We Drew Our Faces

I was going through my classroom pictures this morning. I was going through them in my mind when I read that the announcement of school closing is imminent.

The kids drew these self portraits at the start of the year when the room was shiny and the crayons were pointy. They drew them when they were nervous and trying something new. They drew them when goodbyes were hard and their routines were shifting from lazy summers, to early school days. They drew them when they were unsure and it was my job to sure them, to lower the raised shoulders, to collect the nervous energy on my reading rug and disperse it back to them at their tables. They drew them when they wanted to be on the beach and I made a book sound like the beach. I took their hands that held x-box remotes and replaced them with pencils to start this new journey.

We forget what a big job we ask kids to do at the start of the year. We forget how willing and adaptable they are to rise to the challenge and now they have a new challenge. It’s just a different one.

My sadness is steep at the news that we will not get to spend these last few months together in our usual sense, but I am not immobilized in the thought that I can’t affect their portraits, that my wand is rendered useless without the physical space of our classroom. Perhaps it is my ego, that bloats this post with positivity. Maybe I think I am more powerful, than I really am. But then, I don’t really think so. The journey that I started them on, is still that same yellow brick road. They just have a few more flying monkeys to encounter first, with hand sanitizer of course. The portraits we drew in the beginning are still the same baby faced seven-year-olds I met, they are just now more earnest in finding their way.

As a leader of little people, don’t be distracted by how other people direct their drawings. You will see posts of teachers zooming, google meeting, google hang outing. You will see youtube of videos of teachers who are reading to an audience with a picture perfect background and movie worthy hair. You will want to buy programs and lessons to be enough, to support your littles, when you have forgotten you already are enough. You started the journey with these faces and you will finish the journey with these faces and in any crisis journey they don’t need anything but you and your steady voice to do it. Stay steady, go back to the drawing board and help them finish their picture. After all, you were the one who helped them to start it.