We’re all looking for someone who knows who we are and will break it to us gently.
                                                                    Robert Brault https://choiceliteracy.com/article/may-10-2019-moments-that-matter/

This month I helped my friend Sandy brainstorm ideas for a commencement address. She was trying to come up with something brilliant to say in five minutes or less in front of 10,000 people who would have little interest in listening to her.
So, you know, no presh.
We sat at dinner for a couple of hours with our notepads and talked, thinking of all the cliches people say in graduation speeches. Finally, I asked her to tell me a story of a time when she connected with a student that touched her heart.
Sandy immediately went back over 30 years to her earliest days as a professor. Gary, a freshman at the time, showed up during her office hours and came out to her. Gary had not told anyone else he was gay. This was no small thing in the 1980s, at the height of the AIDS crisis.
Gary explained that a few weeks before, Sandy had been eating dinner with a bunch of students (including Gary) in a residence hall where she was the faculty mentor. Someone told a homophobic joke, and everyone laughed. Sandy said she didn’t find the joke funny at all, the laughter died immediately, and the conversation moved to another topic. It was in that moment Gary realized that Sandy was an advocate for gay students, and it gave him the courage to share his secret with her (and eventually others).
Here’s the thing. Sandy had no recollection of that dinner conversation and joke when Gary shared it in her office. She was just living her life, doing the mundane things we all do day after day—working, eating, chatting, and speaking out when she disagreed with something.
Her story made me think back to when I was a graduate student. The day I received my first writing rejection I cried, if only because the critique was so vicious. The anonymous reviewer said my writing was smarmy (I had to look up the word before I could understand how insulting it was). That night I went to a seminar with the professor who was my writing mentor, Donald Murray. He was talking about publication and I muttered something about how hard it was to get writing published. He chuckled and said, “Brenda, you’ll write a book someday. You can take that to the bank.” He continued on with the point he was making about working with editors. I sat up straighter and put that awful review behind me.
I’m sure Don forgot that remark as soon as he made it. His words changed my life anyway, just like Sandy’s offhand and instantly forgotten condemnation of homophobia changed Gary’s life. The days we live blur together, most seeming insignificant. It’s easy to forget what power we have to change the lives of others, and the influence those we admire have over us. What those mentors say to us one-on-one, how we observe them live their lives, can make all the difference in whether someone nurtures their talents and passions. Or has the courage to tell others who they are.
In May the flowers appear and the end of the school year rushes up like the ground when a plane is landing. The fears and doubts niggle at you. Have I done enough? Have I reached who I needed to reach? The beauty and curse of it is that you have, and you will also never know. The moments that mattered most to others are rarely the ones we remember. The encouragement and guidance teachers give moment to moment is as unconscious as breathing. And students will go on just living their lives, holding on to a moment or two of encouragement from you that you’ve missed in the midst.
Sandy ended up with a lovely little speech about those moments that matter that we know nothing about. She got over her nerves when she realized that the things we think are the most important markers of our lives, like giving a commencement address, really don’t matter much at all.
This week we look at ways to help students tell the stories they care most about. Enjoy!
Brenda Power
Founder, Choice Literacy