Life is a Classroom

Angela Censoplano Holmes

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“Nothing ever goes away, until it teaches us what we need to know.” — Pema Chodron

Life is all one big learning exercise, and we are eternal students. Times of challenge, difficulty, or stress give us the opportunity to learn a new lesson. Inherent in each problem we face is an opportunity to not just survive it, or to solve it, but to grow through it and explore our greatest depths and heights. Sometimes these same situations keep spiraling back around and around again until we get the lesson. Ultimately, if we can see past the pain that these situations may cause and move toward forgiveness, we find a place of peace and happiness — but not without some bumps and bruises along the way.

These lessons are paths of creativity for our souls. From that learning, we grow spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically. From that growth, we achieve personal, spiritual, and emotional peace and acceptance. It’s all a learning experience. Life is one great big classroom, because we’re on a constant journey of learning — from each other. The journeys of our lives are about connectedness — connectedness through all of our experiences — and we’re in session every day of our lives.

I teach elementary students in a challenging area, home to a population of low socioeconomic families. The stories that I share in Life is a Classroom, A teacher’s journey reflect the lives of the many children that have walked through our classroom doors during my many years of teaching.

I recognize and appreciate the light behind every child’s eyes. I see it through both their humor and struggle, and know that it’s my job to help them shine even more, and nurture it alongside their education in preparation to become lifelong learners.

Mostly, I write stories about how my students have helped me through my own personal struggles.

Without delving too much into the politics, civil rights, or laws surrounding education or the rights of children, I point out the similarities, empathy, and knowledge we gain from others by sharing and comparing fears and love, struggles and happiness, and our oneness with others that connects us all in our humanity. Regardless of who we are, where we live, how much money we have or don’t have, who our parents are, or what our mindsets may be, we are all connected, and we are more similar than we realize, regardless of the outward differences.

I challenge you to look through the lens of an elementary teacher, to understand the plight of both student and teacher, and to perhaps understand the hidden lives of children and teachers around you. Perhaps you will begin to see what I see: the innocence of each child and their ability to so easily forgive and move forward regardless of circumstances. The innocence they carry allows their light to shine forth to the world. We can have a greater impact if we choose to see and nurture it. So many of us have lost our connection to our own light and many times I’ve found it right there, reflected back to me through the eyes of a child.

My students are my muses. I don’t think as their teacher I could ever give them as much as they’ve given to me. When I began teaching and collecting the stories that I have shared in my book, I considered myself an observer, watching my students and those of my colleagues from a distance, at arms’ length, separate from them. I felt my sole purpose was to simply teach them reading, writing, literacy, and critical thinking. Now, it’s so much more than that. I learned how to tackle my own problems in my personal life by watching the lives of my students. I watched them go through extremely traumatic and difficult life situations outside of the classroom, and how they moved forward, still able to enjoy life’s simple pleasures, laughing and playing all the while.

Many of my students encounter daily perils, including poverty, violence, and homelessness — realities that jeopardize their existence and shape their life experiences, while also shaping mine. Their playful purity and joy has offered me a unique viewpoint to observe and cope with our sometimes challenging lives, and to lean on joy and humor whenever possible — and it’s always possible. We can always push aside sorrow and embrace joy.

Artist, philosopher, and writer Kahlil Gibran wrote of the relationship between joy and sorrow, and how if one is to find true joy in life, one must also experience true sadness and suffering. They’re dependent on each other, and no one balances these two with grace better than a child.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

— The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

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Angela Censoplano Holmes

Author of 🦋Life is a Classroom, A teacher's journey. District Resource Specialist, & Teacher Educator who ❤s learning and advocating for students & teachers.