Meandering Through the Messy Middle, Searching for Solid Ground

1/16/2022

by Stefanie Whitney

I hear myself using the phrase “messy middle” quite frequently of late. This meander seeks to make sense of what the term “messy middle” even means.

In my mind’s eye, I imagine the messy middle as a place where one is suspended in an ocean between two shores–both shores well beyond reach. Solid ground no longer underfoot, it’s incumbent upon me to make decisions that will, once again, lead me to a steady, grounded place.

Some moments I have experienced this uncomfortable feeling in the classroom and community have been when I have turned over the reins of control and held my breath in wonder about what my fellow humans will do with them. What will they do with the foundation I have built? What will my role look like now? Will they need me? What if a mess is made of the beautiful ground I crafted? What holds? What falls apart? And what was my role in both outcomes?

We cannot possibly know how all of this (envision widespread hands, palms up, gesturing at our world) is going to turn out, which is a bone chilling reality for anyone who appreciates a semblance of control. A reality that seems all the more staggering as each month passes in this extended twilight zone in which we all exist. (Though, I’d argue that messy middles occur whether we are in the middle of a global pandemic or not.)

From here, my mind wanders to William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” particularly this stanza:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

I am always admittedly stalled by Yeats' use of the word “loosed” twice, placed so closely together. In a little search for an improvement that I’m certain Yeats would appreciate, I arrived at Merriam Webster’s definition of loosed:

Loosed: (1) to cause a projectile to be driven forward with force (2) to find emotional release for (3) to set free as from slavery or confinement

Misters Merriam and Webster are speaking my language. For the purposes of this essay, please focus on the latter two definitions. Because of them, I will leave Yeats’ word choices alone. Also, if I may continue being so bold, it seems clear to me that Yeats was stuck in the messy middle of something, and he leaned on language to help make sense of it. The messy middle. Here we are. The middle of the school year, in the middle of a global pandemic, in the middle of hope for progress.

“...fantasy of control….” – “...the centre cannot hold….”

If we are finding that our old norms, our old systems are not working right now, then perhaps we need to investigate what those systems are built upon. If our souls are unsettled and we feel the bottom dropping out, then maybe our old systems are crashing head-on into our developing values; we are trying to hold our old systems up against an evolving human experience. It’s uncomfortable because that system felt safe and I knew my role, but I see more clearly all those not meant for that old system. They do not belong in it. So we don’t belong here, either. Change is crucial, and hard.

A bit about belonging

Brene Brown’s latest work, Atlas of the Heart, aims to help us identify and name experiences and emotions in order to gain power of “understanding, meaning, and choice.” While delving into the experience of belonging, Brown interviewed 8th graders about what it feels like to belong in a place. In their words:

Belonging is being somewhere where you want to be, and they want you.

Brown juxtaposes the definition of “belonging” against the definition of “fitting in,” which they describe as:

Being somewhere where you want to be, but they don’t care one way or the other.

Brown further explains,

Because we can feel belonging only if we have the courage to share our most authentic selves with people, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our self-acceptance.

Which begs the questions:

Shouldn’t we seek to build a community upon a center?
One where everyone can authentically root themselves?
One Where everyone feels like they are wanted and belong?

Heart is sea,
Language is shore.
Whatever sea includes, will hit the shore.

-Rumi

Brown’s explanation of belonging and Safir and Dugan’s description of a change process take us back to Yeats’ work; this time through the writing of Joan Didion, who borrows from Yeats’ poem for the titles of both a book of essays and a 1976 essay in the Saturday Evening Post. Didion acknowledges that,

It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.

Didion, in exploring the upheaval and disruption of the 1970s, writes about the critical nature of thinking for one’s self. Belonging to one’s self. In “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” Didion states:

I am still committed to the idea that the ability to think for one’s self depends upon one’s mastery of the language.

The words of both Didion and Rumi make me wonder:

Are we guiding students toward mastery of the language–so they are able to know themselves and think for themselves?
Are we giving them language that explains more than that which a system has determined is necessary to be successful?
Or are we also guiding them to master a language that helps them describe themselves? Language that helps them accurately describe how they feel and how they belong? Do we know this language? And are we willing to speak it?

It seems fitting to acknowledge the great loss of Joan Didion with her passing on December 23, 2021.

