Alexander Kopelman is the author of the new book For Real: Helping Children Remain Their Authentic Selves in a Limiting World. He is the founding president and CEO of the nonprofit organization Children's Arts Guild. He lives in New York City.
Q: What inspired you to write For Real?
A: I think the seeds of the book go all the way back to my growing up in what was then the Soviet Union. In an authoritarian system well-practiced at controlling not only the actions but the thoughts of its people, the very idea of understanding and growing an authentic self was not really an option.
When I arrived in the United States as a 13-year-old Jewish refugee, I had the opportunity--and the necessity--of shaping a whole new identity in a new language. (When we came to New York, I knew two words, “please” and “hello.”) The idea that I was free to choose who and what to be was honestly overwhelming.
The first 10 years of this new life were all about becoming as American as I could be. And then a few years after college, I realized that while I was busy learning how to become undetectable as an alien, I had not learned anything about who I actually was.
With no tools for self-reflection or emotional growth, I flailed about for a good chunk of my 20s, inflicting quite a bit of pain on myself and the people around me.
When I finally made my way into therapy, a key theme that emerged was that I didn’t know how to be a man in the world. As I later heard many men say, I was convinced that I hadn’t gotten the manual. That eventually led me to the Mankind Project and a life-changing weekly men’s group.
And that’s where the inspiration for For Real took shape. We met in one of the art rooms of a generous elementary school in New York City. Sitting on small wooden chairs, week in and week out, we supported each other in navigating through our lives and becoming the people we wanted to be.
What struck me was how difficult it was for accomplished, successful, strong men to feel, name, and express basic emotions like fear, anger, joy, and sadness (most of us didn’t seem to have as many problems with feeling shame). And I began to think that there must be a better way, that we should focus on prevention rather than intervention.
The idea was simple: Help children learn to understand themselves and feel comfortable with who they are as they grow. That led to my founding, with a group of dedicated people, the Children’s Arts Guild. For Real is the product of the work we have done in developing that simple idea over the past 15 years.
Q: The author Gary Shteyngart said of the book, “As someone still recovering from the bias I encountered during my debilitating attempts at socialization as a child, this book is a boon to anyone who wants to provide better childhoods for their children and students.” What do you think of that description?
A: At SXSW EDU earlier this month, I was talking about the book out in public for the first time. A man stopped by our booth in the Exhibition Hall, read the title on the advance reading copy on the table, and said, “Oh, this is a book about remembering.”
I think Gary’s description gets at the same idea. To do better by the children in our care, we must remember what childhood was like for us and endeavour to learn from what worked and what didn’t. For Real offers readers a structured, empathetic way to do the remembering and some tools for learning from our experiences.
Q: What impact do you think the pandemic had on the classroom, and what do you see looking ahead?
A: Back in 2021, I heard a guest on Krista Tippett’s On Being describe the pandemic as having created “species-level” stress. I think we are continuing to experience the effects of that stress in every single system, inside and out.
Educators and child-development experts continue to tell me that the children they work with tend to be about three years “behind” what we have previously considered the normative trajectory of development. That shows up differently depending on how old the kids were during the most difficult years of the pandemic.
What educators are reporting now are soaring rates of anxiety and depression among children, behavioral issues, difficulty socializing, and learning delays.
For a time, the focus of the education system turned almost exclusively to addressing learning loss. I am beginning to see signs that people are recognizing that if we do not address children’s ability to regulate their emotions, to feel safe, and to manage social interactions in healthy ways, we will not be able to help them learn.
I also think that we have an opportunity to ask whether our classrooms are designed to meet the real needs of children. In For Real, I explore the arguments made by thinkers like Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D., that our model of education, created to meet the demands of the labor market of our ever-more industrialized society, is poorly suited to supporting the ways children actually learn and develop.
The strain of the pandemic exposed even more starkly the ways in which the system is failing our children. Rather than patching back together, I hope we can find a way to reimagine and rebuild it.
Q: What do you see as the importance of authenticity for young people?
A: Parker Palmer, the noted author and founder of the Center for Courage and Renewal, describes authenticity as “living on the outside the truth you know on the inside.” What I love about this elegant statement is that for me it captures the freedom and ease that come from living authentically.
Obscuring parts of ourselves and constantly reading the rooms we are in to determine which versions of us might be acceptable and accepted takes enormous amounts of energy.
When we encourage young people to be comfortable with themselves and support them in developing the tools to live authentically, we help them free up huge stores of creativity, curiosity, and joy.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: The publication of For Real marks the launch of the Authenticity Works Initiative to spark a movement of caring adults dedicated to helping children thrive by helping them understand what is true for them on the inside and to living in harmony with that truth.
Authenticity Works aims to inspire a wide-ranging public discourse through a broad range of activities to
Educate - through the book, speaking engagements, workshops, online content, and future publications and programmatic products
Collaborate - by building a community of like-minded individuals, organizations, and institutions through convenings, conferences, and partnerships
Advocate - by working together with our community to push for systemic changes in areas such as education, social services, healthcare, and childcare.
We will also be inviting people to join the Authenticity Works Alliance as a means to support grass-roots activism to address the needs of children in local communities.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: People often ask me whether this work and For Real is intended for a
particular age group. I really hope that as many people as possible understand
and embrace the idea that we need to support children from birth to early
adulthood in being comfortable being themselves and that in order to do so we
need to work on being comfortable in our own skins in order to model it for
kids.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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