Today, I begin sharing daily writing prompts to encourage writers of all ages to journal on a daily basis. No marketing, just prompts. If you wish to share your writing to the daily prompt, please feel free to leave a link in the comments or use the hashtag #RVWritingPrompts wherever you might be posting your response.

Don’t feel compelled to spend days or even hours crafting the perfect response. A few weeks ago, I subbed for one of the art teachers at my school. In that group, one student emerged and shared with me that she paints a new picture every day. When the bell rang and I moved along to my own classroom, she tracked me down and gave me her daily painting: a beautiful lobster that she painted in about 40 minutes. Paint your response in words or colors, musical notes or dance interpretations, and then share it with the world, in all its raw beauty.

Writing Prompt #1: Reflect on a time when you displayed great courage when the world was not watching. 

My Response: One of my colleagues was quick to post a comment earlier today when I shared this prompt. She alluded to the profession of teaching, and having the courage to show up every day and do the unthinkable, the inexplainable, in teaching in such challenging times when most of the world does not understand what we are doing to teach effectively, to push away all of the noise that is around us, and – most especially – the doubters and naysayers that question our profession on a daily basis.

That part – the questioning of our profession – is something that I have endured in these 35 years of being in a classroom with my students. In fact, I was fighting for the prestige of the profession when I was still 21 and in college, arguing passionately against fellow education majors who were in it until they figured out what they really wanted to do.

Like it was some kind of job that held a space until something better came along.

So to Frances, I say yes. The world has its opinion of what we do, but the courage you and my colleagues display on a daily basis, mostly when the world is not watching, is appreciated and recognized.

For me, it comes down to those small chats with students at the end of class, or in that brief period of time between the last bell and when the buses pull out for the day. Talk about courage. So many of these students have been holding that fear of talking with an adult, or gathering the courage to share a concern, for the entire day. That’s somewhere around 16 bells shuffling them off to other classes or to lunch as they grapple with a dizzying shift in content in those 7 hours.

They display great courage every day, and nobody really knows it except for themselves and the teachers and counselors and coaches and administrators and SROs they talk to.

As the recipient of those chats, I am incredibly grateful that I am with colleagues who continue to show up, continue to listen, continue to hold space for our courageous students who need us to be there for them.

But for me? Courage? When the world is not watching? Well, it is in my art, my writing that takes place in the space beyond the public eye as I sort through the ideas, the philosophies, the wishes, the hopes that I might be able to bring to all of you one day in a form that is best received, best served for a world wandering, reaching, hoping for many of the same things as me, and you, despite what we may be, or share openly, with the world.

I am no more courageous than you.

And that, my friends, brings me strength and energy to carry on, to show up, to share authenticity with the world, or even in classroom 203 on a weekday afternoon at 2:15pm.