Author: Phyllis Swartz

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.

I’m back home from the Danube, living regular life in what I’ve always considered to be an old, old house. Built in 1872, it has ten-foot ceilings and narrow closets. It is replete inside and out with spindle work and stained glass. And its floors remind me of what the Austrian architect Hundertwasser once said about old-house slopes.

“The uneven floor,” he said, “becomes a symphony, a melody for the feet.”

But after a trip down the Danube, my house doesn’t seem so old.

“You’ve got to be careful in Europe,” a guide told us. “Lots of buildings here pretend to be old. Don’t be fooled.”

And she explained the sometimes subtle clues that give away true age.

“Look for concrete,” she said. “Concrete wasn’t invented until the mid-1850s. If you see concrete, the building isn’t that old.”

Really old buildings, she went on to explain, have irregular hand-cut bricks and stones, metal gutters, timbered doors, and enough chimneys to heat all the rooms.

But with some buildings, there’s no guesswork. They tell their ages right out.

“Watch the roof overhangs,” a guide in Salzburg told us.

And looking up, we could see two dates painted on buildings, the first showing the year it was built; the second showing the year it was renovated.

On our last touring day, we ate in what is considered to be the oldest restaurant in Europe, perhaps in the world. Built in 803, St. Peter Stiftskulinarium fed Christopher Columbus, Michael Haydn, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

I sat there eating chicken on polenta under a chandelier hanging from a coffered ceiling and tried to take in the years and decades and centuries that together have amounted to more than a millennium.

And that’s when I realized that my house is new after all.

Post:

Traveling down the Danube, my daughter and I kept hearing voices. And we listened. They were telling us, after all, what we’d never heard before—that chocolate makers in Salzburg had to prove they weren’t sampling sweets by whistling as they worked; that lots of chimneys on a roof meant lots of money, and so some people added fake chimneys to fool their neighbors; that Maria Theresa, who was the ruler of the vast Habsburg Empire for 40 years, also had 16 children.

We listened even when it was hard.

At the foot of the Plague Column, our guide told us that Vienna lost two thirds of its population in one year. Outside the Colosseum building in Regensburg, we learned about Jewish prisoners, who had been brought from death camps and housed in the building.

By day, they endured frequent beatings as they repaired railroads that had been bombed by the Allies. In the evening, they were marched back to the Colosseum, the stronger dragging the weak. A handcart followed behind them, carrying the dead of the day. At night, they were packed like sardines into the dance hall to sleep on wood shavings behind windows that were barb-wired and nailed shut. And each morning, they were warned at roll call that escape attempts would result in the shooting of ten fellow inmates.

Such listening takes effort. We all think faster than most people talk. And this leaves lots of time between words for brains to wander off, especially if you are standing on a street corner in a new city on a new continent. But my daughter and I found ourselves unusually attentive.

And we began to wonder why. So we took notice of not only what guides said, but how they said it. We found that they didn’t speak in black and white, like they were reciting. They colored their words—emphasizing and de-emphasizing, pausing to create anticipation and to give time to mourn.

Their voices were full of tears and of smiles. And because they were taken by their content, we were also drawn in. Never syrupy, their warm buttery tones made us want more.

We started thinking about our own voices. What would happen, we wondered, if we borrowed their skills? My daughter, in the thick of her career as a parent coach, has years to practice. I, on the other hand, have already run my race. But I still use my voice—with young people who ask to meet with me, with an occasional speaking assignment, with elderly parents, with my grandchildren and children, with my husband.

And so I’m grateful that, along with the wonderful and terrible stories I heard traveling down the Danube, I also learned more about how to tell stories.

I’m on a ten-year-in-the-making trip with my daughter. As we sail down the Danube, we keep stopping to visit castle districts, pause in churches, walk narrow streets in medieval cities, see great art, and hear transcendent music. And there’s the beauty of the river making its way through ten countries.

But sprinkled through charm are constant reminders of how Europe has been pummeled by war.

In memory of the 3,500 people who were lined up on bank of the Danube, told to remove their shoes, and shot into the river, sculptor Gyula Pauer created sixty pairs of period-appropriate shoes out of iron. Then he fastened them securely to the bank.

In Budapest, we saw rows of communist bloc housing. During World War II, eighty percent of the city was bombed. So after the Soviets drove the Nazis from the city, they built massive concrete structures filled with flats. Some of buildings have now been brightened with color and balconies, but they continue to remind Hungarians that they have come under military occupation one too many times.

Hungary’s national anthem may be the saddest in the world.  For eight stanzas, it laments lost wars, slavery, corpses, and destroyed cities. In the song, Hungarians beg God for relief from their long-ill fate. This haunting music moved me, even though I was hearing it through the tinny speaker of a bus.

“This is my city,” said our guide on the bus. “And the city of my parents and grandparents. But I’m telling you, and it is true, that we are the grouchiest people in the world.”

