Retreat+Reflection

Momentum: We struggle so much in teaching, and in CA in particular, to create energy, to capitalize on existing energy, and to maintain momentum. Never has momentum been more apparent to me than on that night. One student courageously stepped off the edge into the frightening world of a recently out gay student. This energy, so long latent among our groups, or only infrequently actualized, then grew such that student after student courageously stepped off edges: three more students, each citing the courage of that first young woman, came out; various others made other kinds of personal confessions and declarations (I'm ill, I love you, I appreciate what you did, I'm leaving soon, I can't wait, I'm fearful); many more unabashedly spoke their emotions (even boys!). Looking back, Andy B. suggested that no one would have come out had the first young woman not. Reflections: it takes the first one, but it also takes the right environment, the right support and opportunity, for the rest to follow and innovate and push things forward. All the little things contributed to the creation of that proverbial "safe space." Were every classroom in the building, every hallway, every bus so safe.

Co-conspirators: It’s rare that I feel such a rush of pride and excitement for a colleague in a professional setting and at a professional occasion. We have our relationships with colleagues, sure, and we often feel good about the caliber of our colleagues, but the rush of feeling I experienced when those students started coming out—feelings of many kinds and for many individuals, but above all, perhaps, for Andy B., for what I thought had to be one of //the// triumphant, ennobling, satisfying moments of his career (Could I be wrong?)—was truly rare. All teachers should experience such moments in their careers. That culminating moment where you feel, in an immediate sense, how much good you’ve done. Where you feel that your students have, at least in some way, arrived. I felt it myself, to some degree, as I had played a small part in creating the feeling of safety and trust that enabled those students to come out, and those others to “come out” in their own ways. Yet how especially rejuvenating and re-energizing and justifying that must have felt, in particular, for Andy B., given the nature of his group’s work and his particular commitment to the cause of gay rights. Healthy schools should send teachers down paths, paths that the schools themselves groom and preserve, which lead to such moments. Teachers should set themselves up—by engaging in work that is truly and personally meaningful to them—for the possibility of such profound moments. Students should get the chance to benefit from such moments and from what would ensue from a teacher, teachers, really, feeling that purposeful. It was in that moment, after all, that Community Action “came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of [its] purposeless splendor.” (“Purposeless” is not right, quite, but you get the idea.)