Responding with Awe
| Public schools are cornerstones of replicating and resisting traditions and behaviors. It is hard to imagine that when girls were finally allowed to wear pants to school in Delaware, it felt like liberation to middle-school me. Now, as more and more students strive for their autonomy and authenticity as early as preschool, teachers are stretching to meet them. One morning, a bewildered elementary teacher stopped me in the hallway to tell me she’d just gotten a call from a parent, wanting to know how the teacher would support her transgender child. “I’ve never had a transgender student,” she said, “what can you tell me?” Another day a teacher was flummoxed by a student changing their name and pronoun at least once a week. My first response was awe; it’s just so fabulous that kids have such imagination and willingness to explore. We talked about proceeding with curiosity and allowing for sometimes feeling awkward while trying to keep up. Hearing the N-word is always jarring, especially in school. When it happened on an elementary school playground, I suggested we start with the assumption that children don’t understand how hate festers and resides in a word, or they’re parroting words they hear outside school and in social media, without knowing the hurt they create. So instead of punishment, we talked about how words have the power to cause serious harm. This conversation grows as the young people do. I support educators to meet moments like these with warmth, curiosity, and a willingness to step in, engage, explain even if they don’t feel they have the perfect response. Get the conversation started at least; silence and politeness cause more harm, and there is a place for a hard ‘no.’ A colleague sent a slideshow about symbols for an art class. She wondered if she was getting it right. The beauty, meaning, and substance of symbols was all there and the point that, as with words, symbols portray a lot of power visually. As I pondered what’s missing I realized that some of those ancient designs had been stolen, desecrated, rebranded from the sacred to a clarion call of hate. I sent some examples and encouraged deep conversations with her classes. Teachers are under pressure from all sides to say and do and teach the right things, to offer content that is inclusive, expansive, flexible, more complex, and to engage with young people who are also quite complex. I don’t know anyone who isn’t afraid of making mistakes, and educators know their mistakes can cause more harm than others, so it’s understandable that some opt for silence rather than meeting the moment inelegantly, but definitively. That’s what I’m there to support. And they want to do it. As I work with educators, build relationships, listen to concerns and questions, I hear honest wonder: How do we engage students with relevant, diverse material, meet all the state requirements, satisfy the parents, and meet the students where they are? I hope you hear my respect for, and wonderment at, the stamina of educators – teachers, paraeducators, counselors, nurses, administrators, kitchen and maintenance staff. My work is to respond to their challenges with resources that work in real time, for real effect – and it’s also to encourage them to add joyous wonder to their work, and to be collaborative. I respond to their questions and challenges with curiosity and generosity and remind them of something the poet Maya Angelou said: “Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you learned it.” Kids love to know why. It is such a good query. What might we build together to inspire our students to keep asking that question, to find and reach their own unique stars? That’s the work, as I see it, of the scholar in residence. It’s the best, most frustrating, most amazing, work I’ve ever done. |
This piece was originally published in the Institute for Liberatory Innovation’s newsletter. The institute has grown into Humanityinpractice.org Please visit the Humanity in Practice’s new website to see the transformation.
Posted on April 7, 2026, in Uncategorized and tagged education, justice, learning, teachers. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
vermilyanotes 
What a beautifully written important statement. Here’s to the education team you list – + hopefully the parents.
We are coming to Vermont this Xmas, hope we will see you ! Best to you both.
I’ve read this before… enjoyed reading it again. You shine!Sent from my iPhone