Freaks and geeks
Where your power hides
If you’ve ever been lucky enough to spend a day with a classroom full of kindergartners, then you know what little weirdos they are. They come to school in rainbow tights with their hair in messy pigtails. They CANNOT WAIT to share about their bug collection or the latest fact they learned about Venus fly traps.
Fully themselves, fully free. It is a beautiful sight to see.
But something happens over time. As they get older, they start to hide their quirks and blend into a sea of sameness. When I taught fifth, sixth, and seventh grade science, this was a great tragedy to me. I would watch the students (especially girls) slowly hide their weird and desperately try to fit in.
Part of this is the typical adolescent journey, sure, but it goes deeper than that. Take it from an ex-teacher, the default education system is not built to notice and nurture the unique genius that every child naturally has.
Instead, it is built on a foundation of compliance and preparation for “the real world.” Of course, there are incredible teachers that try to combat this, but there is only so much you can do when you are overworked and underpaid. Student individuality is squelched in pursuit of classroom control.
Raise your hand if you have ever been personally victimized by a comment on your report card! Maybe your mom came home from that parent teacher conference mad as hell. Maybe you got a phone call home or a note that sounded like this:
Towards the end of my teaching career, I wondered how different the world would be if instead of training children to be sufficient in everything, we cultivated their individual gifts.
Of course, this would mean taking a closer look at the things we see as flaws.
Can’t sit still? Maybe you are an athlete!
Can’t stop talking? Get up on that stage and give us a speech!
Doodling during math? Duh! You are an artist!
Oh the shame I felt the first time that someone called me weird. I made it my life mission to blend in. NOTHING STRANGE TO SEE HERE! I’m just like you, see!
But the things that I tried desperately to hide for the first half of my life are exactly where my power lies. We spend the first part of our lives learning how to blend in. If you’re lucky, the work of the second part is the return to your true self.
We all have a specific shade of freak. We all are some kind of geek. A great place to look for your spark is in the years before the world told you who to be.
That person is still there, waiting to be free.