Last week, one of my students came to class and asked me how many pairs of shoes I owned. At the time, I thought she was teasing me and I laughed it off without answering. Then the next day she came in, looked at yet another pair of shoes on my feet and asked again. "How many shoes do you have?"
This time I took a look at the serious expression on her face and the awe in her voice. I realized this wasn't a trivial question for her. I looked down at her own feet the pair of worn-out white sneakers that she wore every single day. It hit me like a ton of bricks. While I take pride in never wearing the same shoes two days in a row, she didn't have a choice.
I decided to lean in. She didn't want me to brush it off and act like it didn't matter. To her, it really did. So I looked her in the eyes and sat down in a chair near hers. "Hmmm," I pondered. "Probably like 20 pairs. That's too many, huh?" She grinned and shook her head. "No. I wish I had 20 pairs!" I chuckled and asked her what size she wore. She told me and I said, "Wow, you're gonna have bigger feet than me because you're still growing!" We compared our feet side by side and I told her about how when I was a kid, my feet grew so much, I had to keep changing shoes and one day, they stopped and then I was able to start my collection. She told me about the basketball shoes and track shoes she wanted some day.
We spent the rest of personal reading time in this conversation. It had nothing to do with reading and she didn't get her 10 minutes of reading time in like I usually require, but the time wasn't wasted. I learned to think a bit more about how I was presenting myself. I also learned a lot more about this student in particular and her aspirations. These little moment matter.
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