hiking as a metaphor.

at my school we have a fairly strong and effective advisory program. usually teachers start by advising 9th graders and then move through their four years with them. but my first year i didn't have a group. so last year i asked for a 10th grade group because i felt a real connection to that class and 10 girls requested me as their advisor. i love having an all-girls group because we can really get into stuff in a way they can't in a mixed group. i have always had the romantic idea that my group was different, more bonded, more thoughtful because of the good work we do together.

at the beginning of the school year each grade goes on an overnight trip. we teachers go with the grade we're advising. so i went on the 11th grade trip this year. i was sent on this trip my first year when i didn't have an advisory and i remember returning upset. the trip involves a hike up mt. monadnock in new hampshire. the hike is very tough and i saw kids struggling physically in ways i hadn't ever before. i also kids literally running up the mountain. i felt like it divided the class ...into the athletic and non-athletic and into groups of kids who've had access to trips involviong hike and those that hadn't.

so i made a decision that my little group was going to do the hike together no matter what. we would reach the top as one which meant some students had to hike at about a quarter of the pace they would have normally while other students had to push out of their comfort zones to keep up. i envisioned everyone helping each other and all of us chatting sweetly as we worked our way up the mountain. i prepped them with my ideas for the trip way back in the spring. a few of the girls helped me make t-shirts for our group last week and i went and bought some silly bouncy headbands for us to wear.

here's the thing...there are 80 kids in the 11th grade and my 10 were the only ones being "forced" to climb the mountain this way. some of them loved all my hoopla and others were not pleased...and they let me know in that lovely way only teenagers can. eye rolling. hands on hips. sighing. i felt for the first time the way parents of teenagers must feel.

we began the hike at 11am. despite my clear instructions several of the girls took off at breakneck speed. i ran up to the front and asked them to slow down. they wanted to debate about it. i felt annoyed. the more we hiked the more the girls at the back struggled. at times i wondered if i was pushing them too hard. the girls at the back told me how bad they felt for making the others wait. i explained that it was the girls at the front who were in the wrong. the girls at the front said they thought stopping and waiting for the girls at the back would make them feel worse. were they pretending to be emphathetic and then using it as a way to get what they wanted? i was so frustrated. i explained to them i didn't want them to stop and wait. i wanted them to help their classmates, encourage them...walk with them. i begged them to put themselves in their classmates's shoes.

eventually i started to pick places we could see up ahead and we would all agree to hike to that point and then sit and rest. this allowed some of the faster girls to push on and seemed to make the whole concept of the hike more manageable to the girls who were struggling.

eventually...after several lectures and me digging down deep into my bucket of patience...they started to get it. they started to stop without me telling them. i saw hands reach back to help.

and by god, somehow, we did it. we reached the top as one group...smiling.


we were the last people to arrive at the top which was humilitating for some of the girls. i was exhausted. i had given away all my water and was carrying stuff from the bags of girls who had packed way too heavily. those cell phones and ipods really add up.

now that i'm back home and too sore to do anything much but update this blog i'm thinking about what we did....

i really don't think some of the girls at the back would have made themselves go to the top without the encouragement (however half-hearted at times) of the rest of the group. there were other students who didn't make it to the top. would they have been able to do it if they'd had a built in support group?

i got angry about halfway up and i let them know it. was my being up front and "real" what helped us get it togther or do i need to allow kids more time and space to figure things out? could i have held my tongue? would they have figured out on their own?

sometimes i worry about students who are at a disadvantage for whatever reason (lower income, less athletic, less artistic, they represent an ethnic or racial minority) having to suffer to educate the students who are naturally getting ahead. is this what i was doing? did the athletic girls learn to help out at the expense of the slower girls? or did we all learn from each other?

WE have so much work to do. teaching empathy might just be the hardest and most important work out there. maybe there's a way to do it that doesn't involve a rocky mountain.