“I waddled into my new classroom. My legs were shaking, and I was pretty much gasping for air. I pushed myself to the front of the room. The teacher asked me a few questions, but I just couldn’t answer them. I mean I could, but the answers were swirling around my brain and I just couldn’t catch them. I pulled my hoody over my head as far as it could possibly go. I wish I could shrink down to the size of an ant or run as fast as the speed of light so I could just get out of this classroom. Even if I can’t run as fast as the speed of light, if I did run out of the classroom do you think they would even notice if I was gone?”
Written by Misha Kalesiko, aged 9, Year 4.
My daughter recited this to me last night. She wrote it in class as part of an activity they were doing around emotions and expressive writing. The task was to choose an emotion or emotions and describe or express them, but without using the actual word.
I was quite awestruck when she shared this with me. Not only was what she shared beautifully written and expressed, she had committed every word to memory.
More than this, it impacted me powerfully for two other reasons.
Just yesterday, I had been running an online workshop during which we talked about techniques to manage and express emotions, and build emotional intelligence and emotional maturity. Key to this is our ability to accurately label and express what we are feeling. The simple exercise that my daughter did in class is a wonderful way to expand our emotional vocabulary and find ways to express our emotions.
On a more deeply personal level, this moved me profoundly. What my daughter wrote was a poignant account of the feelings of an introverted child who self-identifies as shy. It is a powerful reflection of the emotional landscape she traverses when she is at school where struggles to learn.
My daughter and I are both dyslexic. We both wear corrective “blue” glasses to assist us with our perceptual processing. My daughter, since starting school has found formal learning difficult and has come home feeling dejected and down because of her perceived inabilities in the classroom.
Yet, yesterday and for the very first time, she came home, and of her own accord, announced she had something she wanted to share. She sat tall, lifted her head high, and shared her beautiful piece of writing articulately and with confidence. She proudly stated:
“What I wrote was really good Mum.”
My heart welled with pride, and a deep sense of joy, to see her finally, and independently find a place in learning where she can feel so good about herself and her abilities.
By the way … can you guess the emotions she was describing?
With gratitude,
The M.A.D. Team