Visions and Voices

Good teachers are visionaries. Our students’ paths are typically far from straightforward. So, to be effective, teachers need to be able envision some bright thing that beckons. It might be near or far; it might be big or small. Sometimes the work is about seeing clearly what a student wants for their future. Often, it’s about envisioning something even better. 

Given that I was, like most teachers, constantly envisioning things for and with my students, it has come as quite a surprise to find myself on the other end of that.

Let me explain.

Back in 2021, I was approaching various organizations to pitch a writing curriculum I had written. After some time, I got a meeting with Tim. Our conversation was wide-ranging, but he did seem to take interest in my proposal.

Little did I know that as I moved through my slideshow, his non-linear thinking had been activated. He had begun to envision a position for me with Mighty Writers that would never have occurred to me. Apparently, he saw in me, or, I guess heard, a podcast host. 

I still giggle sometimes when I talk about my new gig. To be a woman, nearing 50, coming from the silencing realm of the public school system into a world where I get to use my voice — well, it’s a delightful surprise. 

Along with the giggles and feelings of delight, there’s also the fact that I do not take this opportunity lightly. 

For more than 20 years, because of my work as a writing teacher, I have had a window into the lives of my students and their families, some of whom, as citizens of the poorest big city in the U.S., are among the most disenfranchised people in the country. 

A simple prompt at the top of English class — write about a moment that changed the way you see yourself — might leave me with a pile of essays that would change the way I see the world many times over. I’ve thought a great deal about what I have heard.

I am also raising daughters in this unspeakably fraught moment in history. And, when I am not too busy ensuring that they are mentally and physically safe, I think a great deal about all of that.

I have concluded that the world is upside down. 

But I am not the despairing type. And that has a lot to do with what I witnessed when kids would write and then share their stories in my classroom. 

Over and over again, really without fail, I saw how relationships could change in an instant when a writer or storyteller was given a chance to express themselves freely in a supportive environment. Students who were enemies might become friends, or at least they would stop being enemies, when they came to understand each other in that space. After one emotionally authentic story, the group dynamic could change, thereby improving the learning environment for the rest of the school year. 

So, I am determined to use this unexpected opportunity to try to re-create some of what happened in my writing classroom. I want to highlight writers and storytellers who might help turn the world right side up — away from violence, despair and anger, toward something worthy of my children and my students. 

This blog will be an extension of that goal. It's a space where podcast episode ideas left unsaid or voices left unheard can live. It’s a place for my writing and for the writing of my colleagues (we are, after all, an organization of writers) and the writing of my guests. It’s a place to extend these podcast conversations I can’t believe I get to have — a place where we won’t shy away from the very hard things about being a human being, but we will, as I have said elsewhere, always keep our eye on all the beauty that can coexist right alongside brutality.

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