“Not me,” she added, “and not my family. Just everyone else.”

She paused.

“After all,” she said, her voice now serious, “we’ve been through it!”

Beauty and sadness—both are touching my daughter and me. 

My mom grew up plain. And not only in how she dressed. Her speech, she was taught, should be as unadorned as the hair tucked under her head covering and her ankle-length, solid-color dress. Her yes should mean yes and her no should mean no and God’s name should never be taken in vain. Not in Pennsylvania Dutch and not even in English.

She knew all this. And followed it mostly. But she had an ear for the dramatic. One day in town, she listened to a conversation between her papa and an Englischer. Over and over, the Englischer used a phrase with a ring to it, one she decided to use on the right occasion.

Just a few hours later during the dinner blessing of the food, her mind strayed back to the Englischer’s words. With the family all gathered, she decided, this was the time.

At the amen, she was ready.

“My gosh,” she said. “Lang mich die grumberi.” Pass the potatoes.

No one said a word of reprimand to her. Not then, not later. The looks on their faces said it all. And she never used those words again.

But when I was a kid living in Flint, Michigan, far from the plain people, she taught me about plain speech. A softened-up oath, she explained, is God becoming gosh and hell becoming heck and damnation becoming tarnation. You might not be coming right out and using God’s name in vain, but you’re getting mighty close.

So though most of our neighbors used these words, we didn’t say them at our house.

But I noticed something. My mom still found ways to add flavor to her speech.

“Mei zeit noch amal!” she might say at an unfortunate event. Here we go again.

Or when something unbelievable happened: Unvergleichlich! That crazy stuff!

For ninety-five years, my mom has lived simply, dressed simply, and spent simply. Her yes has meant yes and her no has meant no. But these plain ways haven’t kept the sparkle from her speech.

I saw them. And for an instant, I stopped walking.

They stood there, between me and the Walmart service counter, exuding their dark, mysterious vibe—lips and hair colored black and clothes as dark as a funeral. Each held in his arm an equally grim skateboard.

Perhaps I didn’t need the Walmart service counter after all.

But before I turned away, I caught myself.

My middle school students and I had just read The Outsiders. This is a book about a bitter rivalry between two groups with socioeconomic differences. My students had appreciated the themes—that differences don’t need to make enemies and that commonalities exist among people with differences.

I had hoped reading The Outsiders would help my students build bridges, not walls. And here I was, my feet fixed to the floor.

I took a step and then another. They noticed me coming, their eyes watchful. And suddenly, I was surrounded, arms reaching out to hug me. I knew them. There was Jason, who lived down the street, and Jamal, who loved to draw, and Andre, who had come to talk to me on the day his father entered a state prison, and Isaac who had stopped by my room on the last day of school several years before to thank me for a good year.

We stood there blocking the Walmart service counter while they told me what was going right for them and what was going wrong. And we remembered the detention I had assigned to Jamal for disrespecting the girl who sat in front of him and the phone call I had made to Andre’s dad when he couldn’t remember to do his homework.

Then we realized we were blocking the Walmart service counter, so we hugged each other goodbye. As I stepped to the counter to do my business, they, in their profusion of goth refinery, walked the other way.

The most bitter feuds of my childhood took place at the kitchen sink. Getting along with siblings can be tough in any setting, but especially when you work just inches from each other in a cook-from-scratch kitchen that feeds nine people three times a day.

We soldiered through stacks of plates and mounds of pots and pans, each of us assigned a job: scraping, washing, rinsing, drying, putting away, and sweeping under the table. As the wash water darkened and tea towels dampened, we issued forth a barrage of complaints–scraped dishes still gunky, washed dishes dirty, rinsed dishes soapy, dried dishes crowding the counter. Someone was sure to be sniffling or whistling off key or making faces.

But this was only some of the time.

Other times it was us against the dishes. Shoulder to shoulder, we tackled a messy kitchen . . . and more. With eyes on the dishes, it was easier to talk about what it was like to be the only Mennonite kid in our classes, how we could cope in the year 1984 when Big Brother would be watching, and how infinity could go on and on and on. Perhaps the simple, repetitive nature of washing dishes gave us the courage to admit our angst.

Those may have been the good-old days. But these days, I’m grateful for a dishwasher. During our family’s staycation this summer, the fourteen of us each loaded our own plates into the dishwasher. And while it washed and rinsed and dried, and achieved a level of sanitation far greater than that of the long-ago kitchen, we played Frisbee golf and visited a cave and coerced the grandchildren into reading at a poetry slam.

Troubled thoughts didn’t stop when people found they could survive 1984. There’s still infinity. And the feeling of standing alone. And adults coercing cool teens into poetry slams.

But I’ve seen my grandchildren pound out anxieties on cross-country trails and basketball courts. I’ve heard them in deep discussion on late-night road trips in dark vans. Dishwater isn’t the only place to shed angst.