Fast write prompts reflection

My mom passed away last summer, and the house sold. Closing is in a week, so I am in Wyoming now, packing up for the final goodbye, an event I have subtitled “When Sibling Rivalry Meets the Cookie Jar.” But that isn’t what this column is about. It isn’t about me. It’s a little bit about my opinion on public education funding, and more about what’s mine and what’s ours.

My daughter unwittingly prepared me best for the trip down here when she sent an email asking for a chipped white coffee cup — “I don’t know what sort of business I have touting a commercially-produced ceramic mug around the world when I can make them myself,” she wrote, “except that I drank my first cup of coffee out of the one with the chip and maybe if I keep drinking coffee out of that same cup and keep that as a constant in my life, this will hurt a little less.”

It occurred to me then Mom had been hers as much as she was mine.

So the next day I shared the story with my students as a lead in for their weekly 10-minute timed writing. Then I wrote a one word writing prompt on the board — “mine.” Who’s yours? I asked and set the timer.

Their quality and quantity of prose took me by surprise. One wrote about her dad and how hard he tries to be a good dad. “I know he worries that he’s not doing a good enough job raising my sister and I, but he is,” she wrote.

Another girl wrote about her big sister, and throughout the piece the sister had no name other than “Mine.” It became lyrical in nature and the devotion between sisters even more evident.

Someone else described her dog. “I guess my ‘mine’ would have to be my dog. After the divorce I didn’t think there was anyone left. But my dog walked me to the bus stop every day so I knew I wasn’t alone.”

Mrs. Green, a fourth-grade teacher, was someone else’s. She convinced him he could go to college. No one else since has shared with this young man the same confidence and hope.

“My little brother is ‘mine,’” one young man wrote. “He has autism. I raised him until the state came and took us. … I used to get into fights protecting him from people who tried to make fun of him. But, then I stopped. When I look into my brother’s eyes I know what humility looks like. My brother taught me how to forgive those who shouldn’t be forgiven.”

A quiet young seventh-grade girl wrote about how, yes, her parents and siblings were “hers,” but really her “mine” was the love inside of herself. What she did with that love would make the difference, she explained. That was what she had control over, not others.

I wish that our legislators could have been a mouse in the corner during this fast write. What we say and do matters. We are someone’s “mine.”

I hope the state’s legislators take note as they attempt to rewrite how private and non-public schools can receive funding. Our industry-poor communities depend on property taxes to fund them the best they can. The decisions made in the ways of support for their schools matter. While thousands of students may be choosing a non-public education, tens of thousands of children do not. They choose us, the public neighborhood school.

Just as I realize my mother is not just mine but also my daughter’s, I also recognize that the children within our schools are not mine. They are ours.

Emily Forstner teaches Language Arts at Wasilla Middle School.