Author: Phyllis Swartz

Three times this week, I’ve been asked the same question. And in much the same way. Before asking, each questioner studied my face, seeming to notice lines across my forehead and wrinkles around my eyes. And each hesitated for a moment before asking.

A new father, who had just eaten at my table, asked it this way, “Of all the years you’ve lived, which was the best?”

A few days later, a mid-life couple staggering under responsibility sat in our living room.

“If you could have frozen time,” one of them asked, “what age would you have chosen?”

The next day, I took my ninety-five-year-old mother to a podiatrist. Next to my mom, the podiatrist and I looked young. Still, our hair color matched. And so did the sag of our faces.

“You know,” he said, looking up at me from my mom’s feet. “I wonder sometimes. If I could go back to a younger age, what age would I choose?”

He paused for a moment.

“Do you ever think about that?” he asked me.

So I told him what the young father asked and the middle-aged couple. And I told him my answer to their questions—that I would choose my age, right now.

We talked about it, the podiatrist and I, how at this age we have less to prove, how we are more okay with what we can do and can’t do, how we feel more levelheaded and less pressured, and how people look at our silvered hair and make us sages by default.

We talked about feeling sorry for the young with all the hurdles they have to jump and the uphill battles they have to face.

“Still,” the podiatrist said. “I remember how I felt when I wrestled in college, so toned and agile and fast. When I moved, nothing creaked.”

He fell into silence. His hands kept working my mom’s feet, but his mind seemed to have flown to a long-ago gym.

“You know,” he said, looking up again. “What I’d really like is to have my old body back and keep the head I have now.”

All this time, my mom sat listening. She’s lived twenty-some years longer than me and the podiatrist. But neither of us thought to draw her into our conversation.

Though silver is in our hair, we’re apparently not as wise as we appear to be.

The poster in the dentist’s waiting room conjured up some memories. A smile, it said, is a curve that sets everything straight.

And those words on that wall took me back to the late sixties when Bob Dylan was singing “The Answer, My Friend, is Blowing in the Wind,” and we were all letting it all hang out and telling it like it was.

In my group of friends, we tried to be real—to rid ourselves of the armors our parents had taught us to wear and be completely candid with each other. In this way, we hoped to discover our best selves. 

So we’d sit in an honesty circle, maybe twenty of us, and give each other the right to interfere with our lives. One-by-one, we’d speak, each of us telling all of us what we didn’t like about the person to our left.

Maybe this exercise is what wiped the smile off my face. Or maybe it was the war in Vietnam and the riots in the cities and the assassinations. Or maybe I didn’t know how to be a teenager in that time and that place. Whatever the reasons, gravity just seemed to pull my mouth down.

And they called me on it.

Smile, they said in those circles. Get out of your head. Chill. Show some feeling. Hang loose. Quit being uptight. Get a groove. Lighten up.

So a smile became my armor. And though I never want to sit in such a circle again, what I learned helped me then and continued to benefit me years later as I taught.

I found that in the classroom, smiles made good things happen. Smiles won students over and helped me stay positive, even on bad days.

There’s science behind this.

When you smile, your brain gets the message that all is well. This sends feel-good chemicals through your brain, lifting your mood and lowering your stress.

And smiles are contagious. So when students smile back, good things happen to them. And their brains sync for learning.

I doubt my long-ago friends understood this science. But I’m sure they would have agreed with the dentist’s poster—A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.

To connect to teens, take a lesson from DJ Pryor, comedian and toddler dad gone viral. If you haven’t already, you can see him in action here. While you watch, notice how Pryor uses a strategy called Serve and Return to talk with his son. This strategy is fun, like a lively game of ping pong, but it’s essential in brain building.

And it works with teens.

Toddlers and teens may be on opposite ends of childhood, but the brains of each are reformatting as they build new synapses and prune unused ones. And since both toddlers and teens are in a fierce fight for independence, it’s a tricky time to say connected. But the Serve and Return strategy can help.

This strategy has three parts.

