By Jonathon Medeiros
(Adapted from a talk given at HEA’s Centennial Celebration)
I was born and raised on the island of Kauaʻi, in the Puna district, in Kapaʻa. I grew up working on a farm in the narrow green valley at the foot of Makaleha, with Kapaʻa stream running through it. This is where I spent hours working, and avoiding working, catching opu and trapping prawns, digging fence post holes and dehorning goats, tending chickens before, during, and after the slaughter. I learned to surf at Kealia, and I fished each weekend at a place we called Bluffs. My entire childhood was surrounded by cane fields and the ever present sounds and smells of the sugar industry, ash falling on my arms regularly.
My father is from Kaimuki, on the island of Oʻahu. My grandparents were born in the early 1900s and lived on Waialae Ave, above the bakery there across from Waialae Park. My Great Grandparents came to Honolulu in the late 1800s to join the Portuguese immigrant community already there, looking for community on the opposite side of the world from their home lands.
I've been at Kauaʻi High School for 16 years as a teacher and 4 years as a student, all of those years as a learner. I am an NBCT (National Board Certified Teacher), I build things and bake, I surf and walk and love learning from my brilliant wife and daughters. I am a writer. And I am a teacher. Recently, I was asked to give a talk about reflective writing and our writing lives. This blog grew out of that talk.
In my life, reflective writing is a practice, almost a meditation tool, a way for me to process and to think. In fact, for me, writing is thinking. I often do not know what I think about something until I talk or write and stumble onto my ideas. Despite the way writing functions for me in my life, I still do not love the idea of having to write. I am extremely comfortable with the idea of writing but when I hear that I “have to write,” for a class, a PD, whatever, my knee jerk reaction is some form of “Ug…no.” Perhaps you are this kind of writer. Maybe you are fine with writing as long as you decide the time and the purpose. I’ve noticed that many teachers are reluctant writers; when the notion of sharing our writing is involved, that reluctance can turn into downright discomfort or terror.
Forgive an obvious statement: Teaching is hard. My original notes here said “teaching is hard as f**k.” I admit I am a user of colorful language.
Ok, so teaching is hard; we make 100s or 1000s of decisions every day. Not manini decisions. I mean real decisions that matter. We deal with all of the mental and creative effort and drain of planning, learning, and teaching. We need to work just to be able to work when we are at work! Every single day, we use the emotional energy needed to perform. We deal with dozens of people’s issues hourly. Things change moment to moment sometimes, and we must roll along with those changes and keep smiling. We deal with all the joys and all the traumas of so many people, our own included, daily. We are believed in beyond our abilities and we are doubted at every turn. We all know that this is often an impossible job and yet we are expected to do every impossible part of it and not break.
In lieu of making changes to the systems in which we teach and learn, in lieu of making changes to our pay, to the way we can earn PD, to the daily expectations and responsibilities, to the way we are or are not valued, we are often simply encouraged to pursue “self-care.” Look, we cannot self-care our way out of this to an education system that works, that centers students, that recognizes our expertise, that does not gaslight us as we try to do our jobs and dare to tell the truth about them.
We cannot self-care our way to a sustainable career in education.
All of that would require systemic change, not window dressing. That would require money, flexibility, bravery, curiosity, support, and time. And that work is being done. I don’t want to imply that is not being done. That work is being done and needs to continue, and still, yes, cliche as it is, we do need to practice self-care, but not as a way to prop up education and soldier on but to really make sure we stay centered in ourselves, to be sure we do not lose track of our own needs. As I often tell my students, we can’t rely on someone else for our self worth and health. Down that path is frustration.
Ok, but how can we do this? How can we take care of ourselves in an honest way? I don’t actually know, but for me, writing helps. I believe that writing can be our meditation. Reflective writing can be one way to process this career we’ve chosen, this life as it currently is, and to care for ourselves. When we take time to kilo, to stop, observe, and reflect, when we struggle to find the words we didn’t even know we wanted, we create new meanings, see new pathways, and find new connections. We change ourselves, we add to our knowledge, as we find words. The work of finding the words, not any final product, is actually the valuable part.
Ok, metaphor time…In her essay “Hana Keaka: Drama-Driven Storytelling as Lived Curriculum in Early Childhood Education,” Dr. Puakailima Davis talks about the difference between drama and theater. Theater is audience focused, she says; Drama is participant focused. But one is not more valuable than the other, despite the fact the audience pays to see the final show, not the work leading up to it. She points out that drama is for the people doing the work because that is where they learn, grow, and change, not in the final presentation.
