"It matters."

"It matters."This quote + those sticky notes were on my classroom wall one year. The quote came first. We were struggling with some bullying issues at school at the time. We wanted to encourage students to be "upstanders" instead of "bystanders," but it was a hard sell. In fact, I didn't want to sell them anything at all. I wanted to encourage them, to commiserate with them, to listen to them. So we talked. It's hard enough to stand up for yourself sometime. To stand up for someone else? Why take the risk? After we talked about it for a while, a phrase came up. "It matters."


There are things that don't matter too much. People spend a lot of time on some of them. I won't give you the entire list that we discussed. Make up your own. But there are things that do matter, like loving your friends, being a good son/daughter, planning an awesome future, being grateful, making someone else's day, week, month, year, life a little easier. Those things matter, and they matter forever. Because you matter, and so do the people around you. And that's why I found all these "It matters" sticky notes around the quote the next day. They stayed there the rest of the year.


I'm headed back to Greenhill next week to speak at the school where I learned how to teach and coach. "It matters" will be on my mind. I'm looking forward to talking about writing and sharing the adventure of writing a novel, but more importantly, I'm trying to stay focused on what really matters. The people seated in those auditorium seats. #tbt