Notice the serve—the signal to begin a conversation. Toddlers are effusive with serving signals, but teens make you work harder. They often serve without saying a word. All you may get is a tapping foot or a long look or crossed arms or a slouch or a general edginess. Whatever the signal, you’ve been served. And it’s your job to notice.

Return the serve—as sign you’ve received the signal. Even though Pryor doesn’t understand a word his toddler says, he tries to match his response to what he’s been served. A teen may not say a word. But if she’s just hanging around, she may be signaling for time with you. Invite her for a bike ride, a walk, a trip to the grocery store, any place you can talk without eye contact. Give slouching shoulders a squeeze. Offer a cup of tea. When you get served, do something.

Keep taking turns. Notice how Pryor returns a serve and then waits. Both toddlers and teens deal with thoughts and emotions that stretch their abilities to articulate. It’s easy to pull the adult card, filling the silence with advice. But waiting is crucial. It respects teens as players in the game, giving them time to think. And it keeps the turns going.

It appears that DJ Pryor’s made it big in the toddler leagues. And I wish him well for what’s coming!

The trip was a nightmare. Always before, I’d taken the bus and found it a good way to get to my grandkids. Instead of fighting highway hypnosis and dodging dangerous drivers, I could write or read or listen or sleep. And meet some interesting people.

But this bus made people edgy. It was late, cold, dirty, and crowded. And the driver was fed up from the start. He didn’t want to hear about the Wi-Fi not working or the lack of power outlets or missed connections or unkempt bathrooms.

It was a traffic jam, though, that unhinged us. Toward the back of the bus, a ruckus erupted. First, words flew across the aisle. But soon people lurched to their feet, arms flailing and fists clenched. Over the intercom, the bus driver threatened to call the police. When the uproar continued, he hit the brakes. Though the speed was slow, we all jerked forward.

Across the aisle from me, a young man moaned. I had been watching his heightening agitation. He’d been rocking in his seat and jiggling his legs and sending wild looks around the bus. Now he shot straight up, dropping his headphones to the floor. Turning toward the back of the bus, he shouted words I never say.  And for a moment, I thought he’d walk back there and join in.

My bus mate reminded me of some former students, those who were easily overwhelmed by sensory and social stimulation. He seemed to be in what educators sometimes call the “rumble stage,” where there’s still a chance to prevent a full meltdown.

I gathered my courage and my blanket and slipped across the aisle to sit in the empty seat beside him. He sat down and began rocking again.

“It’s loud,” I said to him.

He didn’t answer, but his rocking slowed. I fished his headphones from the floor.

“I wish I had headphones,” I said, as I handed them to him.

He put them over his ears.

I pulled the hood of my coat over my head. He pulled his into place. I spread the blanket over him. And we hunkered down.

By now, the bus driver had nosed over to the berm and stopped. His phone in hand, he stood at the front of the bus and glared.

Everyone sat down. Everyone was quiet.

No one called the police.

No one went to jail.

You probably cut your teeth on the rule of three—on mitten-losing kittens and house-building pigs, and wise monkeys who saw no evil, heard no evil, and spoke no evil. You memorized the story of Goldilocks finding three bowls and three chairs and three beds. You shouted ready, set, go and learned the red, yellow, and green of a traffic light.

The rule of three kept showing up—in science (solid, liquid gas), famous speeches (blood, sweat, tears), historic documents (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness), safety slogans (stop, look, listen), literature (ghosts of Christmas past, present, future), sports (three strikes; you’re out), and food (bacon, lettuce, and tomato).

And if you came to believe that it’s as simple as one, two, three, you’d be right.

Our brains like patterns, especially trios, the smallest possible pattern. We find groups of three satisfying and easy to remember. We watch for them in books and movies. Even in casual conversation, we instinctively wait for the third item in a list before taking our turns to speak.

Educators know that brains can process three “chunks” in short-term memory. More than three, students tune us out.

