Storm

What does it feel like when I dance?

Lightning races across

A sky that seemed dark, even;

Traces the shapes

Of darkened clouds,

Fills it with colors—

Just as quickly it’s gone.

The sky, the air, charged with electricity

A power that streams

Through, over, under, up through the soles of the feet

Into the brain.

Dancing is putting your inside life on the outside.

I've been dancing since I gave myself lessons for my 21st birthday. Growing up, dance was something I always wanted to do; I used to sit at the festivals and watch the dancers and dream of moving my feet that way, taking over the stage, masses watching my every move. I imagined the judges raving about my performance. I dreamed of awards and trophies and championships.

After that, you would think the best part would be the dancing. Performing is amazing, and I love the way I feel when I get on stage. I also love the way preparing, working to learn and perfect my dances, has given me patience, strength, dedication, and perseverance.

Dancing isn't the best part, though. When I started dancing, I learned something else more important about myself.

After I had been dancing for about a year, I was offered the opportunity to become a teaching assistant for the beginning dancers. In my very first class, I encountered a rather difficult student. “Alexis” was not apathetic about dancing, and she certainly did not misbehave. Instead, she was as hard-working and excited about dancing as any teacher could possibly hope. What made her a difficult student was that, no matter how hard she worked, Alexis never got any better.

She simply was not a natural dancer.

Her energy, though, made me decide that I was going to help her be a dancer, whatever it took. Together we worked out special ways she could remember the steps. I created special exercises she could do at home to help her improve her form. We drew up practice schedules; we sang along to the music to help her hear how her timing should go. Slowly but surely, Alexis began to improve. The day that she tested for the next level and passed my class was one of the most amazing days of my life. To see her so eager to dance well, and to know that when she succeeded, I had participated in getting her there, made me feel exhilarated. I was certain that this was an experience I wanted to repeat as often as possible, for the rest of my life.

It was then that I decided to be a teacher. My love of teaching others, I realized, could be a career, and it could be much more personally fulfilling than the science I had been studying. Though I enjoy science, it has never given me the same euphoria that comes from helping a student succeed when it seems all hope is lost. I believe I would be happy teaching children of any age or background, but I truly find my passion with middle-school students, like Alexis, the girl who showed me that I could make a difference in children’s lives.

When I was about 8, I realized that I wasn’t like other kids. I was homeschooled, which meant that I developed my interpersonal skills around adults instead of around other kids. I wouldn’t have said it that way, of course—but I noticed that I didn’t talk the way other kids did, so they didn’t know how to respond to me. Adults didn’t really know what to make of me either, since they expected kids to talk a certain way.

I was also a tomboy, partly from having four brothers and a lot of uncles, and partly because boy games were just more fun. Girls wanted to play with Barbies and tea sets, not play soccer or run around shooting each other with toy ray guns. Boys didn’t really know how to play with me either, because they were used to going easy on girls. If I beat them, they got mad; if they beat me, it was because I was a girl.

Most unforgivably of all (to other kids), I was a hopeless bookworm. When I was 4, I read every Little Golden Book in the house; by the time I was 8, I had read Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, and Shakespeare, to name a few. I talked like my books; I looked for more and more books to read. I even read textbooks—seventh grade science, tenth grade English, anything I could find used at the bookstore or library. I always wanted to learn new things, and then I tried to teach everyone what I learned when they just wanted to play.

My mom’s oldest sister Liz had a little apartment, and when we slept over, she used to let us stay up late and watch several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I loved Wesley Crusher instantly. He was just like me! He didn’t talk the way kids do; like the space version of a homeschool kid, he was always around adults. He wasn’t interested in what kids liked; he was interested in science and Starfleet and always worked hard, and people didn’t understand him. Most importantly, he was always studying, learning, and then trying to explain what he learned to whoever might listen. This should have made him a hopeless nerd.

Instead, it made him cool. Because of it, he got to do things like fly a spaceship and save an alien race. Watching him, I understood that if he could do it, I could too. Wesley could build a device that saved a starship. I could write a story that people would want to read. I could sing a song they wanted to hear. I could teach them things they wanted to learn. If Wesley could get into Starfleet Academy, I could do anything! So maybe it didn’t matter if I was different. I could be like Wesley, and love what I loved, and do cool things.

Wesley taught me that lesson, probably before the wonderful actor who played him knew it himself.

This was going to be an essay about dancing, but it has morphed into an essay about teaching. I am a middle school teacher, 6th grade homeroom, 6th through 8th grade science, and pre-algebra. Wesley Crusher is a huge part of the reason why. Middle school kids are likely to feel different, alone, estranged. Under the influence of society and hormones, they worry whether or not people like them. My twelve-year-old friend Addie told me that “Middle school is hard because you don’t just care about school, you have to care about what you wear and who you talk to.” I want to teach kids how to play in band and how to love reading, how to find the answers to their questions, how to persevere when math is hard. Those all matter.

More importantly, though, I want to teach them how to love what they love, and do what they do, and be who they are; to live in community with each other; to like themselves even when nobody else likes them. I want to be the Wesley Crusher for kids who aren’t lucky enough to have Star Trek in Aunt Lizzy’s basement.

My friend Alexa jokes that I am "one of those crazy people who actually prefers working with kids at the beginning of puberty." She is not wrong.

Middle school kids deserve someone who loves them, who wants them, who believes in them. I hope my kids learn, but I hope,, more than that, they know how much I love them.

Shinichi Suzuki, best known for the introduction of a revolutionary method for teaching music in 1946, had many goals in his music school. I have many goals in my classroom. But the great music educator expressed the most important one beautifully, and I have always loved his words:

Teaching music is not my main purpose. I want to make good citizens. If children hear fine music from the day of their birth and learn to play it, they develop sensitivity, discipline, and endurance. They get a beautiful heart.

This is what I want to show my kids above all: community. When they have been in my classroom, either for dance or at school, I want, more than anything, for my kids to grow a beautiful heart.