Special Treat: This I Believe

My junior honors students wrote "This I Believe" essays, a la NPR, this week. There were a lot of tears shed as they read them aloud in class. I wrote one, too, but ran out of time to read it to them. Perhaps I will when we return from break. Here it is:

Flying Free

Liz Peterson loved to swing. Everyday at recess while the girls headed for the monkey bars to do dangerous gymnastics and I ran to the basketball courts to play with the boys, Liz climbed onto a swing and moved herself back and forth until she was flying. She would swing until the teacher on duty would blow the whistle and we’d run in for water break, bathroom, and back to class. As we were only in third grade, I obviously did not analyze the symbolic nature of Liz’s swinging at the time. But now it makes sense to me. Swinging, see, is very freeing. It’s like flying for a kid; for an instant you are weightless, hanging in the air, able to see the world from a new perspective. There were probably many moments in her life when Liz wanted to fly away. But she was stuck, as we all are, in a sense, so she would swing.

The kids rarely spoke to Liz. They didn’t sit with her at lunch or play with her at recess. I can’t remember a single person who I could say was Liz’s friend. I’m not sure that I can count myself as one, either. But I was already viewed as a little strange by my classmates. I played basketball with the boys, left class every afternoon for the gifted program, and didn’t seem to care what anyone thought of me. So they let me talk to Liz. I was strange enough to get away with being near Liz, but the kids never forgave her because she was truly different. In fact, they teased her relentlessly.

Liz’s family was poor in such a true and sad sense of the word. To this day, I don’t know that I’ve ever known anyone as poor as Liz Peterson. There were ten children in the Peterson family and they came to school dirty and hungry. Liz told me that she was born with a hole in her heart (awfully symbolic, now, too), and was often sick as a child. She had a really short haircut when long hair was popular. She told me that her mother cut it all off when the she and her siblings all had head lice. But worst of all, Liz wore her Girl Scout uniform to school. She didn’t have enough clothes, so at least two days each week Liz would come to school in her uniform, sash and all. It was too easy to pick on this homely little girl wearing her Girl Scout uniform when she wasn’t supposed to. So Liz would swing.

As a teacher, I see Liz Petersons all the time. They are overweight, completely uncool, or too short or too tall. They have speech impediments or are painfully shy. They are poor, wear headscarves, are gay, or have learning disabilities. They are the kids who sit by themselves at lunch, or hide away in some corner of the school, trying not to be noticed. But they can’t hide. Whatever makes them different is their own Girl Scout uniform. Like Liz’s poverty, they can never take it off.

Liz Peterson, I suppose, is part of the reason I am a teacher today. As a third-grader, I would occasionally sit on the swings and talk to Liz. But I never defended her against her tormenters. I never stood up and said, “STOP.” I don’t think my small act made a difference in her life. I had the opportunity to change attitudes and perceptions. But I didn’t. As a teacher, though, I can now. Every day I get the chance to not only swing with a kid like Liz, but to teach other kids to value one another, too. Through my example, I get to demonstrate the kindness and inclusion that our society often lacks.

I believe in Girl Scouts. I believe in the inherent value every person in the world has. We have done an incredible job creating hierarchies, splitting ourselves into groups, and deciding what makes a person right or wrong. Sometimes we treat each other so badly that we make people hide, hurt themselves, or simply want to fly away. I don’t know what happened to Liz Peterson or if anyone ever believed in her. What I’ve learned is that if we know our value, it’s our job to find and honor the value in others. So for Liz, and for Girl Scouts, for gays and kids who are overweight, for the shy, the disabled, the nerds, the poor, and the minorities, for kids who feel sad inside and don’t like themselves, I believe.