Hello friends,
You made it. It’s the end of the 2020/21 school year.
Are you throwing your hands in the air as you triumphantly blaze through the finish line like a marathon runner who knows they just won? Are you barely surviving, dragging your sore, battered body across the line? Are you less dramatic than my imagination and casually sauntering through it all?
However you got here, you made it, and congratulations are in order!
One of my celebratory rituals at this time of year is to ask my students what they like about my classes, what they didn’t like and what can I do to be a more effective educator. This is one of my favorite things to do because kids are brutally honest. If they like you, they’ll let you know exactly why. If they don’t like you, they’ll also let you know exactly why. It’s feedback I know exactly what to do with. Because I work with a wide range of ages (this year they’re spanning from 1st through 6th), I rarely hear the same thing twice. Until this year.
Every student that I have talked with this year has told me the same thing: “I like you because you let me do whatever I want.”
Every. Single. One. Of. Them. From the youngest to the oldest. They all told me that they like working with me because I let them do whatever they want.
Now, I know this is not true.
I spend a lot of time lesson planning. I pick the books that we are going to read or the stories I am going to tell deliberately. The writing prompts are directly tied to the literature and are covering skills or thought processes that I see they need to grow. I don’t let them do whatever they want. They are doing exactly what I want them to be doing.
I had to think about this feedback for a while because it caught me so off guard.
“I like you because you let me do whatever I want.”
The conclusion that I came to is they are trying to say “You let me learn in my own way.”
I take each of my students very seriously. I treat them as the unique individuals that they are. I treat them as people. When we have conversations about the material we are working with, I put myself at their level and talk to them as if we are peers. When they are writing, I see them as authors and it is my job to be their assistant, always in service to their ideas.
When it is time to work, I do let them have the freedom to find their own way there. I encourage them to let the material work through their imaginations and come out their fingers however it wants. To make it their own. And then I celebrate it.
My students are not writing responses that are identical to each other or regurgitating information that I give them. They are bringing their own ideas to the page. They are bringing themselves into their learning.
And they let me know that it feels good.
It’s not that they get to do whatever they want. It’s that they are showing up to their work exactly as they are. The freedom I am giving them is to be themselves, even as they are doing exactly what I have asked them to do.
It feels like they are doing whatever they want because they want to do what they are doing.
As we slide our way into summer break, I want to encourage you to give yourself permission to celebrate the amazing accomplishment of making it through the roller coaster that was this school year - the virtual learning, the return to on-campus learning, the additional homeschooling, the loss of beloved activities and social connection, and now the gradual return to it with all of the hopes, fears, and uncertainties that accompany it.
You might be feeling the pressure to rush into summer learning, anxious to make up for things that may or may not have been lost this year. And definitely do that if that’s your thing. We’ve been away for so long and being back to normal feels so close.
But let me also ask you this question. What if the most important learning that needs to happen right now (for you and for your kids) is pausing, reflecting on, and integrating all of the experiences of 2020/21?
Deep, meaningful learning happens best when it feels like you are doing exactly what you want to be doing. So go easy on yourself and go easy on your kids in this moment. Let yourself be exactly who you are while you’re with them and let your kids be exactly who they are when they’re with you.
Pretend that you are a student and life is the teacher that has given you an assignment with the freedom to complete it however you want it. Much like how I work with my students, life is encouraging you to let the material work through you in your own unique way and to let it come out exactly the way that is right for you. Make it your own. And celebrate it.
Bring yourself to this summer exactly as you are, do your learning and integrating in your own way and maybe you, too, will feel like life is your favorite teacher because it’s letting you do whatever you want while you’re in it’s classroom.