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Kim Sandoval is a literacy coach at Rowland Elementary School.

The most powerful experience I’ve had with the Ball Foundation is when Sandra Janoff did a training on facilitation and taught us something called “percept” language. It really changed how I see myself and my thoughts about how I use language.

There are three steps to percept language: In the first step, you take notice of your reactions to people in different situations. In the second step, you reflect on what your reactions say about how you feel about certain parts of yourself. Then in the third and final step, you work through those feelings. So, on a deep level, if I think somebody is judgmental, there’s a piece of myself that I don’t like that’s judgmental. That’s why that part of that person really bothers me.

There’s actually a different way of phrasing things when using percept language. For example, if I say I’m bothered because I don’t think “Mrs. X” is a hard worker, I would say, “The Mrs. X part of me is annoyed with the lazy part of me.” The language can be really convoluted and complex – so you have to practice it – but it’s very powerful because it makes you own your thoughts.

During the training, we were all sitting in small groups in a circle practicing percept language with each other. At one point, we went around the whole circle and shared our experience using the language. Mine was about judgment or something annoying – I forget. But then I said, “So what does all this matter? What do words matter? If ultimately, everything we say is just about ourselves, what’s the point? Everything becomes so insignificant because if everything I tell you is really about me, and everything you tell me is about you, what’s the point of this?” Then one of the facilitators said to me, “Now try to say all that in percept language.” It was almost painful to do that because I had to say, “The percept part of me is saying, ‘I don’t matter to me.’” And I felt that. I thought, “Oh my gosh, this really feels awful. It feels so bad.” The power of negative thinking – even when you don’t feel its effects – when you bring it back to yourself, it’s so painful.

Sandra actually helped me work through and understand all of this. As she was helping me, the rest of the group watched Sandra and me have this conversation. At first, I was very self-conscious because there were 100 people in the room.  But the whole experience allowed me to be myself. In my mind, I thought, “It doesn’t matter who’s here because this is how you’re going to learn.” I needed to live the message that you have to put yourself out there and take risks sometimes because I expect the teachers to do that all the time with me. So I thought I would do that in this group of learners and see what would happen.

It was a great experience, but it was also weird. I kind of went into tunnel vision where everybody receded to the background. I knew they were all there, but it didn’t matter. It was like Sandra and I were the only ones in the room as she supported me while I struggled to understand percept language. I felt so connected with her as somebody who knows so much and who gives a piece of herself to the learning process. It felt like when you’re teaching a lesson to kids and you really connect with them. There might be twenty other teachers watching you, but they all fade away, and you’re present with just the kids. It was like that with Sandra.  She “saw” me there in the learning process and worked with me through all of it until I got it. It was almost like a revelation.  It was such a powerful learning experience.

The experience changed how I look at things, how I look at myself, how I view the work.  JoAnn and Carla from Ball talked about critical literacy. To me, that was an experience in how the use of language can alter the way I see the world. Even as I’m having this conversation with you, I’m making more meaning from it because I haven’t talked to a lot of people about it. But I would say that I experienced critical literacy learning through a conversation with an adult who gave of themselves in the same way. And just living my talk is what I think I did that day – in that moment of saying, “This is what learning is. You have to be a risk taker and go out of your comfort zone. Stretch yourself and realize that it’s okay. If it’s not right and you’re making a mistake, in the end you’ll get there with the support of someone else who’s giving of themselves.”

Word cloud created at wordle.net.