Small Yet Powerful

I'll never forget one Friday in my high school physics class.  Mr. Barbara showed us a video that began with an aerial shot over an American city.  It then zoomed out to show how small the city was compared to the country, and zoomed out more to show how small the country was compared to the Earth.  As the view continued to widen, the planet on which we live receded to a pale, blue dot, which then disappeared as the solar system became a tiny speck on the edge of the Milky Way.  The video ended as even our galaxy disappeared into the immensity of the universe.  The bell rang, and Mr. Barbara wished us a nice weekend.  

I think the purpose was to bring arrogant high school students a little perspective on how small we were.  Most of use went home thinking, "Wow!  I am a mote of dust on a speck of sand in the middle of a desert."  If I had not been well versed in Scripture, that might have gone very badly.  Instead, I spent the weekend understanding that, while I am minuscule compared to the rest of the Lord's creation, I have a relationship with the One who created it.

This week, because of particularly intense magnetic storms on the sun, we have been witness to auroras farther south than we usually would.  While it was too cloudy for me to see them at my home, my Twitter feed has been filled with photographs taken by people with their phones that capture beauty that would be hard to call anything but glorious.  The photo here was taken by one of my Twitter friends in Georgia.  Georgia!  That's really far south to be seeing these phenomena that are usually witnessed only above the Arctic Circle.  As a science teacher, I am struck as much by its beauty as anyone, but I also have the ability to be awed by its cause.  The Earth's magnetic field, caused by the spinning, molten iron outer core deflects 99% of the charged particles we call solar winds.  If it did not, there would be no life on this planet as the high-velocity charged particle would interfere with DNA formation.  These lights are caused by the effects of the 1% that gets through at the magnetic north and south poles.  These particles are minuscule, but their effect is powerful (and beautiful).

I've taught basic chemistry to 8th graders for 25 years, and I have always been captivated by the idea that the electron, which is the smallest subatomic particle, so small we don't even count its mass, is responsible for all chemical reactions.  Electrons run the modern world, yet when they were discovered, nobody cared (well, not nobody - scientists cared a lot - but the average member of the public thought it was unnecessary spending that could have been used for other things).  They didn't understand that something so small could, in fact, be so valuable.

I don't really know where I am going with this, but the auroras this week have me thinking a lot about how much small things matter.  I received a note recently in which a friend said that it was a conversation with me that led her to the job she now has.  For me, this conversation was small - I don't remember having it.  But it had a big impact for her.  I've had similar revelations from alumni over the years, about advice I gave them while sitting on the floor in the hallway, just having a chat.  My pastor likely does not know that the eye contact he gives members who come forward for communion may be the only eye contact someone gets that week.  He doesn't see how excited small children are after he gives them a high five, but I see them turn around grinning because he made them feel like the most important kid in the world.

We know from chaos theory that small things matter in complex systems.  Teachers, we don't know what impact might be had from our kind words, helpful actions, loving notes, or smile on a day someone needs it.  We also don't know what impact might be had from our unkind words, honking horn, or impatient tone.  There is grace for our most human moments, but we must be careful because the smallest things matter.  As Todd Whitaker says, "The best thing about being a teacher is that it matters.  The hardest thing about being a teacher is that it matters every day."  Go out this week and do small things, knowing they are powerful and important.

Our Role in Their Anxiety

Look at any psychological study, and you will find that we have been in a pandemic for a while.  No.  Not that one.  We are in an anxiety pandemic.  It started before Covid, but the events of 2020-2021 certainly didn't help.  

The blame is usually laid at the feed of the smartphone and social media.  And I don't disagree.  That is certainly a large part of it, which I will address later in this post.  But I also think we, as adults, like to blame the phone so that we can avoid the hard work of taking a look at ourselves.  As long as it is the phone's fault, it's not my fault.  But that's not going to fix anything.  We need to look at what WE can do to help reduce the anxiety in our teens, and that cannot happen until we look at the role we unwittingly play in it.

