Riding the Rapids

by Kim Johnson

Hello, readers!  I’m thrilled you’re reading the EthicalELA blog today, and I’m honored to have an opportunity to share a little about myself and my EthicalELA journey with you.  Allow me to introduce myself using a Hashtag Acrostic with the letters in my name:

#Kindred spirit with readers and writers
#Imaginative Literacy Specialist
#My home: rural Georgia

#July means birthday cake 
#Over 30 years of teaching
#Here, take my hand – step into my kayak!
#Nurturing my inner green thumb 
#Schnoodles rule my home (a trio of sweet bad boys)
#OneLittleWord2025: enough
#Nine o’clock bedtime…..five to rise!

The power of a writing community cannot be underestimated.  When my mother died ten years ago, I joined #VerseLove on a whim after meeting Sarah Donovan at the NCTE conference the previous November.  At that time, I had no inkling of the healing waters of writing I’d stepped into.  Suddenly, I wasn’t the only one grieving the loss of a mother, or the only one who’d struggled with a child in the throes of addiction or the only hopeless-feeling sandwich-generation daughter frustrated by a rigid, aging father.  I wasn’t the only one in any struggle.  Here, I discovered the power of community and began to see myself in the poems of others. Here, I began to fully understand the way a classroom can offer a sense of connection with the power to change the world ~ one classroom at a time.

Some names have exactly ten letters – a fitting way to commemorate our decade celebration of Ethicalela in the ever-becoming ways that writing shapes us.  I’d like to invite you on a journey with me – one that you can use in the classroom tomorrow or at a professional development session next week or at Open House before the first day of school next year. The number of letters in your own name isn’t important.  Who you are as a person is what matters here. 

• Gather a piece of paper and a pencil. 

• Write your name vertically down the page. 

• Next, add a hashtag in front of each letter.

• Now, immerse yourself fully into the age of social media, where we hashtag our lives in photos and posts.  

• Imagine that you are at a convention of 10.000 people and that your mission is to connect with as many people as you can through hashtagged photos of yourself doing what you love to do.  Your goal is to meet others, to establish relationships by seeking out common threads, to welcome others into your life, to share the journey so that there is strength in relationships.  

• Write a hashtag for each letter of your name, describing yourself in personality and memory snapshots you believe others would see to understand who you are – perhaps starting with hobbies or character traits.  You can reference my example above in my introduction.  

My purpose for my introductory acrostic was to share a little about my professional experience, but if I were seeking to connect with adventurers who have many mishaps like I do when I overshoot the ability runway, I might have started my acrostic with #kayakflipper, recalling an instance from a summer paddle down the Flint River in Georgia when I hit some rapids and went waterborne. 

If you’ve never tried this, allow yourself a mindset shift for a moment. Imagine you’re a student, fearful of acceptance in a sea of faces that aren’t familiar.  You walk into a room, not quite sure where to sit, but you notice the teacher’s hashtag acrostic on the screen, inviting you to do the same with your own name.  The teacher welcomes you, introduces herself, shares her poem and stories, and asks you to raise your hand if you, too, have a pet who thinks he rules your house.  Or a plant that needs attention.  Or a love of reading and writing. 

Finally, the teacher asks everyone to take the next ten minutes to connect with three other people in the room by mingling with their hashtags.  

You’re no longer a lone spirit.  You have experienced the power of connection.  You feel a sense of kinship and belonging.

Be that leader who invests in the lives of students by inviting them to share. 

What I’ve learned in my experience is that I must establish trust and respect before my students will take risks and learn new things.  They don’t care what we know until they know that we care. They must feel safe to engage in the productive struggle of learning, to realize we’re all going to flip our kayaks a few times along the way.  Even expert kayakers flip and come out smiling and satisfied that it’s all part of the journey.

We get nowhere alone.  

Try this tomorrow.  In this age of digital presentation, students can create Canva presentations that tell their stories through hashtag acrostics and pictures.

Stand back and watch the magic when students and teachers connect, feel seen and heard, and are more ready than ever to ride the rapids with you. 

I see you out there! You’re not alone.  Come join us at Ethicalela and feel more seen, heard, and understood than you’ve ever felt!  

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Kim Johnson lives on a farm and is the District Literacy Specialist for Pike County Schools in Georgia. She is a frequent host of The Open Write and #VerseLove, the author/co-author of several books, and a lifelong lover of poetry.  Her blog is Common Threads, at www.kimhaynesjohnson.com.