On Awkward Teaching Moments and Writing the Fire Inside Us.

Tonight I gave my students this list of prompts from Cheryl Strayed. I love this list. To me the list itself is a poem. I told my students that for the first time in a really long time I gave myself permission today to write. I wrote for two hours… I worked on a piece that’s been burning in me for a while now. I told them I started and I couldn’t stop and that the only reason I did stop was because I had to come teach their class. I told them I want them to know what that feels like to want to write. Of course, we’re not all writers and many of us might never have that compulsion. But I thought it might be interesting to at least get them to try. I told them they had to pick at least one of these prompts and write for at least 30 minutes. I said if they ran out of things to say about one prompt then they should move on to another one — I didn’t care which prompt they picked or if they picked one or 3 or all 15. Here’s the list:

Write about a time when you realized you were mistaken.

Write about a lesson you learned the hard way.

Write about a time you were inappropriately dressed for the occasion.

Write about something you lost that you’ll never get back.

Write about a time when you knew you’d done the right thing.

Write about something you don’t remember.

Write about your darkest teacher.

Write about a memory of a physical injury.

Write about when you knew it was over.

Write about being loved.

Write about what you were really thinking.

Write about how you found your way back.

Write about the kindness of strangers.

Write about why you could not do it.

Write about why you did.

The goal, for these resistant writers, was just to write. And they did. They all wrote for more than 30 minutes, in fact. And even though many of them groaned about it at the beginning of the exercise, a couple of students actually asked for more time. One student just kept writing while the rest of us went around the circle and each student either shared their piece or part of their piece or at least said something about the process of writing it. That one student, S, continued to write as everyone else spoke. He wrote and wrote and wrote; he wrote like he was on fire, head bent down focusing on his page and his pen for more than an hour, seemingly oblivious to the rest of us in the room. He was the last one to share and when we finally got to him he had a story that left everyone in the room stunned.

He told us that his darkest teacher had been death, that he had lost something he would never get back — that his little brother had been killed in a terrible car accident when they were both young kids, that he held him as he died and then passed out himself and woke up two weeks later in the hospital. He told us that he didn’t talk for two years after that, and that this incident was how he came to live with his grandmother who still takes good good care of him to this day. He told us that this story was ultimately about being loved.

I guess no one, including me, expected a story like this. It was so sad and so raw, I think none of us knew what to do with it. S had spoken bravely and held back tears as he talked. With a lump in my throat I thanked him for sharing his story and told him I was so glad he wrote and that he had written so much. There was so much else that I wanted to say. But, truthfully, in the moment I wasn’t sure how or where to go. Another student suddenly broke the mood. I’m not sure exactly what motivated her. Perhaps it was the awkward silence she was trying to fill, but she turned to S and told him that she was sorry she had not really heard his story, that she had to tune it out. She wanted to confess , she said, that she hadn’t really listened because it was so painful and she knew she would cry. The awkwardness got even more awkward. S seemed not to know how to respond. And I didn’t know either. Honestly, I can’t even recall how we moved passed it. But we did. We moved on to a new activity and that was that.

I held back my own tears in class, but as soon as the class was over and I was safely in my car I started to cry. I wish I had let myself be vulnerable in that moment. I wish I had cried in class. I wish I had thought of some eloquent response and a way to smoothly transition us on to the next segment in a way that hammered home some big, important lesson. But in the moment, I had nothing.

Of course I want S to know that I really heard his words — that that is what writing is for, to move us in all kinds of ways. And that he did. I’ll send him an email later and probably even send an email to the whole class as well. I want them all to know that words matter, stories matter — that their stories matter and that if we let ourselves write that fire inside us our stories can take on a life of their own. They can enter the world or the room we’re in and change the people who are willing to listen. I want my students to know that there will always be people willing to listen to stories, hungry for them actually, but that writing the fire inside us also changes us… that the act of writing alone can have value for any person who is willing to try. But from the way that S was writing — so furiously, so passionately tonight — I have a feeling this is something he probably already knows.