The silence between the notes

 Trigger warning: Hot button topic ahead. I’m looking for insights and solutions, not complaints. Goodness knows our world has plenty of criticisms right now, so let’s focus on insights and solutions here! 🤍 ——————————————————— I have worked in education for over 20 years. Clarification— I have OVERWORKED myself in education for 20 years. For the first decade, I really thought that’s what I needed to do. I thought that’s what my students needed me to do. Then after years of hard work, constant self-evaluation, additional degrees, and endless professional development goals… my family experienced several traumatic situations, and I realized I couldn’t actually do it all. I couldn’t be there for my students 60 hours a week while caring for my family 60 hours a week too. (And I certainly hadn’t even considered if I should be taking care of myself at any point.)  When I began mentoring incoming teachers at the university, I made it a priority to teach my candidates that they shoul...

Uncertainty, patience, trust. Probably my least favorite words from 2020. And we're likely to face them ALL again tomorrow...and the next day...and so many “next” days... I have vague memories of the hanging chad controversy from the 2000 election, but until I saw the video below, I didn’t realize it dragged on for 36 days without an official result! Friends who were more of an adult than I was back then, did that waiting period have the same sense of distrust and angst that I sense coming with this one?! I get that it’s hard to be patient in the face of such uncertainty, and I think 2020 has hit us all with enough uncertainty and upheaval to last a lifetime! But I’m legitimately worried that America won’t be able to handle what comes next. It feels like so many people are ready to burst, no matter what the result is, no matter how quickly we get a result, or how long it takes to thoroughly confirm a result. So we can’t fully trust the system to provide certainty? Ok, then it...

As more and more STATES and SCHOOL DISTRICTS are releasing their plans for how their schooling will happen in the fall, I’m seeing more and more anxiety and frustration from people’s responses. Friends, please remember there are NO EASY, OBVIOUS ANSWERS, because no matter how obvious one viewpoint might seem to YOU, we have millions of families coming from various experiences across the country and they all have different concerns. I really don't think a singular solution exists, so the most important contribution I can offer in this conversation is my wider perspective. I’ve been a teacher for about 20 years, and a teacher of incoming teachers for 5. I have worked in or alongside approximately 60 schools throughout Washington State. I love my students and their families and my coworkers very much and I wish we could find some magical answer that would fix this situation we’re in. But honestly, I'm still torn about what I wish for the 2020-2021 school year. I’m worried...

  I'm an incredibly private person when it comes to my inner questions and fears and ideals. I've only ever shared those with a short list of individual confidants. Although I doubt that most people in my world really realize that there's so much they don't know about me...because I'm also an unusually philosophical and reflective person, and I DO SHARE those reflections sincerely and authentically with my friends/coworkers/etc. when I feel it's important to our purpose or our working relationship. But it's also likely that there are more sensitive, even controversial topics hidden deep below the surface of what I'm comfortable sharing...Until someone manages to open the floodgates and establish themselves as trustworthy enough to handle the rest...then since all of my ideas somehow relate to one another, I can't seem to stop until I explain all of them at once to the poor unsuspecting soul who offered to listen for the first few minutes. ...

I haven’t posted any of my writings in nearly a year because I haven’t felt like I had time to revise and edit and do them justice. But today’s funny little post is funny…and little…and time sensitive to today’s date, so I figured I might as well get it up here either way.  By now, you probably know that crazy dreams are a nightly adventure for me. Well, amidst last night’s nightmares, there was one quirky plot that actually turned out to be surprisingly thought provoking.   It started out with an unlikely family trip—me, my sisters Megan and Kasey (who lives in DC), and my parents (who really don’t “take trips” anymore)—somewhere in a far off campsite or recreational area of Washington.   Four of us had been ready to leave for a few hours but Megan had supposedly been hanging out by herself for a while and wasn’t answering her phone. We were getting sunburned and cranky while waiting for her to come back so I went to track her down. Turns out, among othe...