Every single child in your school is a message to the world. Some speak in writing, some in song, some in code. Others speak in paintings created with their hands. Some have a raw talent for crunching numbers. There’s even a child or ten who has a a deep passion for understanding the stories of our past. There’s a kid making Origami who can’t get enough of engineering with paper. There’s a bunch of students who are on a waiting list at the library for the new book in their favorite series.
There’s a student who struggles to see patterns the way others do. There are kids who see words differently than you or I. There are kids who don’t want to get messy with paint. There is a child who is more bothered by the tag on their shirt than any “consequence” you could impose for their meltdown.
There are kids waiting to be something they are rarely invited to be.
Themselves.
Not the kid described in a teacher’s guide, nor the kid that fits in “Class A” or “Class B.”
The kid that is exactly who they are. What is their message to the world?
You won’t hear it unless you listen. And if you only listen for words, you’ll miss it even more.
We’ve spent forever celebrating a few skills like great handwriting, work completion, memorization. Sure, those things make for nice looking assignments. But do they tell the message?
It’s time for the artists, scientists, engineers, twirlers, hallway-skippers, introverts, doers, thinkers, writers, poets, journalists, problem solvers, Lego builders, deep thinkers, water color painters, paper folding, gadget geeking, history researching, language lovers, creative paper airplane designers… and more… to have a place where their message, in whatever format is their way to share, is not only welcomed, but heard.
Can we honestly say that we’ve honored every kid in every school for exactly who they are? I’m not talking about a gold star or a blue ribbon. I’m talking about the kind of honor where we help them believe in what they can become.
Until we can all answer “Yes,” with total confidence, in every school, in every corner of the world, we have work to do. And it’s probably one of the most important jobs in the world, maybe one of the hardest, but it’s definitely the most rewarding.
