The Things We Carry

Putsata Reang’s essay, “The Things We Carry: A Lesson in Deep Self-Reflection and Empathy,” was selected by the Teachers & Writers Magazine editorial board as a finalist for the 2026 Bechtel Prize. The Bechtel Prize is awarded for an essay describing a creative writing teaching experience, project, or activity that demonstrates innovation in creative writing instruction. Learn more about the Bechtel Prize here.

“Why did you leave?” I ask my sixth-grade students in the fall of 2025, then wait. One eager hand shoots up and then two. Soon half the class raises their hands like field flags, marking spots that need attention. I call on one student. “Leave what?” the student asks, and the other hands instantly fall, replaced by heads nodding in unison. They want more specific instructions from me; I want agency and creativity from them, and no fences to contain their thinking. “You tell me,” I say, and set the timer for 10 minutes of freewriting.

I worry when I do this, when I lob such small yet spacious writing prompts to my students, they will struggle to answer. But they never do. Instead, there is quiet, and within that quiet, the sounds of writing—the scritch-scratch of lead tips on paper and the screech of metal chair legs on linoleum as students shift, perhaps trying to catch ideas. 

When the students turn in their stories, I’m speechless. There is the story of the student whose family left the plum orchards of central Washington because of an urgent tip—ICE was coming. There is the story of the student who left Seattle and crossed six states during summer break on an unforgettable and sprawling family adventure. There is the student who left home with his mom on account of an abusive step-father; they ended up homeless until recently, when they found a safe place, just for their small family of two. The stories are raw, relatable, vulnerable, and insightful—little slices of their lives that exemplify the spirit of memoir.

In a time of deep division and polarization, personal stories help connect us to each other.

For the past three years, I have been teaching memoir writing in Seattle-area K-12 public schools, and invariably a student will ask why bother writing about ourselves? I answer with a paraphrased quote from the children’s book author and teacher, Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop: Books are either a mirror where you can see yourself reflected or a window that gives you a glimpse into the lives of others. I believe memoirs—true snippets of stories about our lives—do this best. In a time of deep division and polarization, personal stories help connect us to each other. 

“Why do you think feeling connected is important?” I ask.

Thankfully, the answers fly swiftly across the room.

“Because it helps build empathy,” students respond.

Compassion and empathy help us feel less alone. Mirrors and windows help us learn about ourselves just as much as we learn about others by examining and sharing our own interiority. Personal stories place us proximally to others.

But what’s the trick in getting young people—especially self-conscious teenagers—to turn the spotlight on their own lives? The answer, I have found, is good prompts. And not just good, but also short. The shortest prompts produce the deepest reflection and often, the very best writing. There’s room to roam within the valley of a four-word question.

So we start with departure: “Why did you leave?” 

We begin with leaving as a jumping off point for writing our personal stories because leaving is a human condition, the universality that connects us to each other, our lives a series of comings and goings. In other words, journeys. I share an anecdote of the reason my family left Cambodia more than 50 years ago. I do my best to draw the things we left—the Angkor Wat temples, coconut trees, and fish curry noodles. My students follow my lead and draw the places they left, the things they miss, the reason(s) they left.

We all have reasons for leaving.

But this first prompt is merely a base layer for the bigger idea I want my students to explore. There is another, even more expansive prompt that we will turn over and over to see its many sides. This one has reliably generated a wellspring of responses across grade levels and lived experiences. It is also only four words: “What do you carry?” 

We all carry something.

When I introduce this prompt, inspired by Timothy O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried, about a group of soldiers during the Vietnam War and the pointlessness of war as symbolized by the physical and emotional weight the soldiers carry, I tell my students about that time in 1975 when my family left Cambodia, not because we wanted to go but because war forced us to flee. 

I tell my students about that time in 1975 when my family left Cambodia, not because we wanted to go but because war forced us to flee.

We boarded a boat that sailed aimlessly for more than three weeks before arriving at the American naval base at Subic Bay in the Philippines. We eventually boarded an airplane bound for San Diego, California, and then another for Corvallis, Oregon, which is where I grew up amid the strawberry, blueberry, and ryegrass fields that perfumed the air. Corn, too. I carry the memory of rolling hills brushed in golden light in my hometown.

My parents carry heavier memories than mine. All those years ago, when we escaped from our burning country, my father carried his black briefcase, inside of which he kept our family documents—marriage and birth certificates, family photos, his government-issued Cambodian Navy ID cards, and a pistol. He also carried grief, from being cleaved from his country, and fear for his parents, siblings, and so many relatives left behind. “How will they survive the war?” He carried this question for the next 10 years as we built new lives in Oregon.

My mother carried our family’s gold jewelry—heirloom earrings and bracelets and necklaces—tucked in a white cloth and cinched inside her sarong. And she carried a baby, not quite one year old, as our family raced to the docks and claimed a spot on one of three evacuation ships leaving that day. She carried hope we would survive this journey, whatever the destination may be. My three siblings were too small to carry anything.

The boat my family boarded was built for a crew of 30 men, but on the day we left, it carried more than 300 Cambodians. It carried very little food and water for its passengers because no one expected to leave.

