Safe Spaces

This wasn’t originally what I planned to write. I had a perfectly good idea that I attempted to write about on multiple occasions during the week. I’m sure I will return to it in the future, but this week, like much of America, I have been consumed by the images and words that have filled my tv screen, dominated my social media feeds, and disturbed my dreams.

The unimaginable devastation of Hurricane Harvey is impossible to ignore. I can’t even fathom what it must be like in the midst of the destruction, but watching from afar has been horrifying. Last night, I sat mesmerized for hours watching news footage of people escaping rising waters, abandoning what is left of their homes, clinging to rescuers for security, and entering shelters in hopes of finding safety.

Watching the families and individuals filing into the shelters reminded me of an experience 15 years ago in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. To offer whatever help I could, I signed up as a volunteer for the Red Cross, attended a fast-tracked version of their disaster-response training, and reported on Saturday to Reunion Arena in downtown Dallas to work at the shelter that had been set up there.

I did many jobs that day: serving meals, distributing toiletries to people who were about to have their first shower in days, sorting supplies, and working the main floor of the arena where families were setting up cots and staking out the tiny squares of floor they would call “home.”

“Hopeful relief” is the phrase that best describes the atmosphere in the shelter that day. Though the people there had traveled for miles, had left all but minimal possessions behind, and were uncertain what the future might hold, they knew that at last they were safe. Love was everywhere that day. Children played games and colored together at tables at one end of the arena. Grandparents read stories aloud and hugged their grandkids tightly. Fathers returned from DART rail trips to the Cityplace Target with clean, new shirts and socks for their children. A small choir of teens practiced a song to perform at a local church the next morning. One elderly woman told me she was eager to go to a house of worship to give thanks for the safety of her family.  

After thousands were fed and bedtime approached, the shelter began to settle down. The harsh overhead lights were dimmed and quiet hours began. Voices were at a whisper as the elderly and the very young began to drift off to sleep. One father sat in a silent vigil, watching protectively over his wife and children as they slept. There were some quiet tears amid the snores as the room drifted into a deep slumber. Peace and safety replaced doubt and anxiety. Life might look different from this point forward, but things were going to be alright.

An hour later, the silent night was disturbed by the sound of a bullhorn and the glare of the arena lights being turned on suddenly. It seems that several other busloads of evacuees were due to arrive the next morning, and the man in charge of overseeing the operations at the shelter decided that we needed to make room immediately for them and others who might show up later. The volunteers were told to squeeze everyone into half of the arena floor.  With no concern for the comfort, safety, or humanity of the people, the man barked orders into a bullhorn, rudely waking the room and destroying any sense of home created during the day. The space was no longer a safe one.

I do not recall ever in my life feeling so bad on behalf of others as I did that night. These volunteers who had spent all day ensuring the safety and helping to establish community in that shelter were the very ones who had to disturb sleep and attempt to explain why it was so crucial to move everyone in the middle of the night. I couldn’t explain it because it didn’t make a bit of sense to me.

All of these memories remind me of the importance of creating safe spaces for students in our schools and classrooms. Many of us will encounter students in the upcoming months who have been displaced by Harvey. All of us already have students in our classes who experience traumas of their own every single day. During childhood and adolescence, even tiny problems can seem insurmountable. Unfortunately, many young people deal with issues that no one would call tiny. Homelessness, depression, domestic violence, abuse, death, crime, neglect, divorce, abandonment, substance abuse, poverty, and so many other traumas we can’t begin to imagine are everyday parts of the lives of some of our students. For many, school is their safe place away from all that, their escape.

In high school psychology, we studied Maslow, who said that safety was one of the needs—second only to physiological needs such as food, water, and shelter—that must be met before things such as learning can occur. People who don’t feel safe are constantly on high alert. Their brains are in the fight-or-flight stage, and they aren’t receptive to things that don’t impact their immediate survival. Learning doesn’t take place when students don’t feel safe.

Creating and maintaining a safe space for learning should be the top priority for anyone who works in education. We create safe spaces in many ways:

• by the family or community we build
• in the ways we speak to students and they ways we allow them to speak to others
• through our responses to mistakes, errors, and imperfections
• in the rules and norms we set up and how we enforce them
• by listening, even when we are busy
• in our preparation and readiness for each day of class
• with our policies and procedures
• through our body language and physical arrangements of the learning space
• in the ways we accept and celebrate the wide variety of personalities, learning needs, backgrounds, perspectives, and physical types that inhabit our classrooms
• by our words and actions on the days when we are the most stressful ourselves

A teacher told me today about a student who wrote and shared a piece of writing about what it felt like to have a seventeen-year-old older brother who will be in prison for the next ten years. The class listened intently and cried along with this sixth grade boy as he read aloud about an extremely sensitive and personal part of his life in a classroom he had only known for six school days. That teacher has clearly created a safe space for that young man to take risks and share important aspects of himself with others.  

Safe spaces take work to create and even more work to maintain, but the results are worth the effort.

May your students find refuge in your classroom from whatever storms they are weathering. For some, you will be the lifeboat that rescues them, the compass that guides them, the rudder that steers them in the right direction, the life vest that keeps them afloat, or the rock they can cling to when things get rough.

My day working in the Katrina shelter was one of the best and worst days of my life because I experienced the power of creating a safe space and then witnessed what happens when that safety disappears. To our sisters and brothers affected by Harvey, whatever the future brings, I wish a speedy return to safety and stability.  

May we all soon inhabit safe spaces because only there can we be our very best selves.