my students' digital stories

 to find a voice, and use it

at its most basic

what should we want for another?

is it also what we should want for ourselves?

each of us needs to find our voice

and to speak our truth,

the universe spends a lot of effort

so that each of us can be,

and that being needs to be followed by doing:

why have a voice if we don't use it?

each of us has a unique "take" on the world,

and the world needs to hear that "take,"

my calling for decades has been middle school,

an extraordinary time when each student

is on many cusps of development,

still able to remember the joy and magic of the child within,

and also able to access the impending adult coming fast

who can know and express different truths,

despite the fear that wants to suffocate any taking of risk,

this spring I have challenged my seventh grade students

to deeply consider their life up to now,

and to choose a story of their journey

that each can express in words and then on iMovie,

with their words recorded and revealed in their own voice,

then supported and embellished with photo and video

all carefully crafted to express a part of who they are,

today one young woman shared her video with me,

and I was undone with its power,

she eloquently, beautifully, visually revealed

herself as a young girl: vibrant, joyous,

moving body and self through space and time,

completely swallowed by transcendent moments,

till the snake entered the garden

and used social media to insinuate self-doubt into her,

such as the impossible ideal her phone and Tik-Tok

slapped her with every moment she gave herself to them,

so she disengaged and found herself again,

after a lot of work finding how to deny hearing that outside intruder,

the joy that should be her birthright re-found her,

many of my other students are still in process,

finding and revealing the story they want to tell:

the sport that calls to them,

the mitzvah that pulls them into their heritage

and shows them much of who they want to be,

the journey to understand who they are

in terms of their sexual orientation, their love of place,

their love of family, and how family and place can intersect,

their "I-Thou" love with horses,

their "take" on Covid 19 and its slap to their psyche,

one writes of a decade long devotion to dance:

its revelation of her worth,

its denial of her worth,

her physical challenges, her psychic challenges,

16 minutes of her processing who she is

within a world that sought to claim her

and to let her shine, or not,

I am deeply moved by how well my CFS seventh graders 

are knowing who they are and taking the risk

to express a significant piece of that truth.

Wow!

by Henry H. Walker

May 3, ‘24