Again, Safir and Dugan address belonging when considering what a school district chooses to place value upon:

If we accept that success can be defined by a metric -- if we hold true that a child’s test scores or grade point average are determinants of her future -- we will find ourselves forever suspended in a hamster wheel, chasing external solutions, curricula, and validation. But if we believe that every student is more than a number (or a “trauma” story) -- is in fact a complex, layered human being with endless potential, brilliance, and access to community cultural wealth -- we can choose a pedagogy of voice that transforms everything from our classrooms to our adult cultures to our policies. Such a pedagogy says, “I see you. I believe in you. You are safe to grow and thrive here. I want to hear your voice.”

Untethered Moments

During last week’s bone-chilling, sunlit days, while driving through slush and refreeze, a whisper encouraged me to keep driving. Drive past the chain restaurants, the organized meetings, the weight of expectations. Drive until nothing familiar surrounds me, expectations are impossible to meet, and there are no commitments on the horizon. Even now, I’m staring out the window–eyes focusing on everything beyond reach and nothing at all. Maybe my retina and optic nerve are having an argument? Silent treatment is the worst. In all of my efforts to live in the moment–the only moment we can actually count on–here I am, daydreaming about a four-wheeled mode of escape. And it’s funny, because I’m not actually trying to escape this very moment. I am good. I am warm. I have coffee. I’m mostly not hungry.

It’s likely I am trying to escape the foreboding feeling that unsavory moments from my past will repeat themselves -or- maybe I am trying to sidestep future moments that I cannot clearly control in the here and now. Futility at its finest, right?

Nonetheless, I’m untethered right now, but I’m learning what tethers me. Perhaps these two things are the same for others:

(1) Belonging to myself–getting square with my values (for me, compassion and curiosity).

For an exercise on isolating your core values, check out Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead value activity.

(2) A sense of belonging within my communities.

When I’m feeling untethered, is it because the system and structures within which I’m trying to function no longer align with my values -or- because those systems and structures no longer feel like home to me? If I can answer this question, I tend to gather a bit more agency in my own experiences.

It’s not lost on me that I have the privilege to seek out agency in most of my experiences. Do our students have this same privilege? All of our students, I mean? Social and emotional learning is an educational hot button right now, and rightfully so. The more language I have as an adult to work through my discomfort, my emotions, and get clear on my values, the more agency I have when working for equilibrium. As an educator, how can I build systems in my spaces that allow all of us to get grounded in our values, to belong in this community?

The Students’ Take

Recently, I seized an opportunity to talk with students about their experiences with feedback. The questions that guided my work were: What type of feedback feels most actionable to you? What types or approaches to feedback can hinder your growth?
Inevitably, the responses of all 43 students, grades 8-12, revealed themes surrounding relationships, trust, and belonging. Feedback is an action, often a system at play. As an English teacher with limited time, logic centered my feedback, even if emotions (pride, frustration, excitement, passion) bolstered my feedback process. Students also acknowledged the existence of emotions at the heart of their feedback experience. All of the students spoke of how feedback, their teacher, or the classroom environment, made them feel.

Rarely did students talk about grades as the sole reason feedback is helpful, but all students discussed the need to have a relationship with the teacher or person giving feedback and a need to feel a sense of identity and belonging in the class. Some even spoke of the need for passion–from the teacher regarding their quest for students to learn and within the student for the subject area or topic. In short, students want to feel like they belong, like they are seen, and that their voices matter.

I’m struck by how students spoke of values and emotions, yet as adults we often find ourselves rumbling about external systems.

Treading Water

The messy middle can also be explained as a feeling of great discomfort. We have been in this sustained discomfort for months, years even. When I’m uncomfortable, I seek to ease that discomfort as quickly and painlessly as possible. However, I’m learning that, for me, the answer is to slow down, take stock, feel the intensity of and seek to better understand my emotions. Get grounded in my values.

Of course, in this sustained discomfort, we are apt to fight harder to reach one shore or the other; some form of solid ground. But what are we hoping to accomplish with all the splashing, thrashing, and death grips on past systems that don’t serve everyone? What if we normalize the kind of discomfort that bends toward progress, inclusion, and shared humanity?

Maybe the next best step is to calmly look inside at what is causing the turbulence, ground ourselves in our values, and then confidently and slowly start moving in a direction that aligns our value systems with the external systems that demand our attention? In that slow motion, one shore starts to loom larger. We can belong to our messy selves, and we can move with those folk who want us among them exactly as we are.

Stefanie Whitney, EdD, works with the Curriculum and Instruction team in Rochester Public Schools (RPS). She's also been an English teacher, an AVID instructor, and both a high school and a middle school instructional coach in RPS.