I have a student working on a found poem right now, so I’ll also do some quick writing next to him. As I’ve commented before, one of the best ways to write is right alongside the student… it’s like a spiral where both of us are generative, knowing the other is hard at work.
As I was making my hour-long commute to this site this morning, I was thinking through some ideas. I’ve been thinking about how our jobs as teachers is in many ways to just sit inside the pain of our students’ lives. While sitting there, hopefully we provide both some comfort and guidance through the pain.
Which brings me to my own students. All of them are at sites for the pained (remember, these are “alternative schools”). That’s a different way of looking at how we otherwise label them… kids who are “at-risk,” “behavior problems,” “substance abusers,” “difficult.” How about just pained? Isn’t that the deeper root of why they’re here? Pained by the harsh realities of a world which lets so many of them be disposable, kids on the fringe whose lives are too difficult for most of us to want to look at, to want to understand the larger factors which contribute to their lives?
So I sit next to my student, feeling strange inside this pain. We spend so much time trying to run away from pain… television, music, food, and, in the case of my students, less socially acceptable forms of numbing (fights, drugs, acting out and under-achieving at school). The one right next to me works, pouring over a text as he tries to lift meaningful pieces of text to craft a new piece of literature. And as he works, he’s creating, and hopefully I can help him see that he can be a creator of new things, pieces of meaning which elevate him and anyone who reads his work from his point of pain.
And at the same time, I try to communicate that I’m willing to be next to him as he works through all this, inside the pain.
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