April was a busy month for me. Not in terms of a filled-up calendar, deadlines, or deliverables, but for the time I exclusively afforded myself for the deep dive into a new process of coaching my students. The love of the prompts and their potential to point to stories was what lured me into this field of essay coaching back in 2020. Since then, I have always wanted to take a dig at the prompts myself, but I never did until I finally enrolled in the WOW College Essay Experience (CEE).
After 4 years of a pretty successful self-process that evolved organically through my passion for working with teens, I was ready to switch things up. I was eager to return to the drawing board and assess what I could do differently. I was ready to unlearn and re-coach myself. More than any other driver, the main question I asked myself incessantly was: How can I step back more so my students can step in fully? Now I can say that the WOW 10-step process has shown me how. It was the clear modeling of a system between coach and student and how it could lead to a powerful essay of what a student truly wants the colleges to know about them.
As I reflected on the important parts of me that would never make it to a resume, I found so many treasures that could become stories. Out of four such stories, I picked one for my exploration. The instructions for each of my assignments were clear and approachable, never overwhelming or daunting. In the one face-to-face session I had with my coach, she reflected all my stories back to me in her own words, and it was a powerful exercise, the kind that everyone should have the gift of experiencing through the people in their lives. In her seeing of me, I saw myself more clearly. I found connections which were hidden before. I saw a clear path from where I had begun with my anchor story to where it could go. And I got excited about writing it.
I wrote it in bits and pieces following each assignment. I wrote outside of it to consider other vantage points, and in doing so, I found a radical shift between my first and second drafts. It was truly a 'whoa' moment! When it was time to edit and trim down the word count, I was given such broad and helpful suggestions that I could use to become my own editor. Never a line edit or a direct strikethrough! It was my power expressing itself in my story, of my choosing, to tell it in the manner that I wanted. I was firmly in the driver's seat all the way, receiving helpful affirmations from my coach through every step of the process. There was no room for self-doubt, only curiosity and self-expression. And that is the power of the WOW process. It is a spiritual journey for every student who is ready to take this exploration into their own life.
I am beyond excited to put this into motion for the wonderfully unique 17-year-olds who are going to come my way this season. I am eager to see what stories have been woven into their life quilt thus far. I am breathless to witness that smile of self-assurance when they realize they have something meaningful to share simply because it has meaning for them. What could be more spiritual than that?!
Ending this with a copy of my story—the one that made me realize that I am a change maker in my own right.
All through that Zoom session, I watched my spiritual education students. The initial sleepy yawns they fought back, then slowly leaning forward to listen, the light head-nodding as they agreed with the speaker, the ever-so-slight smiles that signaled that hope was returning. They were hooked!
My husband’s young cousin Krutti, an environmental activist throughout high school and now working for the EPA, had just recounted her journey of advocacy to them. And if I was left in any doubt about its impact, it dissipated the instant the session ended and my students declared, “We have to talk to Vivek Flowers about reducing single-use plastic bags!”
A complete 180 from a mere month ago, when they countered every argument I posed for taking action with reasons why it couldn’t work.
I have always cared about the environment, but it wasn’t until a fateful hike last summer in the ‘Shaconage’, the mountains of the blue mist, that I realized my true calling. I was unfit, ill-prepared in my water shoes, and operating on a whim to take on that 4.4 steep incline trail to Hen Wallow Falls. By mile marker 1, my feet were in excruciating agony from feeling every pebble and gnarled tree root. At one point, I came to a small stream and stepped into it out of sheer despair. Ahhh! The cold numbed the pain, and in mere minutes, my entire body felt lighter and jolted into energy from this life-giving water. And I left that forest with a new sense of purpose: being an earth keeper.
I took this identity straight into my Sunday morning spiritual education classes. There is sometimes no bigger inspiration than being in the energy of 17-year-olds who see possibilities. Through our discussions, I planted a seed: could we do a deeper dive into recycling habits and educate the community? That seed sprouted through a fun game they conducted for the members, shedding light on how the plastic film on window envelopes was mixed material and how greasy pizza boxes would contaminate the recycling stream if not trashed. Afterward, I encouraged my students to conduct follow-up surveys. My goal was to inspire the message: you cannot stop at surface-level inspiration. You have to go deeper!
But the issues seemed bigger than any efforts they could make. The despair loomed large, and I sensed their sagging spirits. Rethinking my approach, I reached out to Krutti. Interacting with an older peer was a powerful catalyst. They absorbed her advice to ‘be in it for the long game’. Two weeks later, armed with a trifold poster with beautiful artwork of the turtles in the ocean, they presented it to the store employees. My heart was full at that moment when they delivered their impassioned plea—to charge their customers for the plastic bags and build their brand as an earth-conscious store. They knew this step was a mere drop in that ocean, yet they did it.
One of my students took this further by suggesting green swaps to our community. I worked with her every weekend, fact-checking the details and graphics. I helped her compose emails to the store manager asking for connecting with the decision-makers of the store. We did in-class experiments on making our own laundry detergent tablets and observing how well they cleaned the dishes. No idea of theirs was off the table; everything was open for discussion and planning.
And I made a silent resolve—no matter how futile it looked, I would always empower my students for action. And from that identity of earth keeper came a new one: changemaker and kahu, a Hawaiian term for a guardian of something precious. That is my life purpose today, to not only cherish this earth but also nurture the spiritual wellbeing of these conscious earth keepers who wake up early on a Sunday morning to be in a classroom with me.
