There's Always Something

It's been 65 days since the first day of school. 65 days of all new ... everything. Some days I'm still not sure what I think. Some days I'm exactly sure what I think. Today is one of those days. It's fantastic. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. But it's been hard. It's been hard to walk my children to their classrooms and turn and drive off campus. Mondays are the worst. The first 8 or 9 Mondays I wanted to turn around and go back. It's been hard to talk with former colleagues about how things are going and know that I'm on the outside now. As much as I love them and as much as I love my former students, I lose something when I'm not there every day. And I should. I'm not saying I shouldn't. But it's hard. It's hard to see my (big) kids once or twice a month and to see that they're growing and doing things like applying to college, getting accepted, falling in love. Who are these people? How have I only been gone 5 mon...

And so it goes. Today is the last day of school for this school year and what a beautiful, messy, joyful, painful, ambitious year it's been for both teachers and students. What a privilege it has been to be a part of it. And, oh, how I will miss being a part of it here next year. It's the last day of school and in any year, I think for some it holds unmitigated joy. It's the culmination of a year of work. I look back and see how much our students have grown, what they have learned, and recognize who they've become and I smile and nod to myself because these are the students who finally "got it." Some of the students haven't yet. Some of the students still trudge through each day, hoping the day will end so they can go home. Some students dread coming to school. Not many. But some. I look at these students and wonder if I missed an opportunity. Was it a choice I made or she made? Did I miss an opportunity? Did he? I don't always know the answers t...

There are only 3 more weeks of school. I can hardly believe it. The cyclical nature of academia is something I have adored since I was tiny. I might have been in the 3rd or 4th grade when I started to really look forward to the first day of school, and then in May, looked forward to the last. As I got older, the cycle became my life, a stable force of anticipation and expectation on both ends. Sometimes I wonder what it is about teaching that I love so much. I know for sure that I love the kids, especially these high school kids, but I also know that I love the idea and reality of teaching, too. The idea of "imparting knowledge," "creating lifetime learners," sounds so impossible that I want to know how to make it possible. Learning and teaching are such organic processes and sure the basic ideas of learning and cognition remain somewhat the same, but as new generations of children grow up, the world around them changes and so learning and teaching must change. I ...

Balance. So hard. It really is. For me, a full time working mom,I'm constantly in pursuit of balance, which to me is kind of funny because it's one more thing I have to do, but doing this one is a big deal. But over the last few weeks I've learned something about balance.  Balance requires everything you have. If I don't give everything I have to what I'm doing, whether it's resting, reading, praying, playing, or something else, then I'm not balancing anything.  I'm balancing half-things. And I'm, fortunately or unfortunately, not a half-things person. Balance isn't really eliminating things, it's about choosing which things are important enough to put closer to the fulcrum, to hold you down, and letting the others slide to the end of the lever, where if the important things take a shift, the less important things fall off. But it also means that those things on the end, when you look at them and use them, deserve your full attention too. ...

While I'm posting about my educational journey, both as a student and a teacher, I would be missing out if I didn't blog about what happened yesterday, because it is so very very relevant to what I've been blogging about the last couple of weeks. Yesterday was our first day back to school after 2 weeks of Christmas break.  Some people might not miss their jobs when they're gone.  I do.  Tremendously.  It's lovely to be home and not have to get up and to chase my daughters around my house.  But after awhile I start missing my students.  I was thrilled to see them yesterday and was excited to share with them some encouragement from a book I'd been reading. I read a short devotional about how God wants us to do hard things.  He never promised that life would be easy; He did promise that it would be rewarding if we look for the right rewards.  In the devotional, we were challenged to understand that anything worth having was worth working for. It ...

With Christmas coming up I've been re-filled with anticipation and eagerness.  It's the first year that I feel like both of our daughters are old enough to really be excited.  Last year Meimei was still too young to understand why everyone was so excited.  She was excited, yes.  But Meimei gets excited because her plate is blue and today her favorite color is blue, and so this year she's really excited that she gets to celebrate Jesus.   I watch the world turn through her big (big for an Asian, anyway), brown eyes and wonder what she sees sometimes that I don't.   Her world is always open and full of light and laughing.  There's always fun to be had, something new to try, or in her case, taste.  So far, in the last week, she's tasted: the car window, her chair, the table, the bathtub, the soap (she didn't like that one), and her pillow.  If it weren't for the fact she tells me that she is deliberately wanting to know how they taste, I'd ...