Affirmations. An Interesting Ritual Initiated by a Graduate Student Writing Prompt That Has Tremendous Potential.

One of the things that I love about teaching graduate school is when I invite graduate students to help us write into night with something that they want to do. Tonight, a graduate student said, "Look over last week's readings, and pull words and ideas that resonate with you. Then, from these words, write an affirmation to yourself"

Okay. 

We read Felicia Rose Chavez, a chapter on motivation from Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction, and Kelly Gallagher's chapter on writing to explain and inform. 7 minutes for word searching, then suddenly I had the following affirmation (from the prompt), and I really like it.

Tomorrow, today, and always, I, Bryan Ripley Crandall, promise to maintain personal interventions to hold my tongue when surrounded by competitive institutions that accommodate ignorance, all while remaining motivated for joy, playfulness, mutuality, and safety to promote real membership in a democracy of human togetherness.

I pulled words that resonated with me and made a testimony to myself for what I stand for. I suppose the conundrum that results from such a testimony is the fact that I have become complicit in the very institutions that reify the behaviors  I detest.  In a world of Allegories of the Cave, but also socio-economics, we can declare affirmative statements, all the while becoming complicit in the very systems of which we spend all energies fighting against. How quickly the chains return.

I love the prompt, the conversations we had as a graduate cohort, and I full-heartedly recognize the hypocrisy in claiming to believe one way, while being part of a system that exploits so many. All of this is to say, "Affirmations are dorky, but also clever."

In an exercise, I asked students if they watched SNL daily affirmations with Stuart Smiley. As anticipated, they didn't know who this was. So, I pulled up a video and "wola" there was this. I'm not sure what the meaning is, but there is this video and, well, all the wackiness of what an affirmation actually is, especially when connecting it to larger realities.

26 years in education. 15 years or so left. My biggest issue remains holding my tongue. I don't know how. And I need lessons on being patient where the impatience grows thin.

With that, off to another 14-hour day.