Simply being on a college campus is good for me. It’s quite remarkable how backpacks, classrooms, and using a cafeteria tray produce a lot of aspirations. But, I wasn’t carrying a student ID and wearing whatever clean clothes I had left in my closet this time; I was carrying a guest parking pass and wearing my new ankle boots and favorite Anthro top.
I enjoy teaching. Not because I’m good at it though. I enjoy it because there’s such excitement in looking into the faces of individuals who all signed up for a class called “Creating a Positive Change for Children” and telling them that they don’t have to do big things to make a big impact. In a classroom in the Fred Rogers Center, a place dedicated to sustaining the work and legacy of a man who was all about simple and deep rather than complex and shallow, I shared a little about the work I get to do to create positive change for children and my heart for those who care for the most vulnerable children in the world. They asked questions; I tried to answer them, all of us coming from a place of wanting to be used as instruments of change.
I had a lot to process on my 4 1/2 hour drive home—the experience inside that classroom as well as a full day leading up to it spent one-on-one with the director of the Fred Rogers Center and the man who, over the last two years, instilled much of the same message to me, that what I do matters, that I don’t have to do big things to make a big impact, and that there’s no tool I need or can teach that is more effective than simply offering me.
I keep up with one of the staff at the orphanage where we serve. Her name means beautiful, likely given to her as a wish by whoever was in charge of intake and naming when she was abandoned as a baby at the same orphanage where she now works. It’s a name that fits her well. In October 2015, I led my first staff training there. It is a video driven training where, simply put, we capture the good and magnify it. We used a number of clips that day but the most effective clip we used was one featuring her. I had entered a classroom to observe and take notes of a child in the class. As I did, I caught one of the most beautiful moments there I’ve ever seen, a moment shared by a little boy who would soon be someone’s son and a young woman, an orphan never chosen made teacher. Not long ago, I asked her what it was like for her to be come to a mandatory staff training, sit far in the back looking at the backs of the heads of all those ranked higher than her, and then see herself on the large screen in the front as an example of what good caregiving looks like. It’s a bit of a puzzle talking back and forth as we both use app translations to communicate. Among all of the pieces of our conversation puzzle as she responded to me, there were a few phrases that became ones that I wanted to read over and over again. One of those such phrases was this one: 让我想要做的更好—It made me want to do better.
In those 4 1/2 hours in the car, my response was the same as hers: 让我想要做的更好—I want to do better. All the conversation about how to use the Simple Interactions curriculum more effectively despite cross cultural and system challenges; how to multiply impact and create systemic change by reaching a few people who each reach a few people who each reach a few people; how to utilize the same tool with directors as they lead staff and parents as they lead sons and daughters and even children as they care for other children; how to live out Simple Interactions as a team, as a community; how to balance a near sighted vision to gently nudge along the person before me right now and give them what they need with a far sighted vision that reminds me why I’m pressing on and why the simple interactions matter; time spent with aspiring world changers just sharing a glimpse into what I have the privilege of doing…time spent as a student eager to learn from a gifted and world-changing teacher…all that led me to the same response that my friend in China shared—让我想要做的更好.