Sharing Self

It's always a little intimidating reading your own work aloud before a classroom full of students who may or may not appreciate your story, your humor, your depth of feeling.

So when I shared the essay I wrote about Daniel, I was nervous, my voice shook slightly, and I could feel my knees quivering beneath me. Lucky for me, I heard laughter or silence in all the right places and by the end of the essay, they had heard the message I intended.

The task before students is to evoke similar responses in their audiences through their writing: to make the readers and listeners laugh and think and see what it is they are writing about.

It is about becoming vunerable and open to negative responses, to inappropriate laughter, to uncaring or cold commemts. Teenagers don't often willingly offer themselves up as sacrificial lambs on the writing butcher block. They remain safe by telling the same cliched stories that teachers have read for eons. But growth only happens when we risk much more, when we risk our hearts and souls by pouring them onto a page where we are left open to attack. The growth happens when we become determined to be more and to do more than is expected.

So what does reading my story of Daniel do for me? It exposes me as a human being, one with a sense of humor, a sense of compassion. It also allows me to demonstrate to each of them the love that I have for what I ask of each of them.

May you grow with each word you write.