Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 10
June 30, 2025
Resolution update: June 2025
Every month, I record my progress toward my yearly goals to hold myself accountable and occasionally seek help and advice from readers who are willing to offer insight, ideas, and solutions.
Here are my results from June.
PERSONAL FITNESS/ATHLETICS1. Don’t die.
My blood work came back. Slightly elevated cholesterol. I’ll be increasing my oatmeal and fruit intake and start exercising harder.
I’m also still dealing with an inflamed airway after being stuck in Brooklyn as a building burned beside my car. It would be great to stop coughing.
2. Lose 10 pounds.
Two pounds gained in June. Good job, Matt.
A total of two pounds down so far.
3. Do a targeted push-up workout at least four times per week.
Done.
4. Complete 100 sit-ups four times per week.
Done.
5. Complete three one-minute planks four times a week.
Done.
6. Cycle for at least five days every week.
I completed 25 rides in June — a mix of indoor and outdoor.
A total of 151 rides so far this year.
7. Try at least three new vegetables I have never eaten before or do not like.
No progress.
8. Get a DEXA Scan and VO2 Max test at least once in 2025.
Appointments are scheduled this week.
9. Lower my handicap to 19.9.
I played ten rounds of golf in June, and my handicap remains at 25.3.
My last two rounds have been atrocious. I’ve made a change to my swing (on the advice of my coach) that is ruining my game and making golf a lot harder in the short run.
WRITING CAREER10. Complete my eighth novel.
Work continues.
11. Write, edit, and revise my golf memoir.
No progress.
12. Write my “Advice for Kids” book.
Solid progress. Nearly complete.
13. Write/complete at least three new picture books, including one with a female, non-white protagonist.
No progress.
14. Write about my childhood in partnership with my sister, Kelli, at least once per month.
No progress.
15. Write a new solo show.
Done!
16. Submit at least three Op-Ed pieces to The New York Times for consideration.
No progress.
17. Write at least four letters to my father.
I sent my father a birthday card in March.
One letter so far this year.
18. Write 150 letters.
A total of 36 letters were written in June to students, their siblings, colleagues, fans, clients, conference organizers, and Clara.
A total of 127 letters have been written in 2025 so far.
19. Write to at least six authors about a book I love.
No progress.
STORYTELLING/SPEAKING CAREER20. Launch a new Homework for Life app.
Done! You can download Apple’s app store now!
21. Record and publish at least 25 videos on my YouTube channel.
Four videos were posted in June. A total of 19 videos have been posted in 2025 so far.
Thanks to my production manager, my YouTube channel is really taking off.
22. Perform a new solo show.
Done! Two sold-out shows were performed in May. New venues are now being sought.
23. Revise my free Storyworthy Academy.
Done.
Thanks primarily to the work of my partner and production manager, we have an outstanding free academy for anyone who wants to learn more about storytelling.
Check it out at storyworthy.com.
24. Record and produce at least three new Storyworthy courses.
Done! Two new courses have been completed and are now ready to launch with our new website.
25. Produce a total of six Speak Up storytelling events in 2025.
Two shows were produced in June:
June 7 at the Mark Twain House
June 28 at Hartford Flavor Company
We have produced five shows in 2025 so far:
January 11 at the Connecticut Museum for History and CultureFebruary 7 at District in New HavenMay 10 at the Connecticut Museum of History and CultureJune 7 at the Mark Twain HouseJune 28 at Hartford Flavor Company26. Submit pitches to at least three upcoming TEDx events, hoping to be accepted by one.
No progress.
27. Attend at least eight Moth events with the intention of telling a story.
I attended one Moth StorySLAM in June. Sadly, my name remained stubbornly in the bag.
I also brought two friends to a StorySLAM in NYC, only to discover we were at the wrong venue.
A total of six Moth events in 2025.
28. Win at least one Moth StorySLAM.
Done! I won my 62nd Moth StorySLAM in March.
29. Win a Moth GrandSLAM.
No Moth GrandSLAM opportunities yet.
30. Pitch “You’re a Monster, Matthew Dicks” or my new show to six theaters in 2025.
No progress.
31. Produce at least 24 episodes of our podcast Speak Up Storytelling.
No progress.
