Tao Time Detour

I’m making the executive decision to take a second detour in my series of posts on 21st century literacies.  If you’re unwilling to take surprise detours, you might miss some major highlights, right? And, trust me, these girls are major highlights.

We meet every Thursday after lunch.  We voted on what to call ourselves and ended up with “Tao: Together As One,” which beat out “Dangerous Divas” by an alarmingly small margin.  There are approximately 15 of us and the most heatedly debated topic in each and every one of our sessions together tends to center around what snack I will be bringing next week.  The girls all come from different grades, places in life, and backgrounds; the only thing that they have in common is a need for community.

So Lawrence High’s guidance counselor, in her infinite wisdom, thought it might be a good idea to gather these ladies together to form a community of their own.  And oh what a community has been formed!

We have 3 rules:

1) Always be supportive, positive, and respectful.

2) What happens in Tao time stays in Tao time.

3) Don’t hog the snacks.

We take these rules super seriously; although, I’m not sure we even needed to set them.  These beauties innately understand the roles of positivity, respect, and selflessness in our time together.  They are funny, smart, and one-of-a-kind young women who have, with very little help or input from me, come together and built a safe place for themselves out of relationships with one another.  For 4 weeks now, we have been meeting in empty classrooms to share food, laughs, successes, sorrows, fears, and support. These amazing young women have consistently impressed and humbled me in their ability to go deep in our discussions on relationships, careers, family, sexuality, goals, anxiety, and a host of other big-league topics.  They bring profound insight and experience to the table and it has been a genuine honor and blessing to see them gather together and support one another.

I came home from Lawrence High today with my heart full after 90 minutes of unfiltered awesome with the Tao girls.  I sat down to write up my next blog post in my 21st century literacies series and I just had to take a detour to share some of the special brand of wonderful that the strong and beautiful Tao girls bring into the world.

Playing games, sharing stories, and keeping it real.