Gryffindor

These are my lion cubs. 

 Fifth grade, Eighth grade, Juniors. 

 Every third year, there is one of these; an impulsive, loyal, brave, terrified class that is determined to make all of the things better, all at once. 

 They come more raw than the classes on either side of them, like someone skipped a step and left their collective nerves too close to the surface, left their hearts dangling out on their sleeves. 

 We talk about the differences during a noisy Sunday morning transition, their eyes still wide at the burst of Ravenclaw words that have poured over us all like a sudden thunderstorm. "We weren't like that, were we?" 

 “No,” they grin at the sense that stories are coming, stories that make them feel real, make them feel brave, “you guys were more about running around like crazy people.” 

 “They just have a lot of words.” We explain the three classes with the succinct, tumble over each other sort of style that is classically Gryffindor, seventh grade girls tucked in close and listening with the intensity that is uniquely theirs. “The class below you likes to sit around and talk about things.” 

 The Slytherin girls nod approval, and my eighth graders look at me with that familiar anxiety, “But, do you think that we were a good class?” 

 Because these kids are a Gryffindor class layered over the top of standard Bethel Hufflepuff, and loyalty is bred deep into their bones. Because anything that happens to one of them happens to all of them. 

 These are the ones who run, jump, wiggle their way through life, bring boomerangs to church, and pile so close to their friends that they might as well be sharing a skin.

They are rarely contained by whatever space they are "supposed" to occupy, perpetually up trees and on top of roofs and inside locked doors. Telling stories. Making stories. Always together.

Brave in groups. Lost and dazed when you pick them off and send them on their own.

Higher context than my Ravenclaws, they wield words like a paintbrush in the hands of an Impressionist, a dab here, a dash there, just enough of a hint to spark the memory of the visceral thing that they are trying to say.

Communication is seen and felt and moved through, action and sense and the self aware spending of time.

These ones hold responsibility firmly on their shoulders, wary of any adult that might claim to know better, but holding tightly to the few who are allowed to walk alongside them. They are the most likely to get in trouble, the least likely to do something simply because it is expected.

Courageous. Chivalrous. Honest.

They'll grab a friend and go out to do the things that make them most afraid. Jump in front of a ball in the gaga pit. Refuse to raise their hands just because everyone else is doing it.

If there was ever a class that was Gryffindor, this would be it.