I Dream of Betty

Betty White, that is.

Allow me to explain.

Back-to-school anxiety dreams. We all have them, right?

I had my first of the year last week. It was a usual for me. I was unprepared. I couldn’t find my materials. And–as is always the case for my BTS dreams–I was teaching in an L-shaped room where I couldn’t see all of my students.

My one-hundred-plus students.

But! (And there’s a big one…)

Betty White was there! She was my new co-teacher!

She materialized in what is arguably her most famous form: Rose Nyland, that lovably clueless, perennially optimistic member of the best gal-pal group ever, The Golden Girls.

I decided that this was either Betty White reaching out to me from the dead (unlikely) or my subconscious telling me to binge-watch a few or twenty episodes of “The Golden Girls”.

I did. Here is what I learned from everyone’s favorite St. Olafian.

Tell stories.

When I was eight-years-old, I was just worried about the usual childhood things: how much would the tooth fairy leave me? What would I get from Santa? Would I ever be chosen Small Curd Cottage Cheese Queen? It was our town’s biggest honor, right after Large Curd Cottage Cheese Queen.

Stories engage our audience. They disarm. They connect. They communicate our humanness.

“We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.” ― Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human.

Be curious.

I had remembered Rose as being the sweet, dumb one, but rewatching has made me reconsider. She is sweet, but by “sweet” I really mean she is empathetic, which is a million times more helpful than empty-headedly, smilingly sweet.

She’s not dumb. She is instead outrageously, comically naive. Naive is just a way of saying you are unaware of some things, or you have an overly simplistic or idealized outlook on the world around you.

Given a choice of vices, I’d chose overly idealogical every time.

And, she doesn’t hide inside her naivete. She’s not afraid to ask questions, even if in doing so she exposes her ignorance.

Let’s normalize exposing our ignorances. We’re teachers–let us lead by doing. Be curious. Ask what you need to ask. Not caring that other people might find out we don’t know everything is a superpower.

It will free you. Give you less to be afraid of.

Stand up for yourself.

Watch closely. Rose, full of kindness and optimism, ready to believe the best about everyone, always willing to give anyone in need anything she owned, was not afraid to fire back when insulted.

Here’s the lesson: a person can be flexible and easy-going until it’s time to throw up the barriers and protect what needs to be protected.

Standing up for yourself–or for your students, who truly need you to advocate for them–is not the opposite of being kind and warm. Instead, it makes you a person your students can feel safe around. You’re honest, you’re direct = you can be trusted.

And, it’s perfectly okay–necessary, even–to prioritize yourself. In education, martyrdom is too often applauded. The truth is, giving everything you have–which our overburdened, undersupported educational system will gladly take, take, take–will only make you useless to yourself and others.

Call a garconanokin a garconanokin. Tell us what you think. Say “no”. Be strong in yourself and model this strength to others.

Trust yourself. Listen.

Eat cheesecake. Tell stories. Laugh. Love. Teach.