I’ve read this out loud for those of you who like that kind of thing. And I cried. So keep in mind that this post made me cry! Hope that hooked ya!
A Note for You If You’re Having A Bad Day
Hi There Pal,
I asked my (high school senior-aged) students what I should write to you about today, and they had a lot of ideas. I told them the title of this newsletter, and that it was for “people who beat themselves up.” They nodded, knowingly. They understood. Here’s what they thought I should write you about. (I took detailed notes.)
Carmen (I’m changing everyone’s names, by the way) said I should write about Valentine’s Day. She feels frustrated that Valentine’s Day makes people feel bad for not being coupled up. Why can’t you celebrate your own love for yourself? (I told Carmen that she COULD celebrate that! I’m a good teacher.) She said she doesn’t want to be in a couple, and she feels so happy for herself that that isn’t something she wants.
Manifestation TikTok has come for Carmen, by the way. (I did not know this was a thing, as my algorithm is totally at the hands of a 15-month-old who cares only about angry cockatiels and puppies running toward the camera.) The people on Carmen’s TikTok are encouraging her to manifest a romantic partner. CARMEN DOESN’T WANT ONE! And she wanted you to know, reader, that you don’t need to manifest one either.
Shayla said to tell you that (and I’m quoting directly), “We can hold ourselves to extremes, and impossible standards, in competition with everyone else. But everyone is in different parts of life. You are going through life at your own pace.” She wanted to encourage you to care less about external standards, and more about your own journey. (Jesus, these teens are much wiser than I was.)
Daniel wanted me to remind you that Kimya Dawson has an album called “Remember That I Love You.” The point is, Kimya Dawson loves you. Don’t despair.
Violet wanted to piggyback off of Carmen’s thing about Valentine’s Day. They suggested a one-person date. Stream something YOU want to watch, take a bath, and light a candle. Use your good bath salts.
After a brief conversation about whether or not bath salts was a street drug (it is; that’s not what Violet was talking about), Violet also suggested you “water your plants.”
Me: What plants?
Violet: YOUR plants.
Me: Indoor plants? Outdoor plants?
Violet: Yes.
At this point, Sarah was overwhelmed with excitement to tell me (and YOU!) about their idea for “bile kimchi.” They are learning about stomach acid in Anatomy Class, and it would be a good way to speed the fermentation process of cabbage. Many people yelled at Sarah that this was gross, but they stood their ground.
Penelope said (this was unrelated to the kimchi), that “society makes you have insecurities so that they can profit off of them.”
She also feels that Build-A-Bear exploits children for unpaid labor, and that it should be illegal. “There’s a newsletter there,” she said.
Daniel suggested that you “make yourself a nice paper flower bouquet” because it’s both an activity and one that doesn’t kill any flowers.
He said another suggestion he had was to “pick up all your animals, and swaddle them like babies.” I felt confused about this one. Stuffed animals? Pets? Daniel is usually a pretty serious student, and so this felt a little out-of-character for him, to be talking about the swaddling of animals. I mentioned that I was surprised at this suggestion. His classmates (more than one of them, all at once) said, “You’d be surprised to know that DANIEL BITES PEOPLE!” I did feel surprised to know that. Daniel told his classmates that he didn’t bite people that often. The classmates said, “You have bit every single person in this room except Ms. Goalson.” Shell said that Daniel left bruises on them after biting them freshman year. I continued to feel — and act — shocked. “You’re not the first teacher who has had this reaction,” said Sarah. “Many other teachers have been surprised to hear that Daniel bites.” Daniel expressed (mock?) embarrassment. Because Daniel was not actively biting anyone, and the tone of the conversation was silly, I got up and did a dance. I told Daniel that I’d stop dancing once he stopped feeling embarrassed of himself and started feeling embarrassed for ME. That happened immediately. At this point, conversation about this newsletter had devolved.
You may be wondering how it was that there was enough time to talk at such length about this newsletter. (And we’re worried Build-A-Bear is exploiting the youth?!) This is a fair thing to wonder. We’d just finished an activity that had been so well-planned (let me just get this dust off my shoulder) that every single student had been on task with it for 90 entire minutes. None of them had even gotten up to use the bathroom. It was time for us to take a break. We were scheduled to take a bathroom-and-hallway break at the exact moment that I got an email from my supervisor to all the teachers, telling us that we needed to shelter in place. No students were to leave the classroom. Doors needed to be locked. Shades needed to be drawn.
When I asked the question about my newsletter, I had been stalling, hoping that the shelter-in-place would end quickly and that my students wouldn’t even have to know about it. Although these are fairly common in schools these days, they’re still scary. But it didn’t end quickly. Eventually, I had to tell the students about the shelter-in-place, and that that they couldn’t leave the room, which was met with cries that were equal parts, “BUT I REALLY HAVE TO PEE!” (Fair, me too.) and, “Wait. What’s happening?” (Fair, me too.)