Ten days out at sea, the baby my mother carried stopped crying and eating the milk my mother spoon fed into the baby’s mouth. Eventually, the baby stopped moving altogether. When the captain of the ship came around to assess his passengers, he saw my mother carrying a lifeless baby. He told her: “Miss, do you see how crowded we are here on this boat. Your baby is dead. The corpse will contaminate the others. You have to throw your baby in the water.” 

But my mother refused and begged the captain to let her keep her baby until the ship reached shore, and she could bury her baby in the earth. 

Two weeks later, the ship arrived at Subic Bay, where my mother ran to the Red Cross clinic and passed her baby to the nurses and doctors, who gave the baby medicine. In the morning, when my mother checked on her baby, she pressed a pinkie into the baby’s palm. The baby’s fingers started to twitch. Her baby was still alive.

That baby was me.

I carry this origin story as a reminder of hope and the immaculately fierce love of mothers. I believe I survived that journey, in part, so I could dedicate my life to helping other people tell their stories, too.

 I believe I survived that journey, in part, so I could dedicate my life to helping other people tell their stories, too.

I show my students photographs of the ship that took my family from war to freedom, and pictures from our early days in Corvallis. Then we transition to look at other photographs of what other people in other situations carried over the arc of time: victims of the Eaton fire in Los Angeles; migrants trying to cross the border; Native American tribes during the Trail of Tears; Japanese Americans during internment. We discuss the connections between our stories and the stories of others. My students connect the dots of meaning: their stories, all of our stories, are collectively the story of humanity. 

I see sparks of thought flick across the room, eyes wide as saucers. They can identify with some of the stories from the photographs. They think about that year’s floods in the Pacific Northwest, how some of them carried out pets and pictures, cash and clothes. They think about deportations, what they could and could not live without; what they would and would not miss about America.

What would you carry if you had to leave home in a hurry?

We start our exploration right where we are, in our seats. I pull out my wallet and pass around the contents for the students to hold: an orange library card, my driver’s license, a blue Alaska Airlines mileage card. “If I was a stranger and you found my wallet, what would you know about me?” I ask. A student says, “You’re someone who likes to read.” Another says, “You’re female, and I know your birthday and how tall you are from your driver’s license.” Another infers I must travel a lot. Correct. Correct. Correct. What I carry is a part of who I am.

Then I turn the experiment on them: “Everyone reach into your pockets or backpacks and put on your desk what you carry.” Out comes graphic novels, a soccer ball, a joystick, a mini pocketknife, a Rubick’s Cube, a bag of extra hot Takis. Out come clues to who they are.

I ask them to also scan their bodies for things they might be carrying—a special watch or necklace or bracelet, a favorite hoodie or sports jersey. “What do these things say about you?” I ask. They make a list of all the tangible things they carry.

We define tangible and intangible and talk about how tangible things often carry intangible meaning and significance, and how intangible things carry the weight of tangible objects. The silver cross necklace represents a student’s belief in God. A soccer ball represents a student’s passion for the sport. A Labubu represents another student’s need for comfort. Beliefs. Passions. Comforts. The students make another list of all the intangible things they carry. I guide them toward the core memories and core beliefs they carry, and we write about those.

But memoir is more than merely counting and recounting. It’s about reflecting. We move from lists to sentence stems, which get converted into poems, which grow up and become complete personal narrative essays. They select one thing they carry—tangible, like a favorite toy, or intangible, like a belief—and they write about that one thing. 

Sometimes we are carrying so much that it is a miracle to make a single sentence. One sentence is better than none.

“What do you carry?” is the central question onto which we build the layers of our personal narratives for the next several weeks, learning various writing techniques throughout, such as how to use similes and metaphors and how to make transitions and strong beginnings.

Along the way, I let my students choose—a graphic organizer to draw items they carry, a sentence-stem worksheet to brainstorm, or a five-paragraph essay template with questions to dive directly into their writing.

We write. We revise. We share. We give feedback. We write some more.

When the students submit their writings eight weeks later, I’m awed by what crosses my desk: my students match and exceed the vulnerability I tried to model. The assignments come in various forms, as poetry, as essays, and once in a while, as merely lists. I accept it all, so long as I can detect the effort. I recognize how sometimes we are carrying so much that it is a miracle to make a single sentence. One sentence is better than none. I don’t give grades but do dole out written feedback and encouragement on every student’s story.

The things they carry startle, delight, and inspire. Danny carries a bear claw necklace his grandpa gave him, light and hard as a stone, to remind him of his most favorite person in the world. Luis carries fear that one day he might go home, and his parents will be gone because ICE got there first. Ilya carries colored pencils because she likes to draw. Osman carries hope for no more school shootings. Louise carries her laptop, roughly 10 pounds, though not as heavy as the sadness she carried when her dog died. We carry so much.

When it’s time to share their writings, the students are eager. As they listen to each other’s brilliance, they realize they have so much more in common with their classmates. Mirrors. They, too, have carried sadness and joy and fear; they, too, have carried the responsibility of taking care of younger siblings. They, too, carry dreams of becoming zookeepers and firefighters and astronauts. Windows.

My students learn how to self-reflect, how to be vulnerable, how to practice empathy, and how to become better writers. All because of one open-ended prompt. Four words feel so small but the stories generated are vast. Four words spark boundless writing. Four words are enough to build a universe of stories that connects us all.

Featured photo by Rene Böhmer on Unsplash.