32. Perform stand-up at least six times.
No progress in June.
I’ve performed stand-up once in 2025.
33. Pitch three stories to This American Life.
No progress.
34. Submit at least three pitches to Marc Maron’s WTF podcast.
No progress, but Maron has announced the end of his podcast in the fall, so time is sadly running out.
35. Send a newsletter to readers at least 50 times.
Done!
Five newsletters were sent in June to my Storyworrhy audience, plus 12 to my Substack audience.
Check out my Substack here
https://substack.com/@matthewdicks
I’ve sent 50 newsletters so far in 2025.
HOME36. Organize the basement.
More progress! Bins cleared. More furniture eliminated.
36. Clear the garage of unwanted items.
Done! The garage is officially clean, and all unwanted items have been removed.
37. Replace our backyard shed.
A new shed has been purchased. Permitting is complete. Arrival time is 4-6 weeks.
38. Refinish the hardwood floors.
I’m writing this newsletter while sitting on a stool in an empty room.
The workers arrive today to begin the work.
FAMILY/FRIENDS39. Travel to Europe.
Still waiting on possible speaking tour dates to Australia, Germany, and Saudi Arabia before we finalize European dates.
We may opt to travel to someplace other than Europe this summer.
40. Text or call my brother or sister once per month.
Done.
41. Bring my brother, sister, and me together at least twice in 2025.
No progress.
42. Take at least one photo of my children every day.
Except for days when I was away and unable to take the photograph, done.
43. Take at least one photo with Elysha and me each week.
I only took one photo with Elysha and me in June.
44. Plan a reunion of the Heavy Metal Playhouse.
No progress.
45. I will not comment positively or negatively on the physical appearance of anyone except my wife and children to reduce the focus on physical appearance in our culture overall.
Done.
46. Surprise Elysha at least 12 times.
No surprises in June:
I’ve surprised Elysha seven times in 2025:
A surprise birthday party on January 4Post Valentine’s Day flowersClever and amusing office suppliesFlowers on the first day of testingDesserts for Elysha and her teammatesUkulele care packageMocktail subscription47. Play poker at least six times.
Done!
I played poker twice with Charlie in 2025 — both times using a video poker game on a plane.
I’ve played at least a dozen sessions of online poker again on a legal, sweepstakes-based website. Small stakes. I’m very much in the black thus far.
48. Spend at least six days with my best friend of more than 30 years.
No progress.
MUSIC49. Memorize the lyrics to at least five favorite songs.
No progress.
50. Practice the flute at least four times per week.
No progress.
MISCELLANEOUS PROJECTS51. Host at least three dinner parties where I cook.
No progress.
52. Develop a course on self-confidence.
Progress continues. Strategies are being collected, an instructional outline is being developed, and I’m conducting interviews to gather thoughts and ideas.
53. Develop a list of strategies to help people deal with loneliness and produce it in some form.
I’ve started writing a book on the subject, based on the list of strategies I’m developing.
This was a surprise to me and my literary agent. Instead of writing the full book, I’ll write a proposal for it.
54. Read at least 12 books.
I read one book in June:
“The User’s Guide to Storytelling” by Doug O’Brien
I’ve read 11 books thus far in 2025:
“Unreasonable Hospitality” by Will Guidara
“Schtick to Business” by Pete McGraw
”The Humor Code” by Pete McGraw
“Catching the Big Fish” by David Lynch
“Simply Said” by Jay Sullivan
”Miracle and Wonder” by Bruce Headlam and Malcolm Gladwell
“Revenge of the Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell
”Factfulness” by Hans Rosling
”Fight” by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes
“Steal Like an Artist” by Austin Kleon
“The User’s Guide to Storytelling” by Doug O’Brien
55. Finish reading TIME’s 100 Best Children’s Books of All Time.
No progress in June.
I’ve read five additional books in 2025, bringing my total to 44 total books read off the list.
56. Edit our wedding footage into a movie of the day.
No progress.
57. Digitize a pile of DVDs that contain dance recitals, plays, and other assorted moments from the past.
Done!
58. Memorize three new poems.
Done!
