As a boy, I used to say my prayers at night.

Nothing and everything triggered these prayers. While a light buzz pretended silence before the eventual gunshot outside, I’d kneel on both knees, hands clasped, eyes closed, talking to what Catholics refer to as God. Maybe I just needed time to hear what He needed to tell me. Maybe I needed a respite from the emotional abuse I felt burdened to withstand. Maybe the Our Father served as a wish. Maybe these dreams needed realization. On Earth as it is in heaven, as they say.

Saturday and Sunday school gave me an approach to speak to the ethereal, but it was up to me to translate how that would inform my corporeal.

The idea of prayer came up for me more recently when I saw my student do the sign of the cross before walking into class. Normally, at 7:30 in the morning, it’s just me and whoever’s blasting from my speakers. These quiet moments where I’m prepping for class are also the moments I take to drink coffee and leave a “good morning” tweet for my colleagues and friends, those who I assume are also awake with me. At around 7:55am, I hear the screeches of sneakers and adolescent voices creep from the other end of the hallway. Kids form a human stream of emotions in dozens: exhausting, elation, and clumsiness of the pubescent as they drag, run, and trip down the hallway respectively.

But to see a sign of the cross made me curious.

I didn’t ask, either. I would have thought to ask: “What prayer would you like to see fulfilled before entering our classrooms? Who are you praying for or with? What part of your soul aches that would cause the child to do this? What fears can our school alleviate and what fears does our school inspire that would evoke such a reaction? What is the gap between the things we see about this child and the things we don’t?”

We’ve intentionally kept prayer out of the school curriculum. This doesn’t mean we still don’t need to attend to the spirits and souls of the young humans entrusted to us. School spirit doesn’t just show up in the rallies and logos of a school, but the relationships and pedagogies we espouse. We have optimism that our ratings won’t affect our paychecks and pensions, and we have optimism that we can keep doing this beautiful, arduous work for and with students despite the obstacles. We have affirmations that come in the form of “Highly Effective” on rubrics and 3s and 4s on student test scores, and we have affirmations where adults and children look themselves in the mirror hopeful that they’re up this task we call school.

We can’t operationalize soul. There’s only so many times we can toss out “it’s about the kids” without attending to the elements that we feel even before they’ve crossed our door frames.

A couple of hours after observing the self-christened child, he walked into my classroom and started taking notes. He participated in class. He did his classwork. He spoke with fellow classmates. He still flashes smiles to his classmates. He’s doing fine as far as the eye can see. He’s got the attention of his teacher, though.

His teacher feels the nerves in the room. His teacher’s already 10 steps ahead of the move he’s currently making. The students check in with the teacher … me. I’m good, too. I don’t pray at night anymore. I write. I plan. I kiss my family at night. I save my spirit-conjuring in the morning. Every morning that I get to do this work is the blessing.

We’re awake. May our spirits follow suit.