The Courage of Quiet Presence

I sometimes wonder what label I would have been given if I were a child in today’s classrooms. ADHD perhaps. Maybe something else that captured what others saw as my inability to sit still. But back then, no one was naming it. They just saw the behaviours and I felt the struggle.

I can still remember the physical pain of sitting in a chair while I was given haircuts, forced into stillness when every fibre of me wanted to move. That same pain followed me into classrooms. Sitting still wasn’t neutral for me – it hurt. And when you hurt, you act out.

“For me, stillness was not peace. It was pain.”

That tension between what I needed and what the classroom expected shaped so much of who I became. Always on the move. Always restless. Always challenging. My behaviours became the story written about me before I even had a chance to tell my own.

A classroom that surprised me

The year I found myself in Judy Stewart’s class, nothing about the setup suggested this was where I belonged. Judy was new. It was her first year teaching at the school. Somehow, I ended up in her care, a boy with a reputation for being “difficult,” placed with a teacher still finding her feet.

It would have been easy for that year to be a disaster. Instead, it became something different. Judy surprised me. She didn’t crush me with rules or discipline. She didn’t try to fix me. She was firm, yes, but she also had a way of making me feel seen.

She had presence. She commanded respect, but not through fear. She carried interest in who we were, not just in what we produced. And for the first time, I began to feel that stillness could be shared, not demanded.

“Judy didn’t try to tame me. She tried to know me.”

That subtle shift changed everything.

Behaviours or belonging?

Looking back, I can see how my behaviours were often just the language of belonging. I wasn’t defiant for the sake of it. I was asking: Do I matter here? Will you still hold me when I push against the walls?

Judy answered yes. She didn’t reward the behaviour, but she didn’t reject the boy behind it either. That was new for me. And it planted a seed.

I don’t think Judy would have called what she was doing “trauma-informed practice.” She was simply practicing care. But in that care, she was doing what Te Noho Tahi would later help me name: creating a space of presence. A space where you could bring all of yourself, restless, challenging, or unsure and not be turned away.

The pain of stillness, the gift of presence

When I think about the Te Noho Tahi tree we’ve been shaping in our work, I often go back to those moments. The roots of that tree are connection, manaakitanga, whanaungatanga. Judy, without ever naming them, lived those values with me.

She created what we now try to hold every day for both staff and tamariki: a time to be together, not to produce. To connect, not to perform.

“The greatest gift wasn’t control. It was presence.”

That’s why I fight so hard to protect the daily gatherings in our model. Because I know what it felt like to be that child, hurting from being forced into stillness. And I know what it meant to meet an adult who made stillness safe instead of painful.

Rewriting the story

It’s strange to think back on how easily I could have been written off. My behaviours were loud. My learning looked inconsistent. The narrative of “trouble” was always close by.

Yet, all it took was one teacher, one year, to rewrite that story. Judy gave me a different mirror to see myself in. Not just the boy who couldn’t sit still, but the boy who was worth knowing.

I sometimes wonder if she ever realised the impact. How many teachers do?

“Sometimes the most courageous act a teacher makes is simply not giving up on you.”

That is courage. Not the courage of great speeches or grand gestures. But the courage of quiet presence. Of choosing to see beyond behaviour into humanity.

What this means for me now

All these years later, as I lead a school and build Te Noho Tahi into our daily rhythm, I carry Judy with me. Her courage is part of my courage. When I sit with staff in our afternoon gatherings, or when I protect space for tamariki to just be, I am holding that memory.

Because for some child in my school, stillness still hurts, and for some teacher in my staffroom, presence is what will make the difference.

We don’t always know which small acts change a life, but we can be certain that connection never wastes itself.

The lesson I keep returning to

I have spent years chasing productivity, chasing achievement, chasing outcomes. And yet the most transformative moments in my own life were never about outcomes. They were about presence.

The haircut chair taught me the pain of forced stillness. Judy’s classroom taught me the gift of chosen presence. Te Noho Tahi is where those two threads finally came together – where I could put language and structure around what I had felt all along.

“Presence is the soil in which belonging grows.”

That is what I needed then. That is what I try to give now.

Closing thought

If you are a teacher, a parent, or a leader, I leave you this challenge:

See beyond behaviour. Notice the story behind it. Ask what stillness feels like for that child or colleague. Then, choose presence instead of control.

You may not see the difference straight away, but one day they will remember.

The quiet courage of presence is what changes lives. It changed mine. Thank you, Judy, your presence still lives on.