I’ve memorized the following poems in 2025 thus far:
“This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams
“Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost
“Trees” by Joyce Kilmer
59. Post my progress regarding these resolutions on this blog and social media on the first day of every month.
Done.
June 29, 2025
Dr. Annie Andrews for US Senate
Have you seen Dr. Annie Andrews’ campaign launch video?
She’s running for a seat in the United States Senate against Lindsey Graham.
It’s hard to imagine a Democrat winning a Senate seat in South Carolina, but Lindsey Graham is a hypocritical monster who is loathed by many.
He is currently sporting a 34 percent approval rating in his home state.
Even better, Annie Andrews seems like the real deal.
At least in terms of communication.
And that, in so many ways, is everything. You need to know how to communicate with an electorate, and it can’t be through the ways it has worked in the past.
Arguments must be made, but you must be saying things that people want to hear, which means you need to be clear, loud, entertaining, novel, unexpected, combative, and more.
Additionally, you must not be hesitant, flinch, or afraid.
Also, you need to weaponize your opponent’s language by either stabbing them with their own words or flipping the script and adopting criticism as a compliment.
Dr. Annie Andrews does a lot of this in her launch video.
I’m impressed.
I only hope this isn’t all she had to offer or the extent to which she’s willing to go.
Let this be the beginning of much more to come, and not the apex of her ability to communicate and connect with voters.
June 28, 2025
Empty ice cream trucks!
Here’s one of the most impressive, hilarious parenting moves I’ve ever heard of in my life:
A mother I know, whose children are truly amazing humans, told her children that when the ice cream truck is playing music, it means they’re all out of ice cream.
She allowed this lie to persist for years.
I’m clearly not as opposed to ice cream or ice cream trucks as this parent, so this wouldn’t be something I would do. However, the moxie, the ingenuity, the hilarity, and the ability to say no to her children are so impressive.
As a teacher of 26 years and a parent for nearly two decades, I can confidently assert that it’s a parent’s inability to say no to their children that is most damaging to kids.
It’s not easy, of course, but as Matthew Dicks once said in a novel, “The hard thing and ther right thing are often the same thing.”
Saying no to ice cream in such a clever way — deflecting constant questions and persistent pleas via lies and subterfuge — is so impressive.
June 27, 2025
My Google Portrait has arrived!
For about two years, I have been collaborating with Google Labs to create a “Portrait” of myself — an AI-powered version designed to help people tell better stories.
Google has trained this Portrait on my philosophy and teaching related to storytelling, and then I met with the team on several occasions to prompt, adjust, and tweak the Portrait so it could capture my speech patterns, tone, and general demeanor.
It was a fascinating process. One of the biggest challenges for the engineers was to get my Portrait to speak as directly and honestly as I do.
Artificial Intelligence is generally designed to be polite, which apparently does not accommodate my willingness to speak plainly and directly to people.
As the engineers increased the level of directness, the Portrain began to sound rude, requiring further adjustments.
As we discovered, I often say things that could be construed as impolite or unkind, except that I say these things after establishing a trusting relationship with a person, and I often use humor to balance the directness, which the AI can’t do.
I am also quick to point out my own mistakes and flaws when helping someone identify theirs, which makes it easier for them to hear. Vulnerability, it turns out, is an exceedingly powerful force in communication.
The Portrait can’t really do that, either.
But ultimately, I think we’ve reached a point where it genuinely sounds like me, including my voice, which is uncanny.
It’s been quite a couple of years of work with the team, but the result, launched today, is a version of myself capable of helping people learn to find and tell better stories. The AI only offered about a quarter to a third of what I teach — enough to help people find and produce a good story with real craft supporting it, without giving away too much.
Eventually, the Portrait will direct people to my work for more information, including my books, instructional videos, and other resources.
Check it out here: https://bit.ly/4eoqgif
June 26, 2025
Lot of problems at The Hilton, but one was unforgivable
While in Miami last week, I stayed at the Gale South Beach, Curio Collection by Hilton.
It was not a good experience.
The hotel, except for my room, was mildly air-conditioned. Friends came on Sunday to watch me speak and couldn’t believe how poorly air-conditioned the public spaces were.
