One morning prior to the start of school I saw a student leaning against the wall. She had the ends of her hair dyed pink and a pensive look on her face. I said good morning to her and asked her how she was on a scale from one to ten. I think the question caught her off guard but she thought for a moment and told me she was at a six. I introduced myself and I told her that by the end of the day I hoped it would turn at least into an 8.
At the end of the school day, Ada was waiting on a bench for her mother to pick her up. I approached her and asked how the day turned out. She smiled and after taking a moment said, “Hmm, I’d say an eight!” We began to talk and I took note of the shirt she was wearing. It was a tee-shirt with a wolf on it, half black and half white, with eyes that penetrated the onlooker. “Wow!”, I said. “That is an incredibly powerful image!” She had to look down to remind herself of what she was wearing.
It immediately reminded me of the Cherokee legend of the two wolves. I felt an urge to share the story with her but then caught myself and stopped. Too often as educators we force our meaning onto our students without taking the time to see what things mean to them. After all, they have their own stories to tell. So I asked her what the image meant to her and what attracted her to buying it. She looked at it again and told me she had never thought of that before.
“Hey! This may sound crazy since I am not even your teacher, but do you mind doing a homework assignment for me?” Her interest was piqued. I asked her to go home and, on her own with no outside help, to sit down and do a free-write of what the wolf with two sides meant to her. I pulled from my bag of teacher tricks and put on my fancy NYC publisher face and said, “Can you get it to me by tomorrow morning?” She said, “Yes. I’ll meet you at 7:30am.”
I came to work that day with added hurry to my step. She was standing there with a sparkle in her eye that I hadn’t seen before. She knelt down and took a loose-leaf paper out of her folder. Walking to my classroom, with my coffee in one hand and her story in the other, I began to read. “The she-wolf lifted its head to the star-filled sky. Taking in the cool, crisp air she let out a howl..Then the voices came that had been with her since she was a pup. She knew them as Nyx and Lux….The two start fighting with one another whenever she decides to to do something, making her second-guess herself.”
I stopped in my tracks, immediately hooked. I couldn’t believe the story that was pouring out of her. I also couldn’t help thinking that perhaps my attraction to her shirt and my impulse to ask her what it meant was in fact my own soul trying to see itself. I continued reading. “She listened to them both and they quieted down. She needed both Lux and Nyx; they made her who she was even if they disagreed with each other. They were part of her, they shape who she is, and she was Astra.” Perhaps those voices in my head who rage the same battle made me who I am too. I needed to read on to see how I could make mine could get along.
At the end of the day I ran to meet her to share my excitement about her writing. I asked her if she had done writing like this before and she told me it was the first time. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The next day she brought in chapter two, and the following day, chapter three. This became a cherished ritual, hunting each other down in the hallway between classes. On one of these occasions, I looked straight into her eyes and said, “You are going to be the next J.K. Rowling and a famous young author.” She looked at me, not in some bashful, “Who me?” way, something I have done nearly my whole life to deflect true compliments. She looked at me and smiled from a place of giddy knowing.
Ada moved this past year, yet we continue to text each other inspiring images for her writing. Where I offer her inspiration, she offers me ground and focus, and that hope and idealism that so feed my own soul and my own dreams. You see, when our hearts are truly connected to our children, transformation becomes a two way street.
