Introducing this Quarter’s Theme: BUILDING TRUST

By Katie Rainey

Building Trust. One story immediately pops into my mind. It’s the first day of school some 4-5 years ago and I do what I always do on the first day of school: share from my high school journal. I’ve been journaling since I was six years old, when my grandmother gave me my first sketchbook/journal. I have every journal I’ve ever written in a trunk in my bedroom, some 50+ of them, including that very first sketchbook. 

It’s my first day with this new group of 9th graders. I’m sitting on a stool at the front of class and produce the little black notebook I wrote in when I was their age. In fact, I flip to the exact same date, only some 15 years earlier. This is how I quickly open up my classrooms and create an atmosphere of trust and safety. Some years the journal entries are funny, some they’re angry. I flip to the corresponding date and instantly see that this day is different. This particular day, I was battling severe depression. It’s a darker entry in which I’m clearly having a feeling of wanting to disappear. For a split second, I think about choosing something different. Maybe this will be too heavy for my students at this moment? I shake my head, take a deep breath, and decide to lean in. 

Leaning In & Letting Go

You can’t build trust without being transparent about your genuine, authentic self. That I’m sure of. Warts and all. We have to lay them out on the table. This makes sense, though. When someone has hurt you, what we often look for is accountability, an acknowledgement of our hurt and of their wrongdoing. That takes vulnerability. To admit when you’re wrong, or when you’re feeling unsafe, or hurt. 

But what this really means to me is letting go of control. Showing vulnerability is letting go of the control you have. You don’t know how someone is going to react to your transparency and your vulnerability. They could have a negative reaction. But, more often than not, I find that people soften when someone is vulnerable. When someone lets go of control and lets it all out, most people tend to have empathy for that and want to be vulnerable themselves. Most of the time, when you are vulnerable, that opens up a pathway to build trust. 

And That’s How We Build Trust

I finish reading that darker journal entry, close the book, and look up. Thirty something eyes stare back at me, unblinking. Did I go too far? Was that too much? A small voice pipes up from the front row.

“Can I ask you a question?” she says.

“Of course.”

“When you were in high school, did you ever think about suicide?”

My breath catches in my throat. I decide to just be honest. 

“Yeah, yes I did.”

The girl pauses, looks down, and whispers, “me too.”

Before I can say another word, other voices chime in, the girls saying similar things. We talk about it. We talk about how hard it is being a teenage girl, about all the shame, worry, and anger that comes with it. The powerless feeling that is ever-present. Then, the bell rings. As the other students file out of the room, I quietly slip up to the girl who’d whispered, “me too.” I ask her if she’s been feeling those things recently and she says yes. I write her a late pass for the next class and sit with her for a while talking about it. Turns out, she’d done more than just feel like that. She’d had very near encounters with self-harm. 

That student and I talked about a lot of different things and continued to do so throughout the year. She took those feelings and created some pretty powerful poetry from them. Now, I think about what would’ve happened if I hadn’t shared that journal entry. Maybe that student would have opened up to me on another day or maybe to someone else. But maybe she wouldn’t have at all. Maybe, the results would have been far worse. 

I’ll never regret opening up at that moment because I think it built trust in a way not otherwise possible. Being transparent and sharing myself, that opened up the avenue for this girl to reach out to me and seek help. It taught me the value of vulnerability and transparency. It taught me how to build real trust. 

Call for Submissions 

We’re looking for blogs on this quarter’s theme: Building Trust. We want to collaborate with you and amplify what’s happening in your world, whether that’s direct in- or out-of-school arts and cultural education, administration, advocacy, field-wide services, or your personal artistic, cultural, or creative practice.

You should feel free to do any and all of the following:

  • Articulate your opinion;

  • Share trends you observe in your work;

  • Amplify the voices of young creatives;

  • Interpret academic writing;

  • Elevate projects and people; or

  • Document promising practices to support innovation in the field.

The post should be:

  • Be approximately, 500-750 words, though we can accommodate more or less, if the topic requires

  • Use headers to break up different sections

  • Embed links to references, whenever possible

  • Send us photos or videos to include!

  • Check out our blog guidelines here.