We spent about two hours in the lobby before heading over to the convention center, and it was uncomfortable and annoying.
The elevators, by contrast, were exceptionally hot, like unadorned saunas capable of vertical motion.
The hotel also has no desks. Nothing in my room. Nothing in either of the two lobbies. If you wanted to sit down and do some work, it was happening on your lap, which was the case for me for four long days.
I’ve never stayed in a hotel in my life that didn’t have a desk somewhere in the building for guests to use.
My room was also less than ideal. It was small, containing a bed, a half-sized closet jammed with a safe and refrigerator, and a single nightstand with three drawers for my clothing.
That was it.
My bed also lacked a fitted sheet, even though I had taken the bed apart twice and left a note for housekeeping. This meant that every night, I found myself on a sheet that was eventually twisted, wrinkled, and disheveled.
All of this was terrible, especially given I was in the hotel for four days, but the worst part was this:
I arrived on Friday before the 4:00 PM check-in time, so after spending a couple of hours in a poorly air-conditioned public area, I went to the front desk to claim my room.
No rooms were ready, I was told.
“It’s four o’clock,” I said.
“That’s when check-in begins,” the man behind the counter told me.
“Begins?” I asked. “I travel a lot. That is not a thing. Check-in and check-out are actual times. Not the suggestion of times. You’re not being honest with me.”
“Fine,” the man said, apparently conceding the point. “But no room is ready yet, sir. We’ll text you once we have a room for you.”
After waiting an hour for a text message, I returned to the desk at 5:00 and was told that one room was ready, but it had no windows. “I can give it to you,” the man said. “But I wouldn’t take it if I were you.”
I agreed. Four days in a windowless room in Miami?
At 5:25, I was told two more rooms were ready, but neither had a working television. I wasn’t sure if I would be watching any TV during my stay, but two rooms without working televisions isn’t a great look.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll take one of those.”
“Give me a minute to get things ready,” he said. He returned to the counter, and then a minute later, he said, “Mr. Dicks, another room with a working TV just became available. Windows, too.”
He sounded excited.
I was not. I should’ve been given a room 90 minutes earlier, and windows and a working television seem like the bare minimum to expect from any hotel.
Here’s the worst part:
There were five young men behind the counter during the entire time I waited, doing nothing while housekeeping furiously cleaned rooms throughout the hotel.
Five men handling a single desk at a hotel while guests waited for rooms that should’ve been ready long ago.
It was apparent to me that the manager on duty of the Gale South Beach, Curio Collection by Hilton sucks. Maybe not as a human being, but absolutely as a manager.
One person—possibly the manager—should have been staffing the front desk, while the other four staff members, regardless of their position, should have been cleaning rooms or assisting housekeeping with room cleaning.
When I managed McDonald’s restaurants and we needed more Big Macs than my grill team could produce, I went to the kitchen and began flipping burgers alongside my team.
When the drive-thru wasn’t running efficiently because the orders were large or the team wasn’t cooperating, I stepped in and helped.
If I saw trash in the dining room and had no one to clean it, I cleaned it myself.
I swept, mopped, cooked, and cleaned, and did everything else necessary to ensure my customers had the best experience possible.,
At the Gale South Beach, Curio Collection by Hilton, at least half a dozen people were unable to check in at 4:00, but we all watched as five men behind the counter twiddled their thumbs instead of getting rooms ready.
It was a joke—a poorly run disaster of an operation.
Good managers are willing to roll up their sleeves and work like hell when necessary to ensure an outstanding customer experience every time. The manager of Gale South Beach, a Curio Collection by Hilton, failed in this regard. He stood side by side with his employees as they did nothing to rectify the situation.
For several reasons, I will not be staying at Gale South Beach, Curio Collection by Hilton again, and I may reconsider staying in any Hilton property in the future. But the primary reason will be that I don’t trust the people running the place to look out for my best interests and work hard to ensure a quality stay in their establishment.
I can forgive many things, but I cannot forgive laziness, dishonesty, and neglect of basic customer needs.
June 25, 2025
Mr. Dicks Obit
One of my former students wrote an obituary for me.
Not only is it hurtful, but it’s well-researched.
