I often ask my students how they want to be known. It’s a helpful question.

Yesterday one of my brilliant peers built his staff portfolio around a quote from August Wilson:

“Now don’t you go through life worrying about whether somebody like you or not! You best be makin’ sure that they’re doin’ right by you! You understand what I’m sayin’?”

(I don’t have the script in front of me; this is from the interwebs, will check accuracy later)

The inquiry I highlighted in the middle, “am I doing right by people ?”, is one I think I’ll start using in student conversations. How is our community doing right by you? How am I doing right by you? How am I falling down?” What does it mean if we’re trying to right by you?

Two, and this is from a memoir I deeply appreciated, Mark Slouka’s Nobody’s Son:

“What’s the takeaway?” my neighbor’s always asking his kids whenever they run into something harder than they are.

I love Slouka’s writing — ordered all of his novels from the Free Library once I finished this book but this inquiry — what’s the takeaway — will become another question I hope to start asking regularly. It’s much better than “what have we learned?” or “what will you do differently?”