“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” — Robert Brault
Recently, I randomly recalled an obscure question a student asked me.
She’d asked, “What did you say?”
Those were the only four words I’d heard that student say, over the course of an entire school year. Upon hearing them, I’d decided they were the four best words I had heard all year.
See, she was a student with selective mutism.
One of the interventionists who had been treating her condition thought it would be helpful for me, her classroom teacher, to work with her and a group of students after school, in a small group and less formal setting. This, the expert thought, would help her as she adjusted to school. For unknown reasons, she hadn’t spoken the year prior. However, she did speak with her family and friends outside of school. In fact she was known to be quite chatty at home. As a new and inexperienced teacher, I was all at once, intrigued and honored to be a part of a new learning experience, that would ultimately potentially help a child.
This is where “craft club” began.
My work colleagues smiled at the thought of a twenty-something year old male teacher, meeting once a week with a group of girls and a speech specialist. We played games, made things, and chatted. For each of the girls, I was their first male teacher, a responsibility I took quite seriously. It was important to me that I made and kept a good impression for these young kids, who would undoubtedly grow up to have many other non-relative male figures in their lives.
And this young smiley-faced and pleasant girl, her condition intrigued me.
Having worked separately with the specialist, I had come to understand the importance of my role in all of this. I knew what to and not to do to add any stress or strain to this young child’s situation. The goal for the setting of which I was part, was to establish and maintain a calm and predictable setting. During the day, she was one of my students in a class of twenty-five or so kids. After school, once a week, it was she and three friends, and their teacher, sitting at a table in the back of our classroom, engaged in low pressure and fun activities.
We did this consistently for an entire school year. It was humbling to think of the awesome challenge I was playing a small role in helping to solve.
One afternoon, while the group chatted, we all stopped upon hearing an unfamiliar voice.
It was hers.
She’d asked, “What did you say?”, in response to something I had said.
In this moment, I instinctively repeated what I had said. This, I later found out, would be a critical move on my part, because the last thing this little girl needed was for someone to draw added attention to her circumstances.
These went on the be the only four words I’d heard this girl speak. And while craft club continued the entire year, this school year, like all others, eventually came to an end. The little girls went on to middle school and then, high school. And like most kids, I had lost track of them and they, of me.
Life took over.
Then, in 2018, I received an unexpected email from this little girl’s mother. She had reached out to share that her little girl was a senior in college and was about to start her student teaching. When she interviewed with her cooperative school’s principal, she was asked why she wanted to be a teacher.
In her email to me, the girl’s mother wrote, that she responded, “My third grade teacher made a difference in my life.” Her mother went on to say how she told him about how she had selective mutism and how her teacher did craft club with a bunch of little girls. Her mother wrote to me, “She said she wanted to be like you and wanted to make a difference in another child’s life.”
I share this story of “the good old days” as a reminder that we are surrounded by opportunities to experience gratitude. Now as a seasoned principal, I often schedule time for myself to learn with and from students. These times keep me grounded, and focused on gratitude. When a staff member recently asked if I wanted to play Uno with a group of fifth and sixth graders, I graciously accepted, remembering craft club, with a smile.
I added the appointment to my busy calendar, and look forward to the game.
These “little things” we get to do remind us to be grateful to be living “the good old days”, every day.
- Merle Haggard - I Think We're Livin' In The Good Old Days
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