I’m so impressed.
_______________________________________
Obituary: Mr. Dicks (Born 1 B.C. – ????)
Teacher. Survivor. Balding icon.Mr. Dicks—known to some as “Mr. D,” to others as “Sir Please Don’t Yell At Me,” and to one student in particular as a living menace—has reportedly passed away for the third or fourth time. Sources remain unclear due to conflicting reports of resurrections, bee stings, and raccoon involvement.A fifth grade teacher with a flair for intimidation, Mr. Dicks lived a life most would not survive once, let alone repeatedly. Among his many accomplishments:Survived being hit by at least three different cars, including one during a McDonald’s curbside delivery.Died from a bee sting and then un-died, likely out of spite.Flew through a windshield in a car crash, then was insulted by bystanders who apparently thought CPR meant “criticism per respiratory.”Owned a raccoon. Enough said.Was arrested three times, for reasons never quite clarified but assumed to involve chaos and maybe property damage.Taught countless children, terrifying and inspiring them in equal measure, dating back to the Roman Empire.He is survived by his raccoon (believed to be immortal), several traumatized siblings who were also hit by cars, and generations of students who are both grateful and emotionally scarred.In lieu of flowers, please send traffic cones, bee repellent, and a strongly-worded email from a former student who once placed 5th in America at Kids Lit Quiz and never let him forget it.Rest in chaos, Mr. Dicks. May heaven have fewer vehicles._______________________________________I really do bring out the best in them.
June 24, 2025
My lifelong conversation with Arthur Miller and “The Crucible”
Last week, my family and I saw “John Proctor Is the Villain” on Broadway, on the recommendation of a client.
It’s fantastic. As I was walking up the aisle to exit the theater, I thought, “I’d see that play again tomorrow.”
I loved it for many reasons, but one of my favorite aspects of the play is the way it centers on a class of high school students reading and debating Arthur Miller’s 1953 play, “The Crucible.”
When you love the arts like I do, your life can sometimes feel like a journey through the work of an author or artist.
I first read “The Crucible” in high school, where I learned about the Salem Witch Trials and how Arthur Miller used that time in American history to comment on Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare of the 1950s.
Then I read the play again in college, diving deeper into the story and craft.
Then I saw its first revival on Broadway in 2002 starring Liam Neeson and Laura Linney.
I sat beside actress Nastassja Kinski.
After seeing the revival, I found the play in my local library and read it again on my own
Twenty-three years later, I saw “John Proctor Is the Villain.”
I sat beside Charlie.
Suddenly, a play that I thought I understood for more than thirty years seemed entirely new to me. A window was opened, and I saw the characters and plot in a whole new way.
I feel like I’ve been in a lifelong conversation with Arthur Miller and this play, and each time, I see things from a different perspective. The play gets more interesting. Its depth and breadth expand. It raises new and more challenging questions.
This is the joy of engaging with art throughout your lifetime.
As you evolve, it, too, evolves, and can sometimes become new again.
June 23, 2025
I afford people the right to evolve
The family watched “Stand By Me” on Saturday night.
It’s an excellent film that I saw in the theater when it first came out, based on a Stephen King novella that I have read many times. But as Clara pointed out, it’s a movie also filled with language and slurs that only the vilest people use today.
But here is what I told Clara:
Every generation uses language that future generations consider inappropriate, hateful, and vile. If you think we have reached the pinnacle of wisdom, respect, and kindness, you are filled with ignorance and hubris.
A decade or two from now, we will look back on the language used at this moment and wonder what the hell we were thinking, just as I look back on the language I used in high school and think, “How could I have thought that was okay?”
This is why I always afford people the opportunity to evolve.
Thinking that we should all evolve our thinking and language simultaneously is not realistic nor fair.
This is not to say that I condone language that offends or demeans others, and I firmly oppose the action of people who harm others, but if I use the words “undocumented immigrant” to describe someone who came to the United States outside of the legal means, but another person uses a phrase like “illegal immigrant,” I don’t naturally assume that person is a monster.
I don’t support or approve of “illegal immigrant,” and I may attempt to educate the person if possible, but I am also affording them the opportunity to evolve because there was a time when most of us used “illegal immigrant,” thinking it was perfectly fine.
