About

"We are each of us angels with one wing. We can only fly by embracing each other."

Kids matter. Learning matters.

No fear.

Equipped with little more than these mottos, a competitive graduate degree in education, and an astonishing naïveté, I entered the classroom for my first year of junior high teaching last summer at a high poverty, high English learner school in Los Angeles. And it was slow motion bloody murder.

Still believing that kids matter, learning matters, and that the idea of no fear is technically possible, I soon learned that there is, in fact, a great deal of fear involved in the classroom experience. Students fear each other (Will I have friends?) and the teacher (will he/ she like me?). Parents fear for their students (Does my child have what it takes?) and that their child receives a good education (Will this teacher treat my child right?). Administrators fear lest their school not be successful (Will we create a team that works together? Will the parents work with us?). And teachers fear (by my experience, what the crappity crap am I doing? Are these kids learning anything? Was I meant to do this? Will this sixth cup of coffee kill me?).

But slowly moments of clarity begin to shine in, like dappled sunlight after a fiercely dark winter storm. A student leaves a note on your desk. A parent thanks you for staying committed to her child. An observation goes well.

For me, that moment came in full force when a colleague shared during a vulnerability-focused professional development day that she was amazed by my response to a particularly rascally (read: brutal) cohort of students (named Brown after the elite university). This group of students had given me plenty of reason to fear over the first half of the school year. You know the kind. Mean girls. Boundary pushers. Ganger uppers. Everything I said and did was questioned, argued, spit back at me. We just weren't getting each other.

But this fellow teacher saw possibility. Growth. Her words were something like, "The intestinal fortitude you had with those kids has amazed me. No matter what they have thrown at you, your love and courage with Brown just slowly won them over. And that is incredible."

Those words hit me like a sudden salve on a tired old wound. Slowly I was able to admit my own courage. Slowly I was able to realize that so much of what I had registered as fear was actually love. Caring so much that you hurt. Wanting so much for them that you disappointed yourself over and over. I saw the progress that had been made.

And so I took it on as a metaphor. Love and courage in the dry times. Love and courage where there is no visible growth yet. Love and courage with all the brown, dry places where the steady downpour of compassion and striving for excellence and just being there and not giving up will eventually yield tiny, tender shoots of green growth.

This long-winded blog is a memoir of love for students, for learning, for living without fear (eventually). It's also for pedagogy. The art and love of teaching. And for hearing from you, whether you are a parent, a fellow teacher, or an interested observer.

What about you? Do you believe in no fear? Do you believe in love and courage with brown (places, people, experiences)?

(P.S. Brown and I really get each other now. They are my strongest writers, and there is green, green life spouting up everywhere.)