“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive” — Dalai Lama “If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete” — Buddha “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about” — Unknown It has been an incredibly hard week. And, in the midst of […]
Month: September 2016
Starting to Break Down Silence
“In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in merciless light, and what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed […]
Reflecting on Reflecting: It’s Always a Challenge
I’ve come to really love writing, particularly reflective writing through this blog (a long way from the early entries where writing was so difficult and arduous). But, at the end of the 20-day challenge, I’ve realized that it takes a challenge for me to devote the time I need to actually reflect. I believe that […]
A Parent’s Perspective
When I first became a teacher, I was very young and several years removed from having my own children. As a student, I had never received a call home from a teacher and, as a novice teacher, I was intimidated to reach out to parents, worried that I would either “get a kid in trouble” […]
Cultivating Time for Research, Writing, and Thinking
It’s so easy to lose a day. Or, at least, to lose track of a day. For me, it’s easy to get lost in preparation for teaching. I’m a teacher at the core of my professional identity and I always have been. Teaching comes easily to me and is always gratifying. Students respond well. I […]
Sense-Making & Note-Taking: Getting the GIST w/ a Twist
I had so much fun this morning working with a great group of English Language Arts teachers at the Escondido Union School District where I have been working for 2 of the last 3 summers as part of the Escondido STEM Integrated (ESI) team around cross-curricular project based learning. Today, I got to be with all […]
Getting through Today
My 16-month old daughter is the pinnacle of full self-expression. This morning, she asked for a variety of items, and upon being presented with each, responded, giggling, “No!” She responded with giggles, that is, until she didn’t, at which point, she began crying and thrashing about with unreserved and unabashed sadness and fury, as only […]
Write What You Want to Write
When I was young, I would write for hours: historical fiction, young adult fiction (teeny-bopper young adult fiction because my more life changing experiences hadn’t happened yet, and it was all I knew), angst-ridden poems (real angst that now seems somewhat over-dramatized), pages of notes to my friends. I would write because I felt like […]
Focus on Identity
I’ve been struggling with rewriting a journal manuscript which has been rejected 4 times, in varying iterations. The piece centers around my work with secondary literacy teacher candidates and the ways in which their perspectives and practices integrating literacy into their disciplinary lesson plans change over their time in my course. My friend and colleague, […]
Going Up for Tenure–the Decision before the Decision
I’ve been struggling in the last few weeks with whether I should go up early for tenure or proceed on the normative timeline. In talking with colleagues, the advice ranges from, “If you think you’re ready, go up!” to “If you don’t need the money, don’t feel like you need to put the extra pressure […]