This reminder focuses us on the truth that the learning is in the work, not in the final product; many of us are familiar with this idea: ma ka hana ka ike. The learning is in the work. The regular work we do changes us, if we let it. For me, writing is like this.
The learning is not in the thing at the end. It is not in the beautiful deck, for example, but it is in the scuffed knuckles, the stripped nails, the sandpaper, the sore muscles, the measuring and remeasuring, the hammering, in the sips of cold beer and in the sweat on our skin.
The learning is not in the exam the students hand in; it is obvious to say that the learning is not in the grade that student receives. It is in the broken pencils, in the scribbled notes, in the hellos and how are yous, in the drafts, in the questions, in the discussions, in the daily frustration and laughter and yet we devalue this part, the actual learning, in favor of a final product. We have entire educational systems that confirm this; yearly standardized, report cards, final exams, I could go on.
John Darnielle, of the band The Mountain Goats, talks a lot about his love of work and he explains it this way: People pay money, and revere the painter, for the masterwork, the still life in the museum, but he knows that the real value is in the other work we are not meant to see, in the studies, in the 100s of oranges that the artist sketched over months, as they learned about their idea. These are not less valuable than the paintings in the museum. These, in fact, are where the painter grew and learned and discovered what they needed, what they wanted to portray.
The learning is in the work.
Regular, reflective writing is like this. This is my writing life. The process, the practice, the recursive work, is where the change and learning happen. We can use reflective writing to help us figure out what we know, how we feel, what we want. We can use it to process, understand, and unload some of the traumas of our days.
When we write, we are not simply assigning written words to thoughts and feelings that we already have. We are actually learning what we think and feel as we do the work of writing. This is why regular, reflective writing can be so useful and powerful.
Often, my students struggle with this idea, as do adults with which I talk. They wonder why I am asking them to “just write.” They want to know the question they need to answer, when I will read it, and how to be correct. But I want them to experience the thing that I know, which is that sometimes we do not know what we want or think or need until we spend time trying to find words.
I like to think of reflective writing as similar to looking into a mirror and then writing about what we see, except we do not see our faces in the mirror. We put some other idea in there; maybe a moment, our whole day, a single word or image.
If you would like to practice, you can do something I do with my students, school aged and adults. We begin by thinking and talking about an idea, then we look at that idea in the “mirror” and then write about what we see. We do this often, nearly everyday, building a practice, normalizing the work over the outcome.
For example, use the word refuge, if you want to write today. What is refuge? A place, a person, even an activity that makes us feel safe, makes us feel comfortable being exactly who we are. Poet and essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil says that nature does not judge us for who we are or make us feel uncomfortable being our true selves, and so nature is a refuge for her. Take a quiet minute to identify your refuge; name it, write it down, then place your refuge in the mirror; think about your refuge, all of it, how it feels, sounds, smells, etc. Then, write for 10 minutes. No rule other than do not stop writing.
Now, find the end of that sentence. And take a breath. And now take time to notice how you feel. Pause and check in with yourself. Name that feeling. Write it down.
Reread your writing, notice what you notice, and highlight your favorite lines. Talk to someone, if you can.
And that’s it.
We can care for ourselves in many ways; one way is through a regular, reflective writing practice. Not for an audience or for any other reason beyond the act itself; the work is valuable; it changes us. Again, John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats explains in his colorful way that the end product is the carcass, the thing leftover after the work, which is where the learning really is.
Our job is often isolating; we find ourselves inside of our classrooms, inside of our work, adrift from each other as we try to process the 100s or 1000s of decisions that fill our hours, days, and weeks. Some of us are so lucky to have a constant partner with whom to debrief, to support and who supports us, but many of us do not have that connection. Writing can help us with this, can help us process, help us find connections, and help us see connections or ideas we did not know were present, and can help us move forward, lighter, when we need a load lifted off of our shoulders.
Mahalo for your kind attention, for your work. The work is valuable apart from the outcome, you are valuable because of your work.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jonathon Medeiros has been teaching and learning about Language Arts and rhetoric for sixteen years with students on Kauaʻi. He frequently writes poetry and memoir as well as essays about education. He is the former director of the Kauaʻi Teacher Fellowship and full time believer in failure. Jonathon enjoys building things, surfing, and spending time with his wife and daughters. He believes in teaching his students that if you change all of your mistakes and regrets, you’d erase yourself. Follow Jonathon on Twitter - @jonmedeiros or jonathonmedeiros.com
