Sometimes, on a typical day when the The Little Middle School is in session, we’ll split the group: Whoever would like to go to the park can do so, and whoever wishes to stay and work can do that.

Inevitably, the park-going children are exuberantly loud when they return unless we take a moment to help them recalibrate before reentering the building. They’re still using outside voices and taking up a lot of space. The kids who stayed to work will look up in dismay and shush their noisy, boisterous counterparts. They had settled into the zone, and they find the disruption jarring.

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When I’m wandering the lonely supermarket, there’s always a song playing that doesn’t fit the mood at all. “Endless Love” while you’re choosing avocados. “I’m Still Standing” while you’re grabbing some chicken from the meat case. “Hey Ya” while you’re standing in the checkout line.

If you know the song that’s playing, you can’t help but sing along, even if you’ve never chosen to listen to it and never would. But whether I know a song or not, there’s another level that my brain engages without my conscious thought: figuring out the chords.

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My most useless time of day is thirty minutes before a meeting.

Even if I set an alert on my phone, I have trouble focusing. I keep looking at the clock, shifting from window to window on my browser, and feeling restless.

I am telling myself a story about how thirty (and now twenty, and now ten) minutes isn’t enough time to get anything done. But the problem isn’t time at all. It’s focus.

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“Everything is falling apart, and I can’t hold on.”

“I find myself being a collector of other people’s bad feelings.”

“I worry about being invisible.”

These statements are all metaphorical. The circumstances they are describing cannot be literally true (except that the first one could perhaps be true in an earthquake or tornado).

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Some of us have positive associations with learning, because we have had mostly positive experiences associated with it.

And some of us have had mostly negative experiences around learning, leading to negative associations.

Who we are today as learners is the result of all of these experiences. It’s understandable that those of us who have had mostly negative experiences are hesitant to trust and engage. But there’s hope.

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