by Erin Vogler
Five years ago, when I began writing and sharing daily messages in my classroom, I never would have imagined that I’d still be writing and sharing them today. The #3024daily message began as a way to welcome students back from the isolation of an unprecedented spring and end of the school year. They were my small way to make sure that, despite the noise outside the room, each day they’d find a message that focused on what remained good, or served as a challenge to consider something new.
I never saw a future for these messages beyond the 2020-2021 school year. In retrospect, how could I? How could any of us? We were surviving each day the best way we knew how – by welcoming students to come back together and rebuild the communities many of us felt were lost in just a few short months.
And yet, here we are, five years later, and the messages live on. The work continues. The need for community and connection might be greater than ever.
What still holds true…
My students, all of our students, and those of us who lead classrooms each day, if we’re being honest, still need positive messages in our daily lives. From time to time, we also need nudges to consider ideas and perspectives we don’t often contemplate. The need for encouragement or a push toward better won’t ever go away. The fact that these messages have filled that space for my students and for many beyond the classroom fills me with great joy.
How have things changed…
The messages have changed as our world has changed. Where, in the first few years, I primarily focused my writing on what it takes to come together and overcome challenges, these last couple of years have shifted my focus toward considering new perspectives, honoring individual choice and personhood, and reminding my students, and anyone else who reads them, that we are better – as individuals and community – when we see the world from an expansive perspective, rather than one limited to a single group’s viewpoint.
What I understand now…
When I started writing these messages, I never dreamed that they’d have a single bit of impact beyond the four walls of my classroom. Full disclosure: I wasn’t even sure that they’d have an impact there. I had to try anyway.
This year, however, I finally started to understand that this small, daily act of writing has become the kind of ritual that feeds and nourishes. It has made me a better, more reflective writer. It has made me a better listener and a more intentional observer. Writing these daily messages has helped me truly understand how a few sentences on a white board in a classroom in our rural corner of Western New York can become the connective tissue that helps another person feel seen, understood, or valued.
More than ever, I understand how routinely words are used as weapons in this world. The #3024daily message is my way of trying to counteract the barrage and help us all find our way toward healing, toward better, toward hope.
Erin Vogler is a high school English teacher who also serves as a Literacy and Instructional Coach at Keshequa Middle/High School Western New York.
