phones.
"The room is lit up like a blazing fire had just been ignited.
But not a single light switch is turned on..."
Some would not let me see what they had written, while others asked me multiple times to check out what was scrawled on the notebook paper. One class was even a little late getting to their next hour because we lost track of time because they were into what they were doing. On the way inside, Raegan thanked me. When I asked her what for, she told me it was the longest she had gone without looking at her phone in as long as she could remember, and she felt good about that. She had written more, and better, than she had in a long time.
(On a side note, I geek out about tech in our classrooms. We are 1:1 laptops, and I love it. We are nearly paperless. I let my kids use their phones to do things in class, and I let them listen to music when they write or read. On this day, however, I felt like leaving it all behind was worthwhile.)
The next day, my second hour begged to do it again.
Now, I won't try to tell you that each and every one of the kids produced a masterpiece worthy of high literary praise. and not every topic was earth-shattering, at least not on the surface, but they were their topics and their words, and not a single kid balked at producing and presenting. Some of the pieces stood out, however, and, yes, they caused moisture to collect across my bottom eyelids.
One young lady wrote about how horrible she felt as she thought of having to present what she had written to our class. Her voice quivered as she began to deliver her lines, and her eyes never rose from the page that shook in her hands. She uttered one of the greatest lines I have heard as she personified her anxiety:
"He is the weight on my back telling me to stand up straighter as he holds me down."
She finished, and as she took a deep breath in the silence before the first class member started the traditional snaps, I heard someone across the room whisper, "Wow." The activity for the day would not appear explicitly anywhere on a state assessment report card, but it was a victory, not just for Emma, but for so many of the kids who had a chance to shine that day. The girl who wrote that family is not everything, at least not for her, because her family situation is something she must overcome, the boy who penned a piece about his social anxiety and presented for the first time all year in any class, the multiple young ladies who wrote about doubting their self-worth because they question whether what they see in the mirror each day will be seen as pretty. I am not sure if it is because I am the father of a daughter or because these girls are truly good and beautiful people who should never doubt their value, but that one bothered me. One student wrote passionately of the love she has for music, painting a picture of little girl dreaming of being a lead singer in a rock band, only to discover that she couldn't sing. Another wrote of her love of 'home':
"Home-grown
Like a seed planted in the soil
Watered and weeded
We grow taller and taller
Our buds aching to find the sun
Twisting around to be graced by the bright
Warm
Light
But still anchored firmly in the ground..."One poem was inspired by Hakuna Mutata of The Lion King fame, and another explored the importance of eye-contact. One young man wrote about the feeling of hurling pitches from the mound while another penned an ode to the weight room. I could go on and on. The topics were as diverse and wide-ranging as, well, the personalities of the people I am blessed to work with each day. I was given a brief glimpse into the hearts of some of these kids, a little shutter flash that many struggle to allow. It makes them vulnerable, and for some of those kids, that is the last thing they want to feel when they come to school. If they are going to let me in, if they are going to sincere and genuine with me, I owe it to them to be same. So, if I tear up listening to them read, I am not ashamed to let them see that. My "football coach" status does not preclude me from letting them see me as vulnerable. It is not always fun or easy for me, as was put on display when my fifth-hour seniors demanded I read them the poem I had handed them just before class ended on their last day, a piece titled "A Letter to my Seniors". I wasn't planning to read it outloud to them because I knew I would struggle to make it, but when Tiffanie said, "Hey, you made us read our stuff," I had no way out. They deserve my sincerity. Every one of my kids does.
And they continue return the investment many times over.
Thank you for sharing.
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