Slice of Life: Sometimes Listening is the Most Important Thing We Can Say #SOL20

I think this book is really about being different.

Yeah. Like it’s okay to be different. 

It’s really about how you figure out who you are in a way that you love yourself.

I agree. It is about acceptance – you know being different and accepting those that are different.

The conversation pauses.  I wait, pen ready to capture their words.  The silence is comforting as the groups settle into what has been shared so far.  No one is in a rush to shift the conversation.

Can I hold the book? 

I look up to see who requested the book.  I take the book, Dreamers, out from under the document camera.  Sure. I pass the book to her.

The class watches in silence as she flips through the pages.  She goes back and forth between two pages several times.  I am in awe that no one has felt the need to break the silence.  She begins to speak, then pauses, flips the pages again, and then searches for her words.

I think the story, the idea, is really in these two pages.  When you look at them together, they are the same and so different.  The words and colors – I don’t know how to say it but they go together and they don’t go together.  I think that is what the story is about.  Feeling both a part of something and not a part of something at the same time.  I think the way it changes though—from this page:

to this page:

shows you have to love yourself.  You know really love yourself even though being new and different is scared and hard. I think there is more English on the last page because she has figured out how to be different and still love who she is for real. You see, Amor Love Amor changes to Love Amor Love. I think that is important.

A classmate took the book and put the pages under the document camera.  We sat looking at the two pages, flipping back and forth, back and forth.  No one said another word. 

Sometimes accountable talk is silent.

Thank you, Betsy, Beth, Marina, Kathleen, Kelsey, Lanny, Melanie, and Stacey for this weekly forum from Two Writing Teachers. Check out the writers, readers, and teachers here.