Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with kossacks who are caring and supportive of one another. So bring your stories, jokes, photos, funny pics, music, and interesting videos, as well as links—including quotations—to diaries, news stories, and books that you think this community would appreciate.
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Caution/Trigger: This diary is about children losing a parent to cancer and is a current event in my world.
Calavera. 2nd grade. Día de los Muertos.
Tracing and color rendering.
As an arts educator, one of my great joys is the deep human relationship I am able to build with students. I have the luxury of not being hemmed in by high stakes testing and can thus adopt a more free form approach to teaching. The evolving and flexible nature of this work is consistent with the vagaries of kids’ emotional and developmental cycles and allows me to establish very strong bonds of trust. Kids can be themselves in my room because they’re not under pressure to perform for anyone but themselves, let alone the State. We talk a lot about a lot of things. I listen to them. I earn their respect by treating them as the people they are and in turn they trust me. Respect is the currency of my work, and trust is the vehicle by which it is delivered. Through respect and trust our relationship becomes human and transcends the artifice that is institutional education.
Most teachers have it backward on respect. They demand and expect it, and become frustrated when it isn’t happening. Most teachers also have it backward on trust. Trust is almost as difficult to establish as respect, and many teachers see trust only as a tool to enhance their classroom management, as a means to an end. Few enough teachers manage student trust the way it is in functional relationships between adults. They have forgotten that children are people first and students second. They have become jaded and forgotten (or never knew) how to really “hear” kids when they speak. In a way I suppose this can be forgiven, for there isn’t time.
In my room we make time. It is the most important thing we do all day.
In my school, which is highly functional, trust and respect is most on display when things are going either very well or really badly. For instance my 4th graders are maturing and becoming true 4th graders. They have shed the developmental leftovers from their 3rd grade year and are taking responsibility for their actions, treating one another with decency and the result is school and life are just easier for them. They feel relieved and don’t even know why. It makes for profound discussion and rich humor, the qualities for which 4th grade should be most known.
When things are going badly in a dysfunctional environment trust and respect are the first things to go out the window, if they were in evidence at all to begin with. In the best of schools it can be difficult to maintain this balance, but with the right focus and a lot of caring both of these essential characteristics can not only be maintained but magnified. When a lot is expected and a lot given in return the hard times bring out the best in children, just as in adults. Kids are people, after all, they’re just smaller about it.
Such has it has been this week in one grade where a set of twins are dealing with the life crisis of a father, who has been fighting stage 4 cancer for almost two years, that as of last week finally entered into hospice and the end of his battle.
Complicating this situation is the fact that Mom is a teacher here and Dad used to be. Both are beloved by everyone; students and teachers, parents, community. It is a terrible situation, but one that has been made more bearable by the exemplifying bravery and sheer character of the two parents. They have not hidden these truths from their daughters over the course of this saga. The twins are remarkably well adjusted anyway, but in the face of this new knowledge that their father is dying very soon I have seen their strength grow even as it is tested.
On Monday I was concerned that our current subject, Day of the Dead, would be uncomfortable for them or for their classmates as the girls were told on Sunday night and the grade level Monday morning. My principal assured me I should not change anything and should carry on per usual. No special adjustments except for the request from Mom to give them some extra hugs.
The class was an emotional mess, but the children were remarkably frank about what was happening and were even positive about it. The girls had the center of attention but without clinginess. It was authentic support of the highest order. There they sat, coloring their stylized calaveras and making cards for Dad written in colored pencil.
"What are you all doing at this table?" I asked, sitting down as I always do, inside of their operational space.
"We're making cards for Mr. M. He's going to die soon." said one friend, matter of fact.
"Yeah," said one twin, "we don't really know when but it's gonna be soon. Here, you have to sign this skull picture in green. It's his favorite color."
It went on like this for the entire hour, coloring symbolic tributes to the dead and the dying, all the while living inside of a raw emotional reality and coping with that reality with grace and composure. They were dealing with it much more cleanly than I have seen in past family death crises, a testament to the quality of character of the parents and of their decision not to shield their children from death. In short, the Respect and Trust shown for their children (and for their classmates and colleagues) as people and as human beings has allowed everyone to face this tragedy in a healthy way. There is no room for shielding and denial in this situation. We are all in this together and it is very, very real.
I am so fortunate to work in such an environment, to be graced with the presence of these amazing twins and their beautiful parents. Blessed that my colleagues and managers operate together as a unit in the actual best interests of everyone by facing reality head on instead of creating mythical emotional landscapes and dumbing down the reality of death (as I have seen done more often than not). It is the difference between having a job and having a common family. It is the difference between actual education and just getting through with the day.
No one knows how long he will live but we are apparently far into the 6 month hospice window. It will soon be much harder for these incredible twins and the new direction of their lives is a brutal reality for elementary aged children. The only known factors moving forward, beyond death and love, are the carefully tended gardens of Respect and Trust their parents have given them, that their school nourishes, and that their friends help to populate in kindness and sincerity.
We all are the richer for it.