I am so sick of normal. I see my own boys struggle to stray away from the norm and it seems they always want to see what everyone else is doing first. My students struggle daily. I constantly hear the words popular, cool, and accepted. I see the media pushing kids to try to be like singers, actors, and people famous for no other reason than being famous.

I get it. I can remember high school and even college. I wanted to look and act and be like everyone else. (I included a high school pic so you could see all the stress was not worth it because I looked like a hot purple mess!)

There were people I desperately wanted to like me and wanted to accept me. It has taken me years, I mean well into adulthood years, to finally accept that I am kind of weird and most likely a little crazy too. To accept that not everyone likes me. I don’t fit in the box and wouldn’t want to. I would much rather be running around outside that box dressed like a superhero, wearing my prom dress (I will write in a future post about why it is perfectly acceptable to buy a prom dress in your 30’s), dancing for no reason, teaching the kids no one else wants to work with, and not even thinking about being normal.

So I accepted not being normal for myself, but the challenge now has been how do I get my students to accept being different. One year I focused on the word weird with my students. We talked about being different ALL THE TIME. Middle school can be a hard time for any student, but as a special education teacher many of my students struggle even more as they learn, act, behave, interact, and view the world differently than their peers. I constantly heard my students talk about how they hated being different and hated being weird. That year we took back the word weird. I was determined to help them see that weird means amazing, unique, and one of a kind. The first day of school we celebrated our weird by dressing up in silly costumes (something I had no problem doing!!!). We talked about feeling weird and how the students handled it. It doesn’t seem like much, but I swear to you it worked. I had a student sit in a chair in my room to read. He put on a green wig and scarf and read silently. Everyone looked over at him, but no one said anything…he was free to do what he wanted! Another student put a cowboy hat at the end of class and told us this crazy story as if he was the cowboy. One of the students said, “You’re so weird.” He said “I know. Right.” and looked at me and smiled. During an impromptu “Dance Your Stress Away” moment, one of my most shy boys got up and danced with us. He looked so silly but didn’t care. Too many of my students aren’t there, but it’s about baby steps and small successes.

I am going to challenge myself to continue to be weird and I will challenge myself to help each of my students find the weird in them. I now challenge you to join me – get rid of normal – be weird, be different, be unique, be you.