isn't it neat when...

There are just a few things in my life thus far that have really turned out EXACTLY as I had hoped-and I am really really grateful for them. One of them is my friend Bonnie's life. She called me this morning and talked about her daughter's teacher and how complex and emotional Kindergarten is for her daughter. After giving her the rest of the story on Big Fat Famous Writer guy ( man she is a good listener!) she told me how this teacher has been really emotionally unavailable- and just has not made a good first impression whatsoever. As I listened I started to think on why the nurturer part of my job as a teacher is the glue for me in my life and profession. There are always going to be kids that you just will never understand because they are way smarter than you are, or they just operate so differently from the way you did as a kid. But to teach all kinds of kids you have to be ready to love them- I mean REALLY love them- the way that you love a bitchy sister, crabby cat, distant father, neurotic mother. You have to not only look past what you may not understand about them, but you have to embrace it and try to provide ways for yourself to really see them as they are. Because if you can see the kids in your class exactly as they are, you will just automatically help them to be more sparkly versions of themselves, and isn't that what we want? Isn't that what a diverse and evolved culture needs- grown ups that accept themselves for all they are and are not- and groups of grownups who don't need to be the BEST at everything- but need to accept challenges and keep growing at what they can do fabulously? Yes- we have to teach skills- the basics to become eventually employable- but isn't knowing how to care for someone- knowing how to be polite and loving a REALLY important skill too? And you might think, well- that stuff should come from home, but actually they have to come from teachers and community too because we want our kids to feel safe, confident, and concerned outside of our homes right? We need to make sure in fact that kids see that emotional intelligence is a hihgly valued skill- being tuned into the world and who is in it with you is one of those skills that as a society we do need to survive- because we are interdependent. This is my life's work because my father spent most of my childhood trying to brainwash me into thinking that one must be independent...that to depend on anybody for anything is foolish and unrealistic- it is only now after years of therapy of course that I realize that was his way of dodging his own responsibility as a parent, husband and human being. Combined with his own history of being raised by a father who believed the gospel of Ayn Rand and a mother who's father starved her as punishment- he had some high quality tools to really fuck up his own kids' self esteem. So every day of my life I straddle two dichotomous things in my head: my own demons of not wanting to play with others because of a troft of fear that people will not like me because they will think I am weak or imperfect somehow- and my gynormous desire to love and be loved. And just when the voice of my dad gets too loud, I look at my class and realize that they are watching me in the lunchroom and hallway- and what they take home that day will become a critical part of the setting of their stories.