Back to School
Ah, the sights and smells of back to school! Huge primary colored posters in stores touting the best binders and newest backpack designs. Bright shiny new packs of crayons and markers organized perfectly on the store shelves or overflowing in those giant bins. And let's admit it, even though those crayons are still in their packages you can smell ‘em, can't you? Yes, you can! You remember that smell. And let's face it, maybe some of you can even TASTE ‘em. You tasters were a wilder breed of elementary student!
And then the epic - insert drum roll here - Back to School/Meet the Teacher night!! Last week I represented Everybody Matters at one, and was honored to bear witness to the drama that is middle school.
Raise your hand if your best memories are from middle school! What? I don't see any hands. I do see annoyed faces with cartoon word bubbles over their heads saying, "Hey lady - why'd ya have to bring up middle school??" And some of you are just downright angry and won't even finish reading this because that was just mean of me to stir up those icky memories - but for those of you still reading - I'll continue.
So, there are swarms of people at Back to School night, and as a social worker I love to watch swarms of people. I was stationed in the 6th grade hall so all of those students were just now getting ready to enter the exciting/scary/fun/horrible/fantastic/ludacris/you get the idea here world of 6th through 8th grade, and would be entering at the bottom of the pecking order. Let's not pretend there isn't a pecking order. There is a pecking order.
And the highlight of the night for me was to see a girl who was so unhappy to be there that, I kid you not, she was frowning in the way that someone over emphasizes a frown in a drawing. Like her mouth was turned down so much on each side that it made a perfect upside down arc (like Beeker from the Muppets, if any of you know who that is). Of course my social work soul ached for her because I could tell she was in angst, but my more practical soul marveled that it was humanly possible for a mouth to actually be that frowny. Then suddenly her face exploded with radiant joy - not like violently exploded - but it was that quick of a change - and her arms flew wide open! I followed her gaze to figure out what magic had just transpired, and running towards her - with the same gleeful-ish expression accompanied by a high pitched giggle type squeal - was what appeared to be a same aged girl - and they hugged ferociously - not like lions - but you get what I mean. They then grabbed each others' hands jumping up and down with more squeals and an overall sense of delight. To say that sparkles and fairies were floating around them would be a stretch, but not that much of a stretch.
And this moment reminded me of why we do the work we do. We are social creatures. We seek belonging. We seek connection. That Beeker frowny girl's feelings of fear and angst were abolished the moment she saw her squealing, hugging, jumping buddy. Beeker frown face can not learn in a classroom when she is so disconnected and sad, but she will thrive academically being surrounded by other students and teachers to whom she feels connected. Let's all build more connections - let's squeal with delight and jump up and down when we see our friends - and for pete's sake, for you wilder breed of elementary students - let's stop eating those crayons!!
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