The other day, I had a student in my office and she asked about the quote I had set as my desktop background: “It’s much easier to nurture a dream than to deal with an explosion,” a line from Ernest Morrell’s speech at the 2014 National Council of Teachers of English’s Annual Convention. Over three years later, it remains a line that I quote often to colleagues and use to guide my work with young people every day.

Before I knew it, I was down a rabbit hole. I was talking about Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and Langston Hughes’ “Harlem”; I was talking about the English teachers I have learned so much from yet do not directly know; and I found myself endlessly talking about why I want to teach, the safe space I want to create as an administrator, and how I can always do a better job of helping my school become the place where kids’ dreams are nurtured.

If we aren’t nurturing our kids’ dreams and sense of hope, who else is?

For some, no one.

So when I recently read Eric Jensen’s Teaching with Poverty in Mind and Jensen’s comments about hope, I started to think differently.

As Jensen points out, “learned helplessness” is not a “genetic condition.” Rather, it is “an adaptive response to life conditions…” in which “[students] believe that they have no control over their situations and that whatever they do is futile” (113).

I think we can all point to a student in our careers who has lost hope, who thinks that he or she can do absolutely nothing to change their life trajectory. I encourage you to pause right now, and picture them. Remember their name? Remember how they used to frustrate and challenge you? You may have even blamed them for a gray hair or two. They never seemed to respond to what you would say, and they would tell you again and again that they “don’t care or “will never care.”

That kid needs our help finding hope.

Jensen encourages teachers to talk to students about their dreams, their hopes, and their aspirations. But this talk also has to go beyond the mistake that Shanna Peeples, the 2015 National Teacher of the Year, shared in this podcast. If we only do surface-level work of just asking kids about their dreams and not really listening and talking, we can get—and accept—responses like that of the student she worked with, whose negative response ultimately became his outcome.

As educators, we also have to be aware that “Students raised in poverty are especially subject to stressors that undermine school behavior and importance” (27). This doesn’t mean that all students who live in poverty are subject to poor behavior, nor does it mean that that these students will perform poorly. They are, however, at a greater risk. If we really want to tend to those dreams, we, as educators, must be aware of that and teach students to recognize and overcome some of these stressors.

We must nurture those dreams, make relevant connections in our curricula, and continue insisting that students can take small steps to accomplish their goals. If we don’t, then we can find ourselves managing more of the “explosions” that Morrell talked about in his speech. After all, it’s easier for a student to realize that yelling, screaming, stomping out of our classroom will earn him or her a “pass” at the day’s work. But if we are truly serious about nurturing those dreams, we have to think in terms of empowerment and persistence. Like Jensen also argues, “Instead of telling students to act differently, take the time to teach them how to act differently” (30). We won’t accomplish it in a day or a quick lesson about grit or mindset. Instead, we have to be as hopeful and relentless as we can be.

We have passed the halfway mark of the school year in my district. During this time of the year, I always reflect (actually overthink and overanalyze) about what we have accomplished to this point. My reflections usually involve two areas; the learning we have accomplished and the richness of the community. I have never had a formal list to help focus my reflection but this year I did jot down a handful of questions for both learning and community.

For the learning side of the reflection my questions were:

Are my students actually improving their craft as writers?

Are my students thinking deeper about the texts they read?

Are my students showing improvement in the ability to converse/reflect about their reading and writing?

Are my students showing more independence in their learning?

For each of these questions, I was able to flip through notebooks, look at assignments and check my anecdotal records for the first two quarters. For the most part, we are growing in our learning. Of course, individual students are growing at different rates. Some are flourishing, some are not moving as fast as I’d like to see. But, I can say that collectively we are learning and becoming more confident as readers and writers.

The tougher part of my mid-year reflections is thinking about how we are progressing as a community of learners. While I occasionally jot some notes, reflecting on the community is a truly gut-feel thing for me. I haven’t quite figured out how to take records on the soft-skills of social interaction and feelings like empathy toward each other.

That being said, this year I thought about these questions:

Are my students listening to each other in partner, small group, and whole class discussions?

Are my students doing the little things (like handing a book or computer to a partner) for each other?

Are my students using kind language toward each other?

