Resilience

At a recent staff meeting, one of the teachers said that he tries to counsel every child who comes his way. While I think there's a big difference between professional therapy and the conversations I conduct, it left me reflecting on my own skills at helping my kids cope. I've grown much more comfortable with the variety of issues that come into my classroom, shouldered by children whose resilience leaves me reeling. 

Some students write me notes on the bottom of their tests, where I leave a space for "student-teacher communication." This is one way I keep track of who is freaked out about failing in another class, whose due date is approaching, who thinks they should have studied more but couldn't because they had to live with their cousins for a few days while their parents try to find housing, and who just likes to draw robots on the page. Sometimes I draw robots back. Usually I put a smiley face and few encouraging words. But occasionally I approach them at lunch or before class has started, and we have long conversations about the difficulties with which they're dealing-- difficulties with which I cannot pretend I have ever had to cope.

Some students come to tutoring, where they look up from the concept they're struggling with to tell me that I was right, it was good advice not to seek vengeance on their friend, they ended up straight after all. Some spend the whole tutoring session asking me for college advice, until they drop their essay on cognitive development and we sit together to outline their admissions essay on "why they want to go to the U of X." 

Some students drop bombs in their papers, nonchalantly sharing episodes of violence they've survived, or family members who didn't, in essays meant to be about the influence of society upon behavior or the vividness of memory under times of stress. In my follow-ups I'm always astounded by the degree of vitality the students exhibit. It reminds me of the first student with PTSD I ever taught, who wrote in a poem, "I don't want to survive. I want to live."

Some students approach me purely for reassurance, as an adult who can affirm their worth. Today a student asked if she could speak with me privately. She had been offered an opportunity that her family had laughed at, saying, "people like us don't get that." She was the only one she knew offered it. What did I think? 

"Who are people like us?" I probed. 

"Hispanic," she answered. I pointed out that shouldn't be a factor-- shouldn't stop her, for an instant, because not only was it not true, but if it had been, well, she ought to be the one to change it.

"Well, I mean, also, only rich people. We're not high-class." 

"Having money doesn't matter. Having dignity matters. Treating other people right matters. And you said this is based on character... well, you have more character than just about every other person you've met." Possibly too much character, she worried. I grinned and replied she might have to tone it down a notch. But stay true to her self, ya know?

At lunch Friday, one of my old students came up to find out how I was doing. He is a gentleman on a soul-search. As another child ran past us, splashing us with a puddle and then calling back something rude to our startled 'hey!'s, he shook his head at what he called the state of his generation. He's been reading a lot lately, he says, and he's intrigued by Buddhism. It's a philosophy, not a religion, and his friends don't understand that; they joke that he'll become a monk. But he thinks it helps him with compassion. 

Our conversation was punctuated by quick greetings, as every student that passed us into the lunchroom stopped to dap up before they entered. The variety of students that saluted him speak more for his compassion than anything he's read about. He could teach Buddha a few things, most likely. 

Inside the lunchroom, my old ESL co-teacher approached me with something she had to share. Her class had just spontaneously started to speak of their journeys-- the harrowing paths they'd taken to come to America. They told of watching people die, of surviving without food, of crossing country after country to reach refuge. She was deeply touched as she recounted some of the stories.

As we looked around the lunchroom, we saw students laughing goofily, some deeply immersed in conversation, others reading or plugged into headphones. You could never tell their stories from their faces. The sadness and violence they may have experienced was dropped for the moment, replaced by chicken nuggets and friends. I watched them chatter and chirrup and realized that it doesn't matter how skillfully I respond to them; they are gloriously, vibrantly, resilient, and their ability to plunge on into friendship and learning and success makes the world ever-beautiful.