student

I recent­ly received this email from a mid­dle-school teacher:

I want­ed to let you know that one of my stu­dents has tak­en your book to heart.  He’s been car­ry­ing it with him for six weeks, and he is in the process of try­ing to start a nature club at school.  He is a super hard work­er, and a won­der­ful, bright, sen­si­tive 12-year-old boy–the type who might real­ly make a dent in some of this world’s prob­lems. He is pas­sion­ate about this endeav­or, but he does­n’t feel that he’s being tak­en seri­ous­ly: adults are assum­ing he’s not going to work hard enough, he feels like things aren’t mov­ing fast enough, and he’s dis­heart­ened. Still, he recent­ly cit­ed your book to me, say­ing, “She says some­times it can take for­ev­er, and then some­times things hap­pen out of the blue,” so your words mat­ter to him.

In the rush and hur­ry of get­ting through my inbox, this mes­sage brought me to a full stop. I’ve always said that I will feel like I’ve achieved suc­cess when I hear from one read­er that my work mat­tered to them. Though not direct­ly from the read­er him­self, this mes­sage from such a car­ing, ded­i­cat­ed, clear­ly amaz­ing teacher on her stu­den­t’s behalf feels every bit as won­der­ful. Read­ing this email was an even grander “first” for me than see­ing my name in print for the first time, or hold­ing the final book in my hands, or sign­ing stacks of books at an event. This was a real con­nec­tion with a young read­er, a poten­tial shift in the tra­jec­to­ry of this young man’s life that might not have occurred with­out my work. It’s both hum­bling and validating.
I have no doubt in the world that this stu­dent is indeed the type who might real­ly make a dent in some of this world’s prob­lems. It wor­ries me, though, that even with this sup­port­ive teacher clear­ly on his side, he stills that one of the obsta­cles he faces is oth­er adults assum­ing he’s not going to work hard enough. I mean real­ly, what have we got to lose, adults? If they encour­age him and he lat­er quits, there’s no harm done: He feels val­ued and respect­ed, he learns some­thing about him­self, and things go back to the way there were before. If they encour­age him and he suc­ceeds, the out­come real­ly isn’t all that dif­fer­ent: He feels val­ued and respect­ed, he learns some­thing about him­self, and things get a lit­tle bit better.
I know that I’ve been guilty of sim­i­lar reac­tions with my own chil­dren and their ideas. I’ve been too quick to point out what chal­lenges I see and the rea­sons why their ideas might not be per­fect­ly fea­si­ble. I ques­tioned their long-term com­mit­ment to the projects they pro­posed. What I thought was help­ful real­ism, how­ev­er, was­n’t real­ly that help­ful at all. Indeed, what if my “real­ism” was actu­al­ly cyn­i­cism, and maybe their “fan­tasies” could have actu­al­ly worked? We’ll nev­er know, because count­less times I’ve inad­ver­tent­ly stopped them in their tracks before they even got start­ed, all in the name of think­ing things through and not embark­ing on some­thing they could­n’t finish.
I think many of us (adults, espe­cial­ly, but kids, too) have become so goal-ori­ent­ed that we don’t want to do or sup­port any­thing that does­n’t seem very like­ly to suc­ceed. We’re over­ly focused on the results, when so many of the poten­tial ben­e­fits come from the process itself. We don’t want to waste time on some­thing that might fail, but we for­get that we learn by mak­ing mistakes.
If I’d focused on the like­li­hood of ever get­ting an email like this one, I would prob­a­bly nev­er have stuck with the process of hon­ing my craft, revis­ing my drafts, putting myself out there, etc. But if I had­n’t done that, I would­n’t be the per­son I am today, and I would­n’t have received an email from a teacher that brought me to tears.
I’m going to try to do bet­ter for my own kids and oth­er young peo­ple I inter­act with, and I hope you’ll com­mit to try­ing to sup­port the young change­mak­ers in your life as well. Let’s val­ue their ideas and inten­tions for what they are, and let go of our expec­ta­tions or con­cerns over the results. I have no doubt that, giv­en the right encour­age­ment, they are all the types who might real­ly make a dent in some of this world’s prob­lems. And we need each and every one of them to try.