I hurt a student this week and I didn’t know until her mom reached out with the kindest, most heartfelt punch in the gut I can imagine. I hurt her daughter and she wanted me to know it.
I had put random and anonymous student responses from a digital worksheet on the screen. There were roughly 35-ish responses from 5 different classes in front of me and randomly grabbed one because I wanted to talk about some spelling and grammar things I was seeing across the board. No name. No identifying information. I had absolutely NO idea whose it was. No one else in class knew either…except, well one person did.
She knew.
She recognized her own writing.
And my reading it hurt her.
I finished teaching and went on with my day.
She went home hurt.
I had no idea.
Her mom emailed me the next afternoon. She was so kind it almost made it worse.
She told me what had happened and gave me some context about her daughter that I didn’t have. There’s no IEP or 504 to scour, but her mom explained her challenges in great detail. Suddenly I understood why something that had seemed pretty innocuous to me had landed very differently for this kid. Her struggles are unimaginable to me. Her mom has worked with her daughter for 14 years bolstering her confidence, encouraging her to try in the safe spaces of school. I thought my classroom was a safe space. I have told everyone it is.
Mom’s letter to me repeatedly mentioned how much her daughter loves my class…how much she loves me. I cried in the parking lot. I started my letter back to her with “This is soul crushing…”
I’m a mom too. My kids are grown now, but I remember sending them into schools filled with random adults and hoping those adults would be kind to them. I didn’t want to protect my kids from adults. I wanted to trust that they were all nurturing and protective in my absence.
And now I am one of the random adults...in other peoples’ kids’ lives.
This thought has been sitting pretty heavily with me.
I apologized to her in person the next day. I was teary. I can’t help it. I’m in the business of lifting teens, not smashing them.
And then she started apologizing to ME.
Nope.
I stopped her. It’s a girl thing, I think, but I would not let her apologize for making me well up in tears. She did everything right…She didn’t stew and keep it to herself. She didn’t ask her counselor to transfer out. She had gone home and told her mom that something her teacher did had hurt her. Her mom listened to her. Her mom reached out.
I wiped my tears and told her I was so proud of her for saying something. This is a prime example of when I say I learn so much from my students – maybe more than I teach. She could have come back the next day, sat quietly un-noticed in her anguish…and trusted me less. How would I have known?
I’ve been asking myself this year, Who am I not seeing?
Apparently that question is bigger than I thought. Much bigger.
There are tender places in these kids that I cannot see. Of course there are. I have them too. Some I will eventually learn about. Some I never will. Some have names and paperwork attached to them and some are simply the things people carry around because they’re human.
I don’t need to put an actual student’s errors on the screen. I can look at their work, see the patterns, and make up my own examples. I can create something that belongs to nobody.
Done.
Which is the part that still stings.
A kid got hurt before I thought of it.
I love learning how to become a better teacher.
I just hate when my learning involves somebody else’s pain.
But something beautiful happened in this too.
A kid trusted her mom.
Her mom trusted me.
And this mom somehow managed to tell me you hurt my child while also telling me my child loves you.
She held both.
I keep thinking about that.
Because I spend a lot of time believing that teenagers should not be reduced to the stupid thing they did on Tuesday. They should get to come back Wednesday and try again.
Apparently adults need that grace sometimes too.
I’ve stitched this one up, I think. But it’s still tender to the touch.
