And the child shall lead

Although I had tried keeping a blog once before, over a year ago, I gave it up about a week later when buildings fell down in New York, about ten miles from here, and the world changed. I came back to it this week unexpectedly, and in an unexpected way.

Testing out a new search engine someone told me about, I put in the name of the high school where I work and got more results than I ever had seen before with any other search engine. Exploring some of these results, I came across two blogs that are written by girls who are students at the school.

It was revealing on many levels. Of course it was revealing of them as individuals. Although I can't tell who one of the girls is -- a generic first name, the expected lack of spelling, grammar, and punctuation, nothing written that would indicate who this unique individual might be -- the other is someone I know. I've run into her where she works, I know which clubs she belongs to at school. She is the only girl at school with her name. And so, she is revealed.

I have known her as a reasonably good student, a responsible girl, a good worker. I know her brothers, her parents from past years. She is pleasant and good-natured. I once taught her to make a web-page.

But her diary tells me that she is passionate, most especially about her friends and about someone she loves, or might love. Her diary tells me that she feels art and beauty. Her diary tells me that she writes with depth, not about James K. Polk or some other school-type thing. Her diary tells me that she knows the passion of living and can make that passion live in her words, and the way she makes her words do what she wants them to do. She writes with beauty and grace, and a style that is her own.

She has been revealed to me as a person of warmth, and depth, and of love and hurt, and of the fullness of what people are meant to be. And in so revealing herself, she has brought about something in me that is connected to that.

What do we reveal when we write? When we write in a diary or blog such as this, what do we hope to reveal to ourselves, and of course, to anyone else? Can my young writer from school know that I, one of her teachers, now knows the feelings she has chosen to reveal? Would she be embarrassed if she knew? Would she change what she has done, or do things differently from now on? I hope not.

I wish I could tell her that just reading her diary has revealed in me the seed of the thought that this is something that might work for me too. That I feel priveleged to have been allowed this look into her soul. That I admire what she has done, what she can do, and that I have learned from her.

In the first blog I looked at, I saw a 14 year old girl who was bored by school, annoyed by her f--ing math teacher, and who was killing time in Biology by writing a blog entry. I liked her honesty, and I respect her feelings. I remember those feelings, too. But I wish she would capitalize the word I, and throw in a comma here or there. Not because I want her writing to be correct, whatever that means; I just want it to be easier for me to read.

Both blogs expressed a more raw kind of revelation than I've ever really written myself, although I've been writing for almost all of my nearly 50 years. It is good to know that there is something I still need to learn, want to learn. One of things I like most about teaching is that I get to learn things from students, sometimes. It doesn't come up as often as I'd like it to, but it's a good thing, when it happens.

Thanks, girls.

entry #3