Gratitude

 January 9, 2022

There is a lot going on in the world that causes stress, anxiety, and sadness.  That's why it's important to take time frequently to think about the things for which we are grateful.  Here are five things I am grateful for today:

1.  I am grateful I am getting to spend time with Nicholas while he is staying with me, before he moves to start his new job.  Since the kids are all grown up, the extended times with them are fewer and farther between.

2.  I am grateful I get to text or talk with my kids several days each week.  I like to talk to them, and they like to talk to me!

3.  I am so grateful that although Nicholas got Covid, he is experiencing relatively mild symptoms.

4.  I am grateful for Lisa and Mo.  Man, I don't know where I'd be without those two.  They are my sounding boards, they make me laugh, and they check in on me all the time.  I do the same for them.  Having best friends makes doing life wonderful.

5.  I am grateful for a seemingly endless supply of books.  So many ideas and stories we can inhabit for a time.  It's kind of mind-blowing to think about the millions of ideas and perspectives out there that we can enjoy and learn from.  That's pretty cool!

Omicron At Home

 January 8, 2022

Yesterday I wrote about how many of my students are out at school due to the rampant variant.  Guess what?  This week I will join their ranks.  My son is staying with me for a couple of weeks before his new job starts, and yesterday he started feeling under the weather.  Today I had him take an at-home test, and he tested positive. Fortunately, because he is vaccinated (we both are) his symptoms are totally knocking him for a loop.  Because the CDC has recently changed their guidelines (and because different work places apparently interpret and/or implement them), I had to check in with both my high school and my college to clarify the protocols.  Turns out I am not able to go to either campus until Friday.  While I am thankful that everyone is taking protocols seriously, this is especially bad timing because tomorrow is the first day of the semester at the college--and I can't be there.  At least I'm not feeling sick while I am putting together all the lesson plans....

In Which the Omicron Variant Continues to Wreak Havok

 January 7, 2022

We went back to school this week after winter break.  I wasn't quite ready; no one I know was.  I know everyone keeps saying this year is the hardest year ever in education, and people are tired of hearing it.  But Y'ALL--it is the hardest year ever.  I mean to-your-bones-weary-without-really-being-able-to-put-your-finger-on-why hard.  It's not just one thing; it's ALL OF IT.

Just one of those reasons?  Omicron is digging its heels in deep here in the valley (and everywhere).  CDC's newest guidelines are clear as mud, making them sound like a terrifyingly complex sixth grade math word problem. (If Sally went to a New Year's party and her neighbor who was there for 14 minutes later tested positive for Covid, how many days does Sally have to quarantine if she has only 3 of the 15 possible symptoms but her asymptomatic brother, who didn't attend the party, tested positive 4 days after New Year's?) The fallout?  Upon return to school, I have had approximately 20% of my class absent in every single class every day this week.  You know what that means?  Not only am I teaching my classes, but I will also be fielding emails and Independent Study contracts and scheduling make up quizzes and catching up on absent work turned in at all times of the day and night on Google Classroom for the next couple of weeks at least.  That's if I'm lucky.  It could go longer, obviously.  

I'm used to helping my absent students play catch up, but when it's 20% of your kids, all of that extra behind the scenes (read: after hours) work feels like an extra part-time job.  Because it is.  Kids who miss out on initial instruction will need more support, more help.  And they deserve it.  Covid isn't their fault any more than it is mine. Or the school's.  But yeah, it's hard.  Whew.  

Priorities

 January 6, 2022

We've been going on for months and months now with some pretty significant, systemic adjustments in the social and financial structures due to Covid-19.  Some of those have been detrimental in a variety of ways of course, and certainly there are some long term effects we haven't seen yet.  I can't help but think, though, that if we have managed to make it this many months making sure every school child has breakfast and lunch for free, and allowing college students (and graduated college students) to move through their lives without having to worry about the crippling monthly debt payments of student loans without having had the whole of society collapse in on itself, then perhaps it is, in fact, doable.  Sustainable.  Perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad idea to continue to prioritize, as a society, making sure children don't go hungry and making sure our young adults don't start out in life already so far in the hole that it becomes a debilitaing weight.