In my first year of teaching at a high school in the Recovery School District in New Orleans, there were lockdowns sometimes multiple times a week. Occasionally, the school would go on lockdown in the middle of a passing period, and students would dawdle getting into classrooms, so the police officers the school district had hired eventually deployed pepper spray to corral everyone. Lockdowns could last for hours. Every single student had seen every single episode of every single version of “Planet Earth” more than 20 times by the middle of the year.
I was so bad at my job at that high school that I absolutely should have been fired. This was my first teaching job, and I had no frame of reference for lockdowns, pepper spray, metal detectors, or PTSD so intense that kids would fall to the ground sobbing whenever it rained. Anyone would have been unqualified for that job, but man, was I ever unqualified. I can’t tell you how often I hid in the bathroom reading comic books because I had no idea what to do or how to do it. Eventually, I did lose my job there. It felt like a relief.
Friend, there are SO MANY CAVEATS I WANT TO ADD. I want to talk about my privilege, about how much worse it was for the veteran educators at that school, or for the ones who had lost their jobs at that school because of criminal hiring activity following Hurricane Katrina, or (and especially) for the students, many of whom wouldn’t live to celebrate their 21st birthdays, mostly because of gun violence, but because of other things, too. I’m writing those facts like they’re facts and not gutting impossibilities. It all merits more than a newsletter-length personal essay from your friend Sophie. But that’s not for right now.
The point is, when I got the email from my boss that we needed to shelter-in-place, my body had two distinct fear reactions. The first was a trauma reaction: a remembrance in my body of what it felt like to be pepper sprayed, or locked in a hot room with five angry kids for four hours. The second was an anticipatory reaction: the news lately is all about mass shootings. Two days ago, the mass shooting was at a college. There have been more mass shootings this year than there have been days. I knew I wasn’t the only person in my classroom thinking about this.
I know you know how unbelievably, almost comically tragic it is that this is a thought every American student and parent of a student has to realistically consider. It’s as infuriating as it is debilitating.
One of my students, who’d gotten very quiet and inward-looking since the announcement, meekly asked me what I thought was going on. I really didn’t know. I said, “You don’t need to panic. I don’t know what’s going on, but a lot of adults are figuring it out and keeping you safe.” That might have been the wrong thing. Or, there might not have been a right thing. The thing I said was a thing I knew to be true.
Here’s something else I know to be true, but I didn’t always: change is slow. I mean, it’s GLACIAL. If something changes incredibly quickly, be wary of it. (Unless the something is going through puberty.) I remember how terrified, angry, and sad I felt about lockdowns 15 years ago, and how the Sophie of that era felt the prickly urgency of “changing the system.” I went to every rally, signed every petition, and wrote no shortage of pleading blog posts. Now that I’m a little older, I can attest that the system has changed — in tiny ways. All the teachers I meet these days are familiar with the concept of “trauma-informed practices.” Restorative Justice is normalized in so many more schools. We’re better prepared for these lockdowns. And you’re right: these changes aren’t good enough. But nevertheless.
It matters because there are times when taking action because you believe in the possibility of change can feel hopeless. I’m asking you to keep on trying on the enormous scale of world community, because you are more than you. You are part of us. You are a human in the fabric of humans; we belong to each other. As bell hooks writes in all about love, “The willingness to sacrifice is a necessary dimension of loving practice and living in community. … Our willingness to make sacrifices reflects our awareness of interdependency.” When I think of us (our whole species!) as the huge, sloppy, human fabric bundle that we are, it makes sense that the change should be slow. We are HUGE. Huge things move more slowly.
Your own small life is also the biggest thing you will ever do (at least in this body). In that way, it too, is huge. Your own life is changing with its own slowness. It might feel frustrating, all the time; it might feel like you’re standing still. I assure you, you’re not. You’re in motion, in ways you can’t know.
Sophie from 15 years ago hid in the bathroom with her comic books. Sophie from yesterday could be an adult for some kids who needed one. As they were leaving class at the end of the day, the girl who’d seemed most scared, who’d asked what was going on, said to me (and I’m not making this up, even though it’s QUITE tidy), “Thanks for keeping us grounded. I can feel out-of-control when this happens.”
Good luck out there, bravely facing all that breaks your heart. I’m glad we’re here together.
Love,
Sophie
Commenting to let you know that I am very happy you are recording these. I've been listening to them a couple weeks after they come out, and even though I've already read them, something usually hits me differently. So thank you! And thank you also to your students for these excellent ideas, and for making me laugh.
dear sophie,
thank you for this!
you ARE a good teacher.
that's so great that carmen feels the way she does about herself!
also shayla! these kids are dropping some real wonderful wisdom balms!
kimya dawson! the exploitation at build-a-bear! bell hooks! everyone and everything else!
thank you for sharing all of this, as always!
love,
myq