Building Bridges

bridge

a: a structure carrying a pathway or a roadway over a depression or obstacle (such as a river)

a bridge connecting the island to the mainland

b: a time, place, or means of connection or transition

building a bridge between two cultures

According to Merriam-Webster, those are the first two definitions of the word bridge. While this post was inspired by a picture of the first definition, I'd like to focus on the second.

Getting divorced isn't easy. While the actual process I went through was simple compared to many, the process of looking at yourself, seeing what you did wrong or could have done better, and then trying to figure out who you are and what your new life should look like... well, all of that is really hard.

It's been four years. Four years this week that I said I wasn't happy and was told that it didn't matter, he wasn't going to change. Three of those years I worked closely with a counselor, and this last year I've been doing a lot of reading, listening, and learning on my own to finally get to the place where I wanted to be. Some people have said to me that I must have had an awful summer, what with my foot being broken and having to have major surgery. But actually, this summer was one of the best. It was an amazing bridge. It allowed me to really focus on myself and learn and apply many of the strategies that I had been hearing and seeing in all of these great resources.

Then Wednesday and Thursday happened. Our school is beginning to implement the Leader in Me program, and it's a very interesting training process. Before you implement the program with the kids, you learn how to live the seven habits in your own life. Rather than being a bridge, my two days of training were really the bow that tied up and connected all of the puzzle pieces I had been collecting the last few years. Everything made so much sense, and, next to our opening day a few years ago, this was the best inservice I have ever attended.

The bridge that inspired me during this training appeared in a video about win-win situations. It is a bridge called The Bridge of Aspirations, and it connects the Royal Ballet School of London with London's Royal Opera House where the Royal Ballet practices and performs. The students in the school are reminded all of the time of their purpose and goals simply by seeing and walking across this bridge. They can see exactly where all of their hard work will lead them.

I got to thinking about this Bridge of Aspirations, and I wondered how many schools are actually creating Bridges of Dread instead of the bridges that show how students can achieve their dreams. These bridges are paved with things like:

• You have to have lots of homework this year so we can get you ready for next year.
• If you do that next year, you're going to get detention or be suspended.
• Your (insert grade level teacher) next year isn't going to put up with that.
• You're going to be very embarrassed if you're still acting like that next year.

I know the list can go on. I've said some of these myself, and I'm so disappointed. Instead of setting my students up to cross a bridge of aspirations, I'm setting them up for fear, worry, and anxiety by painting the next school year and the next year's teachers as some awful place with awful people. What I should really be focusing on is: 

• how our skills this year will help them next year. 
• how their choices now will help them develop skills they can use as they get older and the choices get harder.
• the fact that developing courage and consideration will help them solve problems and work with others effectively, no matter how old they are. 
• understanding how important mistakes are to learning, and how important fixing mistakes is to growing.

This list can go on, too. The point is we need to stop building bridges of dread for our kids and for ourselves. 

We need to focus on building bridges of aspiration so that when our kids leave us, they are ready to learn and grow from whatever lies ahead. 

And when we come to those inevitable challenges in our lives, we know we have the strength to go forward and face whatever happens to be on the other side of that bridge.