I’ve just moved beyond that language faster than others.
Also, it’s possible that “undocumented immigrant” will be considered wrongheaded and cruel in the future, too.
Again, to think we have reached the apex of respectful and appropriate communication would be stupid. We are all monsters in the eyes of future generations.
So, when someone is wrongheaded in their thinking or choice of words, I try to guide them along the continuum, as a young woman did for me a few years ago when she pointed out the problematic nature of the word “savage” — a word I had been using all the time.
Today, I avoid the word, but honestly, I also miss it.
And while it’s become popular to shift from “homeless” to “unhoused person” for many good reasons, I still use “homeless” because I was once one of those unhoused people and still prefer “homeless” to describe myself at that time in my life.
But perhaps I need to evolve, too. If you think so, afford me the opportunity to do so, especially if I’m someone you consider an ally.
If that wrongheadedness or language is causing others to suffer in meaningful ways, I will naturally stand opposed to it, but if their thoughts and opinions are foolish or misguided but their own, I am willinging to forgive them of their lack of enlightenment, just like I forgive the teenage version of myself for my lack of enlightenment and those boys in “Stand By Me” for the same.
As a friend was fond of saying:
“The truth is one. The path is many.”
Some paths are longer than others. I try to afford people the opportunity to reach the finish line in their own time whenever possible.
June 22, 2025
Small men in fancy cars
I’m on South Beach in Florida for the next four days.
I’m speaking at the Million Dollar Round Table at the Miami Convention Center — a keynote for about 8,000 people on the mainstage, plus a couple of five-minute bits of storytelling improv and a less formal talk to a couple of hundred people.
Last night, I was standing on a corner, waiting for the light to change, when I saw a family crossing perpendicular to me. They were crossing against the light, which isn’t advisable, but it looked like they had plenty of time to get across.
That was when a man in a red sports car sprinted up the street, which is a thing here:
Men in sports cars accelerating to maximum, almost unbelievable speeds from one light to the next.
It’s crazy.
The cars are so loud, too, which makes dining outside annoying. The constant roar of the engines drowns out all conversation.
In this case, I was worried that a little girl trailing the family might not make it across the street quickly enough, so I stepped off the corner and sort of shuffled her along. This caused me to end up standing beside the man in his sports car — a convertible — when the light changed to red. I must have been staring down at him with a look of anger or disgust because he looked up at me and said, rather aggressively, “What?”
“Your very fancy car goes so very fast. You must be so proud.”
He shouted a less-than-creative two-word response at me.
“So very fast,” I repeated in a singsong voice and quickly walked away. I wasn’t worried about him leaping from his convertible and challenging me, but you never know what people will do.
Especially men who are willing to risk the lives of pedestrians on a main thoroughfare to show off.
Elysha would kill me if I got in a fight on a street corner in South Beach.
It’s so odd to me:
Men with expensive, fancy cars can’t see that sprinting their loud vehicles down the street for a block or two is a screaming, lights-and-siren indication of their inner weakness and fragility.
It’s a sad and pathetic cry for help.
A confident person who possesses genuine self-worth does not attempt to garner the attention of others by driving a fancy car fast. It’s neither impressive nor admirable.
It’s stupid.
Doing so is a desperate plea for attention. A desire to prop up a large but fragile ego. A signal of a lack of maturity, common sense, and decency.
This town is apparently full of them.
June 21, 2025
Grounded for life
My former fifth-grade students — now seniors — returned to the elementary school where I have been watching for 26 years to walk the hallways one more time before graduating from high school. My current batch of students, alongside the rest of the kids in our school, lined the halls and “clapped them down” as they marched through the school, just as they had done seven years ago as fifth graders headed off to middle school.
One of my former students who later came back to say hello was especially dear to me. I had known her since she was a baby before she became my fifth-grade student.
I had actually changed her diaper at least once — a fact she never appreciated me bringing up.
More importantly, she was the last student whom I ever lifted off the ground.
About a month into the school year, I picked her up, tossed her on my shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and began carrying her across the room. She had partnered with her best friend again after I told her to find someone new, so I picked her up and was moving her to another group when my new principal entered the room.
