I’m not sure if I really listened. Understood where they had been and why. What was prompting them to take a step and where they were hoping to go.

Talking it out. Letting it air. Bringing it to the surface. Fleeing isolation.

Easily distracted, not fully present. Rebuked and rebuffed. Imperfect, and dispute that unchanging fact, it is not a weight that presses down on the road to improvement.

One is running around the classroom when everyone is supposed to be sitting down. One child is screaming at another. A child points out that another child sat in their chair when they got up to answer a question and now won’t move. What are you going to do? Watch idle as it happens? Listen…

It’s okay to be sensitive, to feel hurt and vulnerable. I can acknowledge those feelings, and create space as I put my Victor Frankl hat on and choose my attitude. “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and…