Risks I Don’t Regret: The Hidden Curriculum

“No one dies if the assignments don’t get finished. But if you do engage, you might find you become a little more self-aware—or at least remember you’re still alive.”

Most days, I take a risk just getting out of bed.
Not metaphorically—I mean actually. My knees creak like a hundred-year-old porch swing, and the stairs to the basement seem steeper every year. Especially when the laundry’s waiting at the bottom like a cotton-stuffed bully, arms crossed, daring me to make eye contact.

But the real risk starts later—when I open the door to my classroom.

I teach high school art. Technically.

But most days, I end up teaching something else.
How to breathe.
How to sit with silence.
How to tell the truth without blowing up your life.
How to be seen without a filter.
How to choose staying over disappearing.

These aren’t on the syllabus. But they show up anyway.

My classroom is what I’ve come to call low stakes, high impact.
No one dies if the assignments don’t get turned in.
But if a student shows up and engages—really engages—they might just become a little more human. A little more free. A little more themselves.

That’s a risk worth taking.

Of course, it doesn’t always fly with the system.

I’ve had colleagues pull me aside, frustrated:
“Why are you keeping my student? They need to be in my class doing my assignment.”
As if education were a turf war and kids were chess pieces with GPA-shaped heads.

And I get it—everyone’s got standards to meet, boxes to check.
I’ve sat through the meetings.
Heard the PowerPoints.
Nodded at the bullet points about cross-curricular accountability and student compliance.

But I’ve also had students who needed to sit in my room instead of spiraling in the hallway.
Who needed to draw their breath before they drew anything else.

So I risk letting them stay.
Even if it costs me something.

I risk telling the truth when it would be easier to perform.
I risk saying what I actually think—even when a student asks,
“Mr. Graf, do you think before you speak?”
Short answer: sometimes.
Long answer: not if the truth gets there first.

I’ve let kids skip assignments to figure out how to talk to their mom again.
Or to pass a different class—the one that’ll earn them a diploma.
That’s not great for my data.
But it’s good for their future.
And I don’t regret it.

I think about Henry Kissinger—yes, that Kissinger—who once said,

“University politics are vicious because the stakes are so small.”

He would know.
He left Harvard’s faculty lounge feuds for Cold War diplomacy and global power shifts.
Me? I navigate hallway politics and who gets which kid during which period.
(And I do it without a motorcade.)

I’m a man of spirit in a system of schedules.
And while others measure progress by projects turned in, I’ve started measuring by the questions students ask, the deep sighs they let out, the number of times they come back even when they don’t have to.

I’ve had students who barely turned in a thing—who didn’t pass the class, at least not on paper. But they kept showing up. They’d hang out after the bell, lingering like the class wasn’t really over. And more than once, one of them would say,
“I love this class. I know I don’t do the work, but I come for the stories… for the realness. You tell the truth, and you don’t judge me.”

And I get it.

Because sometimes a student isn’t coming for the credit.
They’re coming for the presence.
For a place where they’re not performing.
Where wisdom shows up in conversation, not just curriculum.
That kind of learning? That’s the stuff that matters.

I’d rather risk my reputation than miss the slow miracle of a student realizing they matter.
I’d rather be misunderstood by a few adults than be unavailable to a kid who’s barely holding it together.

So I keep showing up.
Day after day.
Risk after risk.

No regrets.
Just students.
And a few creaky stairs.

SmallRisksBigStakes #LowStakesHighImpact #InsideOutTeaching #GraceOverGrades #Forming2Point0 #TeachingWithSoul #HumanFirstEducation #MrGrafSaidIt #NoRegrets #StoriesFromTheArtRoom