And this one's for Sarah

One of the first tricks I learned as a new teacher was how to respond to the inevitable "I don't know" answers students try to get away with. The basic principle is that "I don't know" is rarely a genuine answer and that if you're going to be effective in the classroom, you have to treat that response as the defense mechanism that it is. And over the years, I've gotten pretty good at getting past this particular defense when others put it up.

The irony, of course, is that I do not hold myself to the same standard. I let myself get away with this three-word phrase a lot more than I ever let my students do. In the moment it usually feels genuine (as I'm sure it does for some of my students), but looking back I do see how it is most often a cop-out. At the very least it is a marker that there is something going on that I haven't taken the time to fully figure out. And though I'm generally relentless with my students, I can let myself off the hook way too easily at times.

So tonight I find myself grateful for friends who don't let me get away with the "I don't know", who stick with me, who keep probing, who circle back and back and back again until I finally get to the heart of the matter. The truth is that I don't always know what's underneath the surface, but I get there a lot sooner when people push me to stare down my own uncertainty and process whatever it is that is causing my inability to articulate a genuine opinion. So thanks to those who do this. You help me live my life more fully as myself. And thanks to those who have tried. I know I haven't always made it easy.