For the last 6 weeks, our community has come together on Wednesdays and Saturdays. There are two reasons for this - the first is for our students to continue having social gatherings over the summer; and the second is to help move our school into our new location on Canyonwood Dr.
We have had students, parents, and friends alike coming in to "school" during the heat of Texas to pick up trash, hang up hammocks, donate and move in furniture, clean windows, paint, sweep, and so much more. We have also had students who have graduated return to help with new space.
On the last Saturday, there was a fair amount of energy buzzing as people got stuck in to straighten and brighten our environment. Dads, Mums, siblings all confidently carried and placed and cleaned throughout the morning. As the day was drawing to a close, I came out from under the mountain of office and school supplies I had been arranging and looked around the place. The living room/Humanities classroom, no longer an empty space for boxes of unknown locations stacked near the door, was a room with character and cushy chairs. The quiet room/computer room had books placed with intention in the book cases and desks aligned ready for laptops and notebooks.
By the time I got to the kitchen, tears had begun to fall. I had not expected to be so emotional, but everything became so real and beautiful in that walk through. Not alone the coming together of the rooms, but the acknowledgement that I had created a space for this community of people to come together and take ownership and pride in it. I was overjoyed and overcome.
As with many things, it is not until you find community with your people that you realize how much the being longs for community. This is not the first time I have written about this, nor will it be the last. What makes this a bit more extraordinary was the acuteness in which I felt and feel that community. Right now, when the world, and most certainly Texas, is a scary place, I needed to create this space. I needed desperately to show our young ones that there are people in this world, including and beyond family, who love them for who they are - even, and perhaps especially, as this develops and changes for them. Adolescence is meant to be a time of change and challenge; the next generation is meant to bring new breath to our world and move us just a bit closer to all of us being free to be exactly who we are: our better, truer selves.
Don't get me wrong, this space fills a need for me as well. To be accepted and entrusted by our community to host this place, because they also believe in me is humbling for lack of a better word. It is awesome. I feel simultaneously incredibly proud and underserving. As I sit at my desk in my new office space, though, I feel at home. And I simply cannot wait to open the doors to the new school year and invite my community back inside.
Lovely, wonderful article.