“What are you doing?” he asked in a panic.
“Teaching reading,” I said. I really had no idea what he was talking about.
“Not that,” he said, “Why are you carrying that student?”
“Oh, I said. “I do this all the time.”
I told him that I would pick up students and move them to where they needed to be when they were annoying me. I didn’t do it every day. Just every now and then, when needed.
“It’s my thing,” I said.
Honestly, I think I saw it as perfectly natural. As a father who carried his kids in his arms and on his shoulders until they were too big to lift, and as a former Scout leader who would toss boys on his back or shoulders to carry them when they were tired or couldn’t get across a stream, I saw my students similarly:
Kids whom I cared for in the same way I cared for my own children or any other child.
Kids whom I loved.
So why wouldn’t I treat them the same?
A minute or two later, I was standing in the hallway with my principal, being told I could never lift a student off the ground like that again.
I couldn’t believe it. I had been carrying students for nearly two decades, including the former principal’s own daughter, who was my student years before.
No problem. No big deal.
Apparently, it was now.
So, although I’m a rule bender and sometimes a rule breaker who is always looking for an edge, I’m never blatantly insubordinate. When told not to do something, I don’t unless I can find a way around it semantically.
But there was no getting around this one. The instruction was clear and unequivocal.
So for the past seven years, students in my classroom have remained firmly on the ground, despite my occasional desire to lift them and carry them across the room.
“You’re the last student I will ever toss over my shoulder and carry across a room,” I told my former student, now all grown up and headed for college.
She thought this was a travesty.
Although I understand why I’ve been told not to lift kids off the ground and can see the rationale behind the decision, I agree with her. In our effort to remove risk from our world, we’ve created a sanitized, bubble-wrapped environment that is decidedly less fun and doesn’t give children the opportunity to take risks, learn from their stumbles, and grow from their falls.
As we continued to talk, my former student was appalled at all the other things that have been stripped from students since her days in my class:
Field trips, overnight camping trips, the stage in my classroom, select musical groups, competitive field day, and yes, my proclivity to lift kids off the ground and move them where I wanted.
“That’s terrible,” another one of my former students said. “They’ve taken all the best things. All the things I remember most.”
I agree.
“Why?” asked another. “Why did they take away all those great things?”
My answer is the same I give to anyone who wonders why something has been taken away from children in any school system:
It made adults’ lives easier.
Whenever something joyous, memorable, or epic is taken from students, it’s always done to simplify the lives of adults.
In my 26 years of teaching, I have never heard an administrator say:
“We are going to stop this fun, memorable, life-changing experience for children but replace it with something equally fun, memorable, and life-changing.”
Nope. It’s always subtraction. The equation is never rebalanced. As a result, children suffer.
And these things —bits of splendor and joy—are always taken away to make things easier on adults under the guise of recapturing instructional time, risk management concerns, changes due to the pandemic, or budgetary reasons, which is always a way of saying:
Funding this will be hard, and finding the time and resources required to make this happen will be hard, and we don’t want to undertake another hard thing, even if it would mean the world to the kids.
Want to know what’s important to kids?
Ask kids.
Ask my former students, ready to head off to college, about what was most meaningful to them during their time in elementary school.
They know better than anyone.
Granted, picking kids off the ground and hauling them to the other side of the classroom is probably not necessary, and I suspect that a fair number of parents would disapprove, so my principal probably did me a solid by bringing an end to this habit, even though it was perfectly fine for two decades.
But the other losses suffered by students across our country, as budgets are squeezed, teachers are overworked, and visionary leaders are replaced by efficient managers, are a tragedy.
School can’t only be about reading, writing, and math. It can’t be a place absent of fun, hilarity, and joy. It can’t be as forgettable as a day at the office.
Kids do best — academically, socially, and behaviorally — when they are having fun. Looking forward to the next day. Doing things they will remember forever.
When adults stop making that a significant focus of the school day, they fail children. They ensure that only the most motivated and supported kids succeed while leaving behind scores of children who require inspiration, purpose, joy, hilarity, and fun to get ahead.
My former students know this. They know it well.
Adults should, too.
