Sub Notes: Rise from the Ashes

Sometimes on my job I have to talk so much that I forget an even harder skill: listening.

I was walking around the room to make sure these high school children were working. He was done with his work, and he was drawing. Part of my job as his special education teacher was to redirect him to something productive, but there was such intensity about the way he was bent over the page, something told me I needed to ask.

“Beautiful,” I said. “It’s a Phoenix, right?”

He was a tough-looking boy. But here is a secret I learned long ago: high school children don’t dress to reflect who they are, but who they want to become. Tough looking ones often are the most sensitive people who are trying to overcome tough circumstances. He looked up from his desk glowing with quiet pride.

“It’s the tattoo I’m getting,” he told me. “I was in a car accident six months ago. They said I died briefly. But I made it. It’s been hard work, but the phoenix represents how far I’ve come.”

I didn’t do my job that day and tell him to work on something else. Sometimes nature lights her own fires, and all we can do is stand back and marvel at what rises from them.

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. ~William Butler Yeats