I Hope/I Fear

 January 5, 2022

Today in class we took time to connect and reset our focus for the year.  As part of our reconnecting, we make concrete goals for the semester, whether those be personal, physical, academic, spiritual, or relational.  I teach them some tools for making those goals attainable, and we talk about giving ourselves grace when we don't reach a goal.

In talking about giving ourselves grace, I also talk about turning that grace to others.  We do a little exercise in empathy and reminding ourselves that we are not alone in our stresses, and that everyone is walking around with a lot of stuff running around in our minds behind the scenes that we might not ever guess.  I ask them to anonymously complete two sentences:  I Hope.... and I Worry About/I Worry That..., and then I read them out loud.  Here are some of the things my kids wrote today:

I Hope...

I will choose the right college for me.

my grandmother will get better.

I make my parents proud.

my sister's business will be a success.

I find someone who loves me.

my anxiety won't stand in the way of me finding happiness.

I will stay in touch with my friends when we all move away to college.

I Worry...

that people don't really like me and they are just tolerating me.

that I will disappoint my parents.

that my grandmother won't make it to my graduation.

that Covid won't go away anytime soon.

that I will make the wrong career decision and will be unhappy in life.

that my father's choices around smoking and drinking will take him from us too soon.

that I won't find someone who loves me.

that the transition to college will be too hard for me.

that I won't be able to handle the financial burden of college.

These are just a handful of them, but many of them echoed similar sentiments.  I always have students write a reflection after they hear these, and nearly every student, every year, says they had no idea how many of their classmates were dealing with the same anxieties that they do.  It's comforting to recognize that they aren't alone.  It's comforting to remember that we are all human, and everyone has a lot going on behind the scenes that we may never have the privilege of knowing. We don't have to know exactly what a person's worries or fears are to extend grace and empathy; we just have to remember that those things are there, unspoken and unseen. If we operate as if everyone has those unseen struggles, we are able to much more easily give people the benefit of the doubt.  We are able to connect better as humans.   I think it is always a good thing to remind ourselves of this.

Immersed in Art

January 4, 2022 

While I was visiting Lisa at Thanksgiving, we decided to take in the Van Gogh immersive exhibit in L.A.  I had been seeing advertisements for it all over the place, and was really interesting in checking it out.  Van Gogh is one of my favorite artists, and IS Lisa's favorite.  It was a really cool and impressive exhibit.  It was mesmerizing.  I can't imagine the amount of work that went into creating all of those effects and seamless transitions.  

Since we both enjoyed it so much, I gave Lisa tickets to see the Monet immersive exhibit for Christmas.  We went last week.  Like the Van Gogh experience, there were some really beautiful elements.  That being said, as much as we liked it, the Monet experience was a little less...magical than the Van Gogh.  It didn't feel quite as finished, or quite as immersive.  Whereas Van Gogh's paintings and art blended across the screens, beautifully transitioning and melting from one scene to the next enhanced perfectly by the accompanying music, the Monet experience was more like a slide show for a great deal of the hour long show.  Still big, beautiful, and even breath-taking in parts, but separate and a little more fragmented. Despite the comparison, the Monet experience was still definitely worth the trip.  It's really a creative and engaging way to invite audiences into the art experience.  I really hope more of these types of exhibits will be available in the future.

Good Enough

January 3, 2022

I was talking with my sister about New Year's resolutions today. Three days in, and we're both going strong. Yes, it's a low bar. Anyone can do three days. Three days of carving out time to read. Three days of 10,000 steps. Three days of blog posts. Three days of healthy eating. Three days of whatever. Three is nothing, a piece of cake. You know what's hard? That there are 362 more days in the year to keep it up. But we think about these resolutions in the wrong way sometimes--an all or nothing proposition. Let's say we get to Day 10, or Day 24, or even Day 115 and life interferes, as it often does. We get sick, or we have 12 meetings back-to-back, or a friend desperately needs our time, energy, and focus, and we miss the mark on those resolutions. No time to read, or a McDonald's run late at night on the way home for dinner, finally. Maybe instead of 10,000 we hit 8,500, or even just 2,000. Eating healthy isn't hard, really. 10,000 steps? Totally doable. The hard part is what happens when we miss, whether it be a day, or even week that we fail to meet those goals. There is such temptation to let that misstep become our destination, rather than a temporary pit-stop on the journey. We can see that pit-stop as a failure and we can beat ourselves up about it. Man, we can be hard on ourselves. There is a temptation to throw in the towel altogether. But missing a day doesn't mean the goal was a bad one, and it doesn't negate what we have done or can still do in the future. What if, instead, we practice the same grace we would give a friend if she told us she'd failed to meet a goal? We'd say that's okay, wouldn't we? We'd encourage her to try again tomorrow. We might suggest ways that she can meet that goal the next time; we might suggest ways we could help her meet that goal. Would we tell her to give it up because today didn't happen the way she planned? Of course not. Why do we do it to ourselves? If we hit one of those days or those weeks where life is happening to us, coming at us fast and furious and trying to blow us off track, maybe what we need to learn to say is "For today, that was good enough. That's what I was able to do, and I cannot do more than that, and that's okay. Tomorrow we try again." Sometimes we need to let good enough be good enough.