So how can you tap into the three-loving brain? Here are—you guessed it—three ways:

• Three Ideas—When I led tours at the Columbus Museum of Art, I noticed how quickly visitors’ eyes could dull in front of a painting. “Let’s find three contrasts in this scene,” I’d say to them. And their eyes snapped back into focus. Try it in all the disciplines—three achievements of Dorothea Dix, three literary devices in To Kill a Mockingbird, three traits of the sun. Give them three, there’s a chance they’ll remember.
• Three Times—Repeat it to help them keep it. And intensify each round—they hear it, muck about in it, and teach each other. Most people remember 5 percent of what they hear, 75 percent of what they do, and 90 percent of what they teach.
• Three Ways—Pull in the whole brain. Give students something to see (Venn diagrams, paintings, objects, timelines), something to hear (a lecture, excerpts from a speech, chants from a demonstration, songs from the Great Depression), and something to do (label a map, assemble a chart, peer through a microscope, prove a theorem, debate an issue).

In the mid-300s B.C., the famous teacher Aristotle wrote the three-word phrase Omne trium perfectum, translated toEnglish as what comes in threes is perfect.

So try it—three ideas, three times, in three ways.

I didn’t know he was still alive. But there he was, in the photo my friend sent me. At eighty-six years, his eyes, still dark and penetrating stared out from dark, over-sized glasses. Unruly hair—once thick, springy, and black as coal; now white and wispy as smoke—still flew above his head.

But it was his wide-set mouth that took me back. Mr. Wooten taught me history during the years of Watergate, the Vietnam War, and soaring inflation. Every day, something—like gerrymandering—set him off.

He’d start by working his mouth, first pursing his lips and then twisting them in displeasure. In seconds, he’d become so agitated about contrived, exclusionary boundaries, that words spit from his mouth in fits and starts. This spectacle startled kids from their stupors and made Frank Adkins, who hated school, lean over and whisper to me, “Now, what the hang’s gerrymandering?

The times were right for Mr. Wooten’s teaching career. He couldn’t believe his good fortune in having personally seen so many Supreme Court cases.

“The year you were born,” he told us, “was the famous Brown v. the Board of Education decision.”

Fred Adkins slouched in his seat as Mr. Wooten went on about how Brown v the Board overturned the earlier case of Plessy v. Ferguson

But it was Tinker v. Des Moines that got Mr. Wooten pounding on his desk one day.

“Just last year,” he said, “the Supreme Court said that students do not leave their rights at the schoolhouse door.”

The pounding roused Frank Adkins. He listened as Mr. Wooten told us how Mary Beth Tinker and her brother got kicked out of school for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. Mr. Wooten agreed with the justices. This expulsion violated the Tinkers’ first amendment rights.

Mr. Wooten stopped, as he often did, to peer at us from under his bushy eyebrows and wait, his finger drumming the podium. It was our turn.

If someone, usually John Jenkins, the class brain, said something approaching cleverness—something like, “If we don’t leave our rights at the school doors, how come you search our lockers?”—Mr. Wooten’s smile would crack through his crustiness.

We’d do almost anything for that smile.

And the smile was still there on Mr. Wooten’s now shrunken-in face, reminding me that he taught me more than history. He taught me what I tried to remember during my decades of teaching, that passion is the contagion that draws students in.

Thank you, Mr. Wooten.

For too long, I used the wrong three-letter word with my students. And my feedback to them kept swerving off course.

“Your plot points are clever,” I told Kareen after reading her story.

But she didn’t seem to hear me. It was as if she was tensed for what might come next.

This happened again when I complimented Jason on showing up on time for three days in a row and when I thanked Blake for an insightful comment in class.

So I began listening to myself. And I heard the pattern—that after my positive critique, I usually continued with the same three-letter word.  

“But your dialogue is stilted,” I told Kareen, “too formal.”

To Jason: “But last-week’s makeup work is still missing.”

And to Blake: “But your writing needs to show this level of insight.”

My intent was to invite students to greater growth.

Instead, by my word choice, I undercut my approval and their confidence.

A simple swap of two three-letter words made the difference. Shoulders no longer slumped and chins went up.

“You did a great job on that project last week,” I began saying to students. “And you might want to polish it even more by including a few quotes from experts.”

