I am inspired by my student.

I am inspired by my student.

Last week one of my students was having difficulty with an academic task. He was working through the stress of the work and his self-confidence in his ability to complete it in the time allotted. As this student’s stress was escalating, becoming apparent to students surrounding him, an angel reached his wing out to comfort the student.

This angel was another student sitting at the same table. In the most gentle, soothing voice and without looking up, he touched the anxious student. With his hand on the boy’s shoulder, he softly spoke to him saying, “You’ve got this. You are the most determined person I know. You can do it. You’ve got this.”

“You’ve got this.” From one adolescent to another, from an eighth grade classroom of angst, anxiety, fear of being different and bullied. From the heart of one student who, like all the others, experiences the ups and downs of this difficult age where minute to minute can be a struggle between independence and dependence, invincibility and vulnerability, triumph and disappointment. An act of solace from one young man who stopped his work to help another in pain. That call to reach out to a peer was deeper than the academic work at hand; it was a powerful yearning to connect, to alleviate the pain in another, to encourage, to motivate, to support.

This angel gracefully removed his wingtips from his peer’s shoulder and silently resumed his own work. The touch of those fingertips was felt on the shoulder, and his words felt in the troubled student’s heart. Anxiety abated, he too silently resumed his task at hand. “You’ve got this” echoed on as I watched them work.

I am inspired by my student.