"I need your help"

Yesterday evening when Steve announced that we would be reporting, writing, doing videos, social media, etc.,  I was immediately scared.  I remembered back to one of my first years of teaching when our entire teaching staff took some introvert/extrovert test.  My score was 4/100; zero was the most introverted that one could be.  Someone later admitted to me that they also scored as an introvert, but they were so scared of being one that they gathered with the other 50 or so extroverted teachers in the room.  Go figure, it only makes sense that most teachers are extroverted. 

This immediately explained why I broke out in hives every time I stood in front of my class, why I stuttered, and why my armpits so visibly resembled a fountain.  I preferred to have my desk in the back of the room and to "visit" the front of the room where I sat awkwardly on an old metal stool.  A few years into teaching, I switched jobs.  When I interviewed at the new school, the dean asked me if I could teach journalism.  I explained that I rode my bike around Lake Superior without training, so I could probably figure out how to do newspaper.  At the time, I was stretching for a response.  But, now I know that advising is very much like going on a 1300 mile bike ride around a lake with no topographical map, no place to stay, and unpredictable weather.   My answer was enough to get me the job, and I found myself advising a weekly newspaper.  This was the beginning of me sending my students off into the world to interview people - something that I would announce as a powerful and almost joyous event.  I was completely oblivious to the fear that this must have produced in some of my students.

Yesterday, I felt that same sense of fear with Steve's words, and it was good for me to feel this fear - to understand it from my student's shoes.  It was good for me today to feel that fear dissipate as we walked around in our small groups interviewing and trying to figure out what happened to poor Suzanne.  In order to solve this mystery,  I very much needed the help of the people whom we were interviewing.  But more than the interviewees, I needed the help of my peers to stand beside me, ask questions that I wouldn't ever think to ask, and to develop a strategy for solving this mystery.

When I return to my classroom, I want to remember the words "I need your help".  I want to remember them because it is at the root of all of the work that I do in my print and online classes.  I need my students help, they need each others help, they need my help, and most of all we need the help of the people whom we interview.  Without their stories and their voices, we would have nothing to tell. 

Tracy Anderson
Community High School
Ann Arbor, Mich.