The Bully in Our Brain

Although I haven’t mentioned it much on here, I’m a teacher. I spend my days with 85 eleven and twelve year olds. Sometimes it can be trying, but most of the time, it’s pretty rewarding and always entertaining. I encounter countless challenges every day, and am forced to come up with creative solutions. The longer you teach, the better you get at it. However, there’s a few challenges that have come my way the past year or two that I’m still trying to figure out the best way to navigate.

As a social studies teacher, I start each year off with a unit all about identity. The compelling question that we try to solve throughout the unit is “What is identity and how is it formed?” We spend a little over a month delving into issues like how our identity shapes who we are, labels and assumptions we make about others and ones others make about us, society and societal norms/expectations, invisible “masks,” perspective, stereotypes, and how our choices affect how we’re seen by others. It’s a really fun unit, and it not only helps me to learn about the faces that sit in my classroom each day, but it helps bring awareness to each student about their thought process and who they truly are.

Each year while doing this unit, there are moments where I’m totally blown away in both positive and negative ways. My students never cease to amaze me with their perspective on this world, themselves, and each other. As adults, I feel like we sometimes don’t give them credit for the things that they see and recognize about the world around them. Let me tell you, they see A LOT. They also feel a lot, and they feel their feelings so strongly and passionately.

However, in feeling so strongly, they are under a great amount of stress. You may have heard someone say, “Kids these days are different.” I may not agree with the negative connotation that this statement is insinuating; however, I do agree. Kids are different, and unlike many people may think, it isn’t their fault. Kids are different now than when I grew up, or when you all grew up because our world is different now. This world, as hard as it is for adults to survive and thrive in, is even harder for our youngest humans to navigate.

There have been two lessons I’ve taught the past few weeks that have totally blown me away and hurt my heart. For the first one, I stood up in front of my classroom and asked, “Have you ever been told by an adult that you can’t be stressed out because you’re a kid?” You would not believe the reaction that question received. I had kids vigorously nodding their heads, jumping out of their seats with their hands raised, raising their voices, and generally getting all worked up. I don’t know what they were expecting, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t expecting me to follow the question with, “Well I think that’s crap.” Although crap isn’t necessarily a ‘bad’ word, 6th graders do get a certain kick out of hearing it come from a teacher’s mouth. Anyway, I asked them to start naming all the things that stressed them out, made them feel anxious, or made them mad about their lives. I listed all of them on the board, and they went on forever. They named parents, family issues, school, sports, siblings, homework, bullies, sleep problems, pets, chores, and more. Some kids shared personal details, some just shared an area in general, but there was not one kid in the classroom that did not participate. These kids may be twelve years old, but they have legitimate worries and fears. And more than anything else, they just want to be heard and validated that their worries matter. That they’re real.

The other lesson that broke my heart, was our labels lesson. We talked about labels, and how they are words that we assign to ourselves and to others based on appearance, personality, and assumptions. We talked about how some labels we assign to others may be true, and some may not be true. We listed all of the labels we have given someone else on the board, both negative and positive. We then did the same for the labels that we give ourselves, aka the words that we call ourselves in our heads that we don’t say aloud. I teach four sections, and in each class, the majority of words that our kids are calling themselves in their heads are negative. In one class, it took over ten kids sharing words to get to a positive word. As each class finished, I went through and underlined all the negative words. At the end, we all stared at the board and all the red underlines. Our kids are being bullied, and the biggest bully they are facing is within themselves.

As a teacher, this is one of the biggest challenges that I face on a daily basis: to discourage negative self talk and model positive self talk and self esteem. Even as an adult, this is sometimes hard. But as hard as it may be, it is SO important. Our kids need to see the adults in their lives being kind to themselves. They need positive role models to look at to see how to take care of themselves, both physically and emotionally. Our society is unfortunately all about tearing others down, the last thing kids need to see is the adults in their life playing into that narrative.

Thinking about this challenge, and all those fears and worries that my students have running through their brains, I get overwhelmed. It is so daunting to me to think about all the things that I wish I could do, that I wish I could model and teach to help each kid. As teachers, we are supposed to be ensuring their learning and mastery of concepts. But a question that I ask myself often is, “But how?” Yes, on paper, I understand the how. I understand the Iowa Common Core standards and what we want each student to know. I understand best practice, how the brain works, classroom management techniques, and how to keep students engaged. But when I hear all the things that my students are worried about, some of the major things that are taking up space in their brain, and when I see all the words that they are throwing at themselves on a moment-by-moment basis, I wonder just how I’m supposed to be teaching these kids content when their brains are consumed with worry and fear about their day-to-day lives.

Now, to the brutally honest part. As I lay in bed at night and think about my kids, as I affectionately call them, I often feel like a hypocrite. Yes, I think it is absolutely essential to be a good role model and model positive habits, self-talk, and self esteem. However, as important as I think it is, it is something that I struggle with on the daily. In my mental health struggles the past few years, I could have filled up that side of the board with negative labels that I have given myself five times over. Although I try to be a kind person on the outside, I can be absolutely brutal to myself on the inside. That is one of my biggest struggles. So that begs the question, how can I be a truly positive role model and preach self-love and self-care when I suck at it? That’s the question that keeps me up at night and puts a pit in my stomach during the day. It’s something that I’m working through, and still trying to figure out.

In saying all of that, my biggest goal the past two years as a teacher has been transparency and honesty. As I wrote in a previous blog post here, I used the fact that I had to go to treatment to work on myself as a teaching opportunity last year. In an age appropriate way, I was honest about not being healthy and needing to go take care of myself so that I could be healthy again. The thing that I’m most proud of the past year of teaching is that I have not balked from being honest about getting help when you need it and all the things that I have learned about myself along the way. I’ve found the kids respond to honesty, especially when you admit that you don’t have it all figured out. They appreciate listening to my stories of struggle (they love hearing about how I refused to practice deep breathing at first because I thought it was “stupid”), and the things that I’ve done to overcome those struggles. They also appreciate hearing that I don’t have it all figured out. Many times as adults, we feel like we need to portray a front of confidence and competence to kids. However, I’ve learned that more so, they just want you to be real with them and admit when you don’t know or when you struggle.

Do I still feel overwhelmed as I lay in bed wondering how I can teach these kids who have so many worries and anxieties? Is it still daunting to look at these pictures of my board (and listen to conversations in the hallways, at recess, etc), and see/hear all the negative thoughts and words that my kids are repeatedly calling themselves on a daily basis? Yes and yes. Do I still feel like a hypocrite as I see my students struggling with some of the same things that I’m still working on? A thousand times yes. But through all of the overwhelming feelings of dread, and guilt, I try to stop and reframe. All of this time, through all of the heartache and anxiety and frustration and sadness that the past few years’ struggles have brought to my life, I haven’t lost hope that there’s good to come out of all of this bad.

So when I start getting really overwhelmed and feeling like I can’t make a dent in all the bad in this world, I try to remind myself that this world needs more honest, transparent people. This world needs people to admit when they struggle, to tell their story, and to be real. As hard as it is, when people show up and own their stories, they are giving other people permission and space to do the same. Therefore, if owning my story, being honest about my struggles and giving my students a REAL role model to look up to, not a PERFECT one is all I can do right now, then maybe that’s good enough. Because maybe if they see me being real and struggling, and picking myself up every time I fall on my face, just maybe it will empower them to do the same.