"Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me."
I was sitting outside on the playground bench wiping the tears of a child when this old saying came to mind.
It isn’t true, of course.
The tearful child was a student undergoing an evaluation process to help us understand why she couldn't read.
One of her classmates was climbing the ladder of the slide and yelled out, "Hey! You’re retarded!"
Ouch.
Words can hurt us.
They can break our hearts.
I frame my classroom rules in a small set of positive statements.
The most important rule is "Speak with kind words."
From the first day of school until the last, our catchphrase is, "We use words to build up instead of tear down. We use words to help and not to hurt."
My former students can recite this mantra word for word.
I hope they hear it in their sleep.
I hope they remember it for as long as they live.
After the playground incident, we made our way inside.
I sat in my rocking chair.
My students joined me crisscross applesauce in a circle on the carpet.
"What is the most important rule in our classroom?”I asked.
They answered enthusiastically, "We use words to build up instead of tear down. We use words to help and not to hurt!"
"Why?" I asked.
They sat in thoughtful silence.
This was unusual for that group of 9 and 10 year olds.
I used that silence to introduce a story that would illuminate the power of words.
I held up the picture book Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges.
We started a picture walk by looking at the front cover.
"This is Ruby Bridges. This is a picture of her when she was 6-years-old and in the first grade. She was younger than you. She was a special person. She was the first African-American child to go to the William Frantz Public School in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1960. All of the other students at that school were white. The parents of the white students didn't want Ruby or any other African-American child to go to the school. They believed white children were better than African-American children. You know what I think about that. No person is better than another person because of the color of their skin, the country they were born in, or the things they believe. I detest any ideology that states one person is superior to another person. We are all human beings. We have hearts, souls, minds and bodies and each one of us is THE MOST VALUABLE person on this green earth. So I disagree with those parents’ beliefs about Ruby Bridges. I disagree with them with all of my heart. I’m pulling for Ruby.”
We stopped on page 25 and looked at the famous Norman Rockwell painting called The Problem We All Live With. There’s Ruby and three U.S. marshals. The picture shows them being pelted by tomatoes while walking by the N-word spray-painted on a wall. We talked about a group of women called "the cheerleaders" who came and screamed words that tried to tear down Ruby.
"How would it feel to walk in Ruby's shoes?”
One student’s response was more powerful than the rest.
She didn't answer my question with words.
Instead, she gently placed her arm around my tearful student’s shoulder.
In that moment, I knew the words had become building, healing actions in our classroom.
The opportunity to get to know one another—that’s the first step in learning to use words to build up and help instead of to tear down and hurt.
I love that.
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