The Shells We Almost Walk Past

4 days ago

3 min read

by Nicole Johnston

September is Equilibrium Month at The Worthy Educator!

A few weeks ago, I was on the beach with my niece looking for seashells.

She walked along the sand, carefully scanning the surface for the best ones. Every so often, she would pick one up, examine it, and decide whether it was worth keeping. I told her a lesson I learned from my best friend. That if she really wanted to find the interesting shells, the ones with more color, character, and unexpected beauty, she might have to dig a little. The best ones aren't always sitting right on top of the sand.

So we started digging. But as we searched, I noticed something about the shells she was choosing. They weren't perfect. She picked up shells that were chipped and broken. Some were oddly shaped. Some were only pieces of what they once had been. They weren't necessarily the shells I would have stopped to pick up. But she did.

She wasn't looking for perfection. She was looking for what she found interesting or beautiful. A color. A pattern. A shape. Something that made that particular shell worth noticing. I had started our afternoon thinking I was teaching her a lesson about digging deeper. Instead, she taught me one about what we find when we do. And somehow, standing there on the beach, our search for seashells started to feel like a lesson I needed to carry with me into another school year.

At the beginning of a school year, it is easy to stay on the surface. We learn names. We read schedules. We look at transcripts and class lists. We meet new colleagues and reconnect with familiar ones. We make first impressions, and sometimes, without even realizing it, we begin forming ideas about who people are and what they will bring to our classrooms and communities. But people, like those shells, require us to dig a little deeper.

A student is more than the grade they earned last year, the course they were placed in, the first assignment they submit, or the way they behave during the first few days of class. A colleague is more than the role they hold, the department they work in, or the impression we form during a meeting. There is always more beneath the surface.

Getting to know people requires curiosity. It requires asking questions and actually listening to the answers. It means noticing the person who isn't always the loudest in the room. It means being willing to reconsider our first impressions. Sometimes it means doing the work of digging when it would be much easier to simply accept what we can see.

But my niece reminded me of something equally important: when we dig deeper, we can't only be looking for perfection. As educators, we talk to our students all the time about embracing mistakes, taking risks, asking for help, and growing. Yet it can be easy to fall into the trap of looking for the "perfect" student. The one who participates exactly the way we expect, learns at the pace we expect, communicates the way we expect, and fits neatly into the picture we have created of success. We can do the same thing with colleagues. And we can certainly do it with ourselves.

My niece wasn't interested in whether a shell was whole. She noticed what was interesting about it anyway. Maybe there is something important in that.

As another school year begins, I want to remember that afternoon on the beach. I want to dig a little deeper. To ask another question. To listen a little longer. To look beyond first impressions. And, when I discover the inevitable chips and cracks, not to mistake imperfection for a lack of value. Because none of us enters a new school year as a perfect shell. Our students don't. Our colleagues don't. And we don't.

We each arrive shaped by experiences that aren't immediately visible, carrying strengths that someone may have to look a little closer to see. Because whether we are talking about seashells, students, colleagues, or ourselves, there is so much more to discover when we are willing to look beneath the surface. My two takeaways entering this new school year are to remember to have the wisdom of a child to recognize the beauty in what we find. And sometimes the most interesting things we find are the ones we almost walked past.

Nicole Johnston is a veteran Upper School History Department Chair for the Oak Knoll School of the Holy Child in Summit, New Jersey, and a Civics and Politics Teacher with One Schoolhouse, based in Washington, D.C. She is an honoree of Women Who Rock by Hackensack Meridian Health, an ASCD Emerging Leader, a National Association of Independent Schools Teacher of the Future, and Teacher of the Year by the Knights of Columbus. You can contact her via email here.