Are my students excited about the books classmates are reading and the writing classmates are composing?

Are my students supporting each other without doing the work for each other?

For these questions, there was also a mixed bag of success. I think we are growing closer, but there are still many things to improve. For example, in each of my classes, there are small close-knit groups that are doing well, but we are not there yet as a class. It is a rarity to see a member of one group seeking out a member of another group.

Over the years when I start this time of reflection in January, I often remember Alfie Kohn’s work. Kohn is both inspiring and a reminder that I am not the teacher I want to be yet. His book Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise and Other Bribes, is as relevant to me now as it was when I read it back in my early years of working with children.

As I balance the last learning question, “Are my students showing more independence with their learning?” With the reflective questions about community building, I have asked myself over the years, Kohn’s thinking about how interdependence versus independence is a strong reminder to ask a different question. “How do I balance the needs of the individual with the needs of the community?” I lose sleep at times when I think about this.

I know Jeremy needs more intensive support than Charlie, but if I consistently don’t make time for Charlie how does that impact the fabric of the community I want to see in my room? I know Elle is a fabulous reader, but if don’t spend the time challenging her level of thinking, then how will she be able to nudge conversations with her classmates to a higher level?

For the rest of this year, I have decided to focus on community interdependence more than continuing to foster independence. Due to the constant bombardment of news that seems to show a distinct lack of empathy and community building, I feel the need to be a counterweight to those negative messages.

So, the first thing we are doing this morning after the long weekend is to talk to each other and hopefully find more connections. Discover or remember commonalities we have. Looking for these will help us build empathy and become a better community. I want my students to remember that we are far more responsive to the greater good when we go beyond just our personal responsibility.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we welcome students back into our classrooms after they—or we, at times—have made mistakes or have had something serious happen in their lives.

Maybe a student lashed out at you. Maybe they fought another student at the end of your class period. Or maybe they recently lost an immediate relative.

We all know what happened yesterday, or last week, or five minutes ago. Or we hear and see posts on social media, or we overhear students who talk about events that have happened around the building and outside of school. The witnessing of the fight downstairs a few minutes ago has now made its way onto the third floor and, despite not having seen it, it’s all kids are talking about, and then somehow that conversation is resurrected when that student finally returns to school and class.

We don’t just forget.

And we have to acknowledge that. If we simply forgot, then we miss out on opportunities to improve relationships, to signal to students and colleagues that we care, that we are people, and that we are a part of a community working to support each other. And it’s our experiences with each other that contribute to who we are and how people perceive us, and it’s our response after a negative experience that enables the rebuilding or refining of relationships.

So I write more without answers but more of a topic that I have been thinking about lately, the idea of re-entry, of return, of welcoming students back into our rooms and our lives after we all know that something happened. Because our goals as teachers and administrators are to teach, to adjust, to refocus, to redirect, to support and, I think, very rarely ever to ignore or to give up.

I think we first have to acknowledge that it is going to be awkward. People will look. They will talk. They will whisper. They will point. They will have thoughts that we will never know about the incident before.

And we have to communicate to students that we will recognize their discomfort, the awkwardness, and everything else that showing up again after a difficult event entails.

It might be a pat on the back and saying, “I know how difficult this is for you, but I am here to talk it out / be a support / prevent it from happening again.”

It might mean addressing it as a class (I seek permission from parents and the student when doing this), which I think can be incredibly powerful. When you acknowledge that something happened, others were affected, and we are now moving on, it can send a message to students that we make mistakes but our classroom culture is important to us—so important that it had to be addressed—and now we can move on.

It might mean that a simple “I’m sorry” is necessary. And sometimes brevity is okay. More can be said with less, and it is so important for kids to hear that from their peers and adults. We must model the behavior we expect from our students.

We must acknowledge the sinking-of-the-gut feeling that happens when we all do something difficult and then acknowledge when students take this important next step. This might mean a quick, “I am proud of you,” or a thumbs up, or a pat on the back. But we must reaffirm the power of taking that step to rebuild and move forward.

Returning is never easy, but with our help, the burden is lessened and we begin our journey toward restoring or reaffirming the sense of community we want to achieve.