The use of but focuses on the mistake—negating the great job. The word and brings a different connotation. It upholds the good, points the way toward even more of the right stuff, and gives students the sense that you are on their team.

Although but has its place (as you can see in this post), I’ve found that switching to and helps students see feedback as a gift.

Around the corner from us lived a neighbor who saved her life with a needle and thread. Walking by her nondescript house, you wouldn’t think an extraordinary woman lived there. You wouldn’t think the woman who lived in that house would be an artist, whose works appeared in galleries and museums worldwide. Nor would you think that this woman had, by miracle and a deft hand, survived Auschwitz.

She seemed like an ordinary neighbor, one who waved to me from her front porch when I passed and stopped by mine when she was out walking her Yorkies. She came to our children’s graduation parties, gifts in hand, I took homemade cinnamon rolls to her, and once my husband rescued her Yorkies from a snarling stray mongrel.  

But though we were near neighbors, I never celebrated her artistic acclaim with her. Or mourned the Holocaust. It wasn’t her way. She didn’t want to be set apart by fame or by tragedy. She wanted a small-town life as unassuming as her house. For her, keeping silent left more room to make this happen.

It’s been more than a decade since my neighbor died peacefully in her bed. But this week, I mourned again. And because of a book.

“You need to read The Dressmakers of Auschwitz,” a friend told me.

And I did.

In this book, Lucy Adlington tells the story of women who sewed to survive. When clothes rationing hit Germans during World War II, elite Nazi women, Hedwig Höss among them, felt they were above the law. Höss, who was the camp attendant’s wife, had no intention of letting standards slip. No matter who did the stitching, she intended to look smart.

So she established a fashion workshop in the heart of Auschwitz and staffed it with skilled Jewish women who designed, cut, and sewed garments for the Nazi upper crust. At this workshop, the shorn, tattooed, hungry, grieving women stitched for their lives. And some survived. But when the war ended, the survivors discovered what they lost.

As she had been sewing, my neighbor learned, her husband of three months, her twin brother, and her mother had all been murdered. Her father had died before the war, so she was left as the lone survivor in her family.

Tonight, I walked again by the nondescript house, where my neighbor lived out her post-war life. I imagined her sitting on her porch, ready with a wave. But on this walk, I also made a pledge—to not to forget what I learned in Adlington’s book: that genocides occur in phases, that it’s possible to recognize these phases early on in hopes of stopping them, and that genocide can be facilitated when ordinary people stand by.

Middle school teachers should get hazard pay, someone told me once. And I knew what he meant. Middle schoolers have a way of taking you to the edge.

They walk into class asking if we are doing anything today, drop backpacks in aisles, tap pencils incessantly, and forget to wear deodorant. They talk when they shouldn’t and fall silent when asked to speak. And after you give crystal-clear directions in middle school speak, they ask, “Now what are we supposed to do?”

They’ve got what educators call adolescent egocentrism, meaning their world is small and they’re in its center. They tend to believe they’re the focus of everyone’s attention—that they’re being spoken of in every room and that one social mishap could ruin their lives forever.

One day they show manners, asking how you’re doing and lending pencils to classmates. The next day, they sulk and throw tantrums with the skill of a toddler. They’re young enough to clip Critter Plush Animals to their binders and old enough to carry guns. And you never know which version will walk through your door.

One thing for sure, middle schoolers never bore you.

This is because good middle school teachers always do two things at once. First, they use empathy to see students as they see themselves. And more, they use insight to see adolescents as they cannot see themselves. Good teachers use this empathy and insight to pull back the curtain so kids can see the beginnings of what they can become.

Kindergarten teachers may get hugged every day while love from a middle schooler is often hard-won, but when it comes . . .finally . . ., it makes up for living on the edge.

One Friday afternoon, three middle school girls came to me with a sealed envelope.

“Wanna send a message to your husband,” Natasha said, her tone as brusque and off-hand as it usually was in class.

“Mr. Swartz,” my husband read aloud when he opened it. “When Mrs. Swartz dies, please invite us to her funeral.”

Apparently for Natasha, writing please was easier than saying it.