President's Letter: When Students Support Us

Wednesdays are the longest days. I’m fairly certain there is a measurable value to the heaviness that Wednesdays have. Especially when it comes to getting out of bed. I think I can even go as far to argue that there is a statistically significant value in the weight and gravity exerted to keep us in bed from approximately 6am to 7am. It goes away for a while but this gravitational force starts exerting itself again in the evening, usually around 9pm. The pushing and straining toward that cold side of the pillow, perfectly firm mattress – and we can’t leave out the pull of a fluffy comforter.
 
Last Wednesday felt especially heavy. The kind of heavy so you plan out your morning to the very second so you can shower just long enough to have just enough time to dress before you absolutely have to be out the door or there is no possible way to make it to the intervention team meeting on time. That was this last Wednesday’s kind of morning. However, meetings went well. Ideas were brainstormed. Accommodations were identified. 504 meetings were scheduled. It’s on to the third and fourth grade combo lesson in 15 minutes.
 
This is the last lesson of the month. At my school, the student-to-counselor ratio allows me to be in every classroom, every week, for 30 minutes. My position is only a four days per week, but my predecessor advocated for the time in every classroom’s schedule to allow for that amount of student contact. On the last lesson of the month, we do Music and Mandala day! I push my crude guitar skills to the limit, Mr. Lynes (my counseling intern) brings his bongos, and we get to jam while the kids sing along and draw or color designs on their mandalas.
 
There is something about singing a song and expressing that real emotion with another being. There is a connection that is so hard to explain in words, but you can feel it. In all the lessons we taught that day, there wasn’t a single kid who didn’t engage and participate in some meaningful way. The only times I had to let the kids know that they needed to “get control over their bodies” was when they were participating too much and not giving a chance to the kids around them to join in the discussion.
 
But this isn’t about the shared experience, it’s about the relationship we have with our students. It’s about the smile in the hallway for no reason. It’s about the genuine questions about how their day went. It’s about noticing when that random student wears the weird video game shirt that we have no idea about. Kids notice these things. They notice more than we notice. They notice when Mr. Diemart wears two different colored socks on a heavy Wednesday. They notice when we mean what we say. They notice if we mean it when we tell them we care about them. And when they notice that when we love them and genuinely care about them, they will want to listen, learn, and give us immeasurable amounts of love back. Sometimes those long, heavy Wednesdays don’t feel so heavy anymore.
 
Contact Chuc Diemart, ISCA president, at charles.diemart@boiseschools.org.