Decisions

January 2, 2022 How do you know when you are supposed to wait, sit in patience and understanding, and when you are supposed to move on? Patience is a good thing, right? But how do you know if what looks like patience is merely spinning one's wheels, destined to prove fruitless in the end? How do you know if it's keeping you mired where you aren't supposed to be while your path is elsewhere waiting for you? But, if you turn away from where you are, choose a path and begin walking, what if that's exactly where you were supposed to stay and you turned your back on what was supposed to be? Life is a series of choices, and the road forward is never the same as the road back.

New Year, New Word

 January 1, 2022

Three years ago, as I found myself in a place where I was trying to regain my equilibrium from an unexpected end to a relationship, I chose a word to guide my year,  to manifest a an attitude that would guide my way of thinking- a talisman of sorts that I could return to when I needed to remind myself of my purpose. That word was RISE. Like a Phoenix from the ashes,  my focus was to rise and be strong.

The next year, having dragged myself out of the dust, my word was SHINE. One must, of course, rise when one has fallen into despair, but then? It's time to shake off the dust and step into the light of the new you and own it. Shine. That was sometimes difficult, but ultimately empowering. That was the goal, after all.

Then last year, a year of turmoil and uncertainty, I chose the word EXHALE. Politically and socially, the world was a wreck, with a little pandemic thrown in the mix. I had hoped that last January would usher in some much needed change. In some ways it did; in others, it merely magnified some pretty deep fissures in the facade. We are still trying to recover. In the meantime, although I had hoped that EXHALE in Janauary would mean an ability to relax, it turned out that it just meant to remind myself to breathe, in and out, one breath at a time, one step at a time. That's how I got through the year- how we all got through the year.

This year, once again, my word is hopeful, full of promise. The word is FOCUS. There are things I want to see happen, goals and plans I foresee for my future. This year, instead of hoping and just learning to breathe through the chaos, the goal is to focus on those proactive measures I can take to effect the kind of changes I want to make. Rise, shine, exhale, then focus. Seems like a good way to move forward.

A Good Day in the Classroom

 October 9, 2021

Yesterday, in my last class of the day, we were talking about some of the social issues an author was addressing in his literature. We then trained our lens on how those issues are still relevant in today's world--how they've changed, how they've remained problematic. It was a long discussion about challenging issues with many different perspectives. The kids spoke their minds. They spoke from experience. They shared perspectives. They were passionate AND respectful. It was amazing. I had two kids say how important they felt it was to have these conversations. One kid thanked the rest of his classmates for being willing to share and for listening to differing perspectives, because learning from each other is how we move forward and do better. As I was wrapping up the discussion (which went on much longer than I had intended because it was GOOD), I told the kids we'd have one more comment and then we'd move on. My last commenter said, "Oh gosh, I forgot we were in English class and that we were supposed to be doing work." To which I said, "Y'all, this IS the work! This is what literature is about! If we can't figure out why literature matters to us in our own world, how it speaks to our experience, then those books are just bound paperweights taking up space on the shelves. THIS is why we read." And my kids CLAPPED! My job isn't to tell kids what to think; it's to guide them in having their own conversations and finding their own voice and place in the world. And if I can do that while encouraging them to be good humans to one another (my common mantra is that we can BE BETTER than the people who find satisfaction in haranguing and harrassing others in online comment sections), well, then, that's a good day in the classroom. Critical reading is critical thinking, which leads to critical writing and communicating--and the kids not only need that, they want it.