Not Light, But Fire by Matthew R. Kay take aways chapter 1

   These are my take aways from chapter 1.  First of all,,  I will say that I was lucky enough to attend a Professional Development session with Mr. Kay at the beginning of the summer coordinated by my school district.  It was fabulous and made me really want to read his book.  So here I am.   It takes a little longer for me to read a book like this because I really like to read, then parse my thoughts and then read some more. 

What is a "safe space"?   Well, it really depends on who you are.  For some, it's a place where you literally don't get beat up for an hour.  For others, it's a place where you can quietly learn.  But for this conversation, a safe space is where we can have conversations that challenge our ideologies .

Teachers must BUILD the conversational space.  The most important aspect of doing this is listening - actively listening.   We can show we are listening by making eye contact- using patience to allow a person to finish their thoughts and to be engaged.   This is how we build a place where courageous conversations can happen.  We have to build trust and relationships. 

One of my favorite quotes from chapter one is " We must instruct where we use to admonish, encourage where we use to excoriate and carefully track what we use to ignore."   Very powerful and this really spoke to me.

To be a good listener we must: listen patiently - don't interrupt.  Listen actively - not by thinking of what we will say when it's our turn, but by really listening.  And finally we must police our own voice. 

We don't interrupt because ideas are important - they should be heard and built upon.  

This was also a really big one for me - policing your voice isn't just about tone but also about how much time you are taking up.  Have you ever had a conversation with a person who took up all the air in the room?  It's discouraging and exhausting.  Don't be that person. 

Listening and talking are really hard but they are even more challenging when your conversational partners don't have the same senstitivities, values, investment or cultural background.  This makes minorities want to keep quite versus engaging in such energy sapping ways.   

* It's sometimes hard to look a white person in the face, even when that person is smiling.

We can't invite ourselves to the dinner table because we are tolerated at the water cooler.  We have to EARN our seats! 

To preserve emotional well being we show vulnerability to those we trust - who show we are a priority - so as educators we need to do the work with ALL of our students, but especially those students who may look different from us.  We have to EARN it.  

Good news - start class with students sharing what's going good.

High grade compliments - focus on who you see a person as being.  Not your pretty or I like that color or even you worked hard on that.   More.