Growth Is Messy

I need to go run.

I stared up at the ceiling and contemplated another nap.

Get your shoes on. Run for ten minutes. Then you can nap.

A drawn out and dramatic exhale left my chest.

I traded my dress pants for shorts, laced my running shoes, and was off.

The past few weeks have been nothing short of a whirlwind, and I've evaded processing it all for a stretch of time now. Some things are small. Some things are big. Right now, most of them remain labeled as "things" as I run through each labored breath.

Parts of the past few weeks will take time to process. They'll need to remain vague reflections until I have enough distance from this period of time to understand them clearly.

Other things are becoming clear in quick and unexpected moments.

Today was full of those moments.

It was the last period of the day, and my sophomores were about thirty minutes into selecting research topics and developing research questions. As I knelt down next to a group of students, each with questions and voices overlapping the next, a wave of exhaustion came over me. I put the group on pause so I could get a drink of water and let a moment of silence reset me.

I walked back into the room and smiled at the messiness of the writing process. They were caught up in it. Words were simultaneously being tangled and untangled. Each voice a layer to an overarching conversation we have been having all trimester.

So. Stinking. Beautiful.

My teacher heart swooned, and I realized how well I know their voices.

How well I've come to understand their idiosyncrasies.

How easily I can determine what kind of conversation is going on in any part of my classroom.

I feel so differently about my classroom than I did ten months ago.

Growth in the classroom equates to so many small moments, and few of them have built consecutively.

It's messy, just like the writing process.

But it's also pretty stinking beautiful.