(My last class of a fourth/fifth grade split in 2003. Look at those faces, pure JOY and delight. I was the luckiest teacher in the world to have taught these heart nuggets over my career. My gratitude dear ones.)
One cannot make these things up. I was recently recalling a class project I had my elementary charges engage in at the end of our school year. I was describing it to my friend and recalled that I had read about a teacher doing this decades ago and that it had been something I knew I must incorporate into my class.
As life would have it I was listening to recent podcast of Tara Brach, on finding refuge and she recounted the narrative I was remembering. A Catholic nun many years ago taught in a small private Catholic school and her high school students were having a challenging time with their studies. She had them pause, placing their work to the side and asked them to take a piece of notebook paper out. Asking them to write their classmates name on the paper and recall all the characteristics, events, moments that they noticed and admired about one another.
Upon completion the pages were handed out, read and she couldn’t help but observe the delight and often surprise in their faces that their classmates had noticed something about them. Mirroring one another’s goodness and light and allowing it to boomerang right back to the rightful owner.
Years later she was told that Mark, one of her students who had participated in the assignment had died in the Vietnam War. Attending the funeral, Mark’s father pulled her aside and said he wanted to share something with her. Carefully, he took out from Mark’s wallet two worn pieces of notebook paper, taped together gently and folded in many places. Mark’s teacher knew immediately what they were and slowly his other classmates gathered as they knew as well. One sharing that hers was placed within her diary, another chimed in that his was in a wedding album and yet another nodded and said his was in his top dresser drawer.
I adapted this project and engaged my then fourth/fifth grade students in the same exercise. I gave them a class list and they wrote an adjective or a moment they recalled about one another. I compiled their lists and from them created a page for each student and copied what each of their classmates admired and noticed about them. I used our group picture and had a quote that reminded me of our class as the cover and gave each child a bound booklet on the last day of school. I purchased some treats, they sprawled out on the floor and squeals of delight and smiles of rapture were abundant as their little fingers flipped all the pages to locate their page first to dive into.
I reminded them that they could tuck this treasure away and bring it out anytime they may have forgotten about their essence and were longing for a mirror to gaze into once again. It has been over two decades since I last witnessed their intentional and dear faces pouring over those pages. I like to imagine that they have brought them out to absorb when they needed to remember and perhaps they are as well loved and worn as Mark’s page was? I can only hope.
May we BE this for one another, a mirror reflecting back, speaking the truth of what we are perceiving. This is a life giving and affirming practice which strengthens with practice, feeling more innate and natural each time we engage within it. Our own version of this is right at hand when we take the necessary time to pause, to witness and to share what we are noticing. It is well worth a sense of awkwardness and vulnerability that might first be felt as we are growing into and embodying this new way of being.
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