Taper

I'm running on Saturday, the Kentucky Derby Half Marathon. I could not be more anxious, excited and  optimistic about the race.  I've entered my week of taper and with those 2 and 3 mile runs cone doubt, heavy legs, and mental bartering.  The course is by no means fast and flat.  The exact opposite, actually. I know this taper is essential to my race Saturday, but I'm sluggish and my body misses bouncing life around in my head for about an hour each day.

Like my training taper, I've also entered a teaching taper.  I start spending less time in the classroom and more time in front of a computer typing data, charting growth and reflecting on the past year.  What worked?  What didn't? What can we refine and redo differently?  I know this taper is important and essential to my growth as a teacher and professional, but I also long for being part of something, a community.

This leads me to think that as a parent I enter a taper as well.  If I charted my highs and lows as a parent, this may be one.  Just when work gets a little hectic, the boys sense it and start acting like coked out cows leaving Cuba.  The Beaver Team crumples and turns into mornings and evenings of cat herding.  So I take a step back, away from work, to sit down and eat breakfast or go over homework, build cake towers out of blocks, read books and tell Camp Shaw stories.  It's in these moments of doing life, breathing in that dirty dog smell, that the important rocks make their way to the surface. SO we enjoy the taper and take those extra minutes for what they are...a deep breath for the next swarming of life. 

Hands together, elbows together, head up- root a jah, root a jah...

I've been seeking out mentors this year like a mad woman.  I've literally turned myself into an octopus in order to know better, do better.  One mentor came in a not so likely form.  I flip through books, devouring random quotes, experiences, and tidbits like a wolf mother returning to her pack.  Sotomayor was narrating her experience of when she learned to truly read and interact with the text.  It was taught to her by another 5th grade student.

“But the more critical lesson I learned that day is still one too many kids never figure out: don’t be shy about making a teacher of any willing party who knows what he or she is doing. In retrospect, I can see how important that pattern would become for me: how readily I’ve sought out mentors, asking guidance from professors or colleagues, and in every friendship soaking up eagerly whatever that friend could teach me.” p. 72


What if that's the way we all lived our lives? Learning from each and every person we come in contact with, mind open ready to gain new understandings or turn old understandings into misconceptions and forge ahead.  Being humble and gracious enough to realize that everyone has something to teach you. 

This reminds me of a book by Max Lucado

So often I stomp through life more and more like a Wemmick and less and less like a Punchinello. Now that Spring has sprung it's time to take a deep breath and encourage ourselves and others to look around with an open mind and notice. 

Going Hard

I sometimes find in my life there are times I push myself and others and times I want to pull others in.  This week has been a pendulum of both.  I'm pushing a new initiative and starting it in a 2nd grade classroom.  I could not be more excited, this will up the ante for our teaching and our student's learning.  Through this push, I am hoping to pull others in. This is a Glog that I will be using to launch the unit.  I know it will evolve and change as we are able to capture video of the students using STEM in inquiry based learning.  In order to start something new, you need to be comfortable with ambiguity and the possibility of failure.

In my personal life I've pushed myself in my marathon training.  I have 3 weeks until the Kentucky Derby Half Marathon and let's just say that long runs have not been a favorite weekly event of mine.  I've talked myself out of upping the ante the past 4 weeks, so I went from a 4 mile run last week, to a 10 mile run this week.  While I was excited to finish, the after affects left me drained all day. But pushing myself yesterday changed me. 

As a professional, triathlete, mother and wife there are times that I'm pushing harder in one area than in others.  I'm okay with that- the discourse of life.  I'm not a tap dancer.  Never have been.  I can't tap dance around controversial issues, or topics.I feel this burning to push the envelope.  To effect positive change on myself and  the circles that I work with.  I am always looking for ways to make this happen.  I am a stock holder in Theory Y.  I know people essentially want to do good and meaningful work. They will do so under the right conditions. I'm not a "shoulder".  I should...Should I... Maybe I should...  Before I know it I'm knee deep in shoulds. I'm okay with being different, okay with knowing that the culture of my home, work and life is always changing and evolving. 

Stop giving a should and start doing it.