They need adults to be parents and teachers, not friends - A few decades ago, there was a weird shift in parenting.  Parents started referring to their kids as their friends and said their goal was that their kids would be happy.  This is a big contrast to the previous generation who said their goal was for their kids to be good citizens.  Teachers sort of adopted that attitude too, and we started seeing changes in classroom management as well as parenting.  It sounds loving, but kids don't respond well to this approach.  On the surface, they would probably articulate that they want easygoing adults who don't tell them what to do, but deep down, they know that parents and teachers are supposed to be the safe people who set loving boundaries.  Without that, they are left to figure out what this beneficial and what is dangerous about the world on their own, and that is scary.  As for happiness, it's too elusive to be a goal.  There are objective measures that can be observed to know if you have achieved the goal of being a successful citizen, but there isn't a way to know if you have "achieved" happiness.  If I accomplish something,  I'll likely be happy about it, so setting achievable goals might be the way to lead to happiness rather than making happiness the goal.  Not knowing whether or not they are happy increases their anxiety.

Too Much (Adult) Information - Since parents viewed their kids as friends, they started talking to them like they talked to their friends, including adult topics to big for kids to handle.  Prior generations worried about having the money to send their kids to college, but they didn't tell their kids about that worry.  People started placing such value on authenticity that they stopped recognizing that kids' brains aren't able to handle adult problems.  They can't help you with your marital problems, so they don't need to know about them.  The phrase "age appropriate" used to be a thing, and we need to restore that concept because treating them like short adults is only serving to increase their anxiety.  

Overpacking Their Schedules - I hear adults complain frequently about the amount of chauffering they have to do, taking their kids to music lessons, dance lessons, and practice for their year-round soccer team.  They get their kids home in the evening and then complain that the school has assigned homework because now their kids don't have time to ride their bikes and play.  Some of these same parents want to have their students dual enrolled in high school and college simultaneously.  The common phrase is "there's not enough time to . . . "  Yet, we have the same 24-hour days and 7-day weeks that people had back when they had to do everything by hand.  We have made choices for ourselves and our kids about how to spend time.  Extracurricular activities are good.  Pursuing passions is good.  But, time is like money; there is only so much of it, and it must be spent thoughtfully.  If you have spent time on one thing, that time is no longer available for something else.  Ask yourself why they are involved in so many things.  Is it because you think they HAVE to be involved in everything to get into college.  Let me tell you some stories of very happy kids who got into college without packing their schedule full of everything under the sun.  Recognize that there is no prize for finishing college early, and let them be in high school while they are in high school.  If all of this scheduling is about pursuing their passion, chances are they care a lot about one of the things, not all of them.  Prioritize that one.  Your child will graduate with better mental health and head into adulthood just as well as those who are frazzled.

Pressure - Watch the news.  The world is not in good shape.  From environmental issues to acts of mass violence to political division, things are very much not as they should be.  Kids know this more than we did at their age because they have access to so much information.  They also know this is the world they will inherit, and they see that adults are more concerned with their own rights than they are about fixing anything.  Kids feel that they are going to be required to "save the world" and know they don't have that capacity.  Teachers, we must be careful not to communicate to them that it is their job to fix it.  That's not fair, and it's not good for their developing brains.

Limit Phone Use - The phones and screens are, in fact, a problem.  Prior to Covid, a lot of parent and teacher discussion was about limiting screen time.  That went completely out the window during lockdown (and understandably so).  It's time to revive that discussion.  Kids cannot buy themselves a phone, and you have the ability to resist giving them one.  I know it is hard to think they won't have what other kids have, but the evidence of every study shows that delaying their access to phones and social media is best. Perhaps a group of parents can get together and make a pact to delay purchasing phones for them until 9th grade.  Then, you wouldn't have to worry about your child being "the only one."  At the very least, get it out of their bedrooms.  Back when computers were larger, we put them in public areas of the house and installed filters for accountability.  The same should apply to the small computer in their pocket.  Boundaries are healthy.  

None of this is easy.  I'm not going to pretend otherwise.  But it is necessary.  We cannot keep raising kids steeped in anxiety.  We just can't.