As a newcomer to the 2017 NWP and
NCTE conferences, I walked around in a perpetual state of astonishment and
sensory overload. The one refrain that reverberated through my mind, other than
“free books,” was the concept of Tikkun
Olum, roughly translated as “repair the world.” First conveyed during the
NWP plenary and repeated by several presenters throughout the NCTE conference,
I had heard this phrase previously through my Holocaust studies coursework at
UT Dallas and through training with the Holocaust Educator Network. The phrase
represents a belief which I hold dear, but hearing it again from a variety of
presenters at the conferences underscored just how important it is for each of
us to repair the parts of the world in which we live.
Teachers have the unique
opportunity to encourage young people to do the same, as most of us see over
one hundred children daily throughout the school-year and spend more time with
them, on average, than the other adults in their lives do. What if we could
bolster students’ empathy through reading and discussion and then – more
importantly – empower them to go forth and “repair the world”? As teachers of
English and language arts, we understand the importance between the texts we
read and their real-world implications. We understand patterns in society and
how literature warns us not to repeat mistakes of the past in a much more human
way than history does. We understand the power of language to change the world.
How do we get our kids to see these
things? We must take the time to have our students make connections between the
texts they read and themselves, their friends, family, community, country,
world, and humanity as a whole. We must provide context for what they read and
connect fiction with non-fiction – in both fiction and non-fiction based
courses. Bring news articles into AP Literature and bring some poetry into a
class built around non-fiction, for example. We must empower our students to
see themselves as readers, writers, thinkers, and feelers by not simply providing
them with opportunities to write authentic pieces for real audiences, but
expecting them to do so. We must encourage risk-taking as they find their
voices and resist the urge to beat them down with formulaic writing and
artificial writing scenarios. Why not have high school English students
practice writing letters to senators, or have students submit their poetry to
national publications? Students could create public service announcement films
and publish them on YouTube. The possibilities are endless, but imagine the
engagement and ownership students will experience with these examples versus writing to
another STAAR prompt. We can still help them hone their craft along the way,
but students would learn that there is power in their writing.
While empowering students to make
change with the written word, we must also help them develop as oral
communicators. This nation is in crisis. The adults no longer know how to engage
in civil discourse. So what hope do our kids have, who spend most of their time
avoiding “awkward” social interactions while they stare instead at phone
screens? We must make conversation a centerpiece of our classrooms. Learning to
engage each other respectfully – especially when we disagree – is perhaps the
most powerful way that we can prepare our students to repair the world.
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