The Art of Growing in Purposeful Silence

“To live fully alive is to feel every part of your experience.” —Dah Last week, I was showing a prevalent sign of depression: ruminating. Triggered at work but I saved my meltdowns for when I got home. It sounds like I had it controlled but not at all! I kept replaying the hurtful situation over and over in my head. The more I thought about it, the more I screamed and cried. I lost sleep and when I did, I had awful visions in my dreams. Visions that made me not even want to sleep. I somehow managed to still go to work during the day but came home and  continued to feel worse and worse.  But I’m good now.   How? Well, it’s not as simple as the following list may seem but after the first 6 days of depressing darkness,  I did these things to finally find my light.  I confronted those that hurt me via a letter — even though I didn’t give it to them at first, it helped to get things off my chest.    I confronted those that hurt me  (this was actually not planned) came to me and

Our middle school culture is a reflection of our ability or the lack thereof to transform our children from the inside out. Day in and day out, we see extreme levels of anger among them, we silently feel triggered when they yell at us in front of their friends or call other students names. They disrespect one another and their teachers because they see us as weak, worthless, disposable, and powerless. They see themselves as such as well. The way our children act is the way they truly feel. These feelings are not being transformed by us, they are expanding from the root, right in front of us. Let’s be real: our children have been offered and have accepted a mediocre education for a very long time and when the bar is set higher for them, whether in the form of uniformed behavioral expectations that attempt to ensure their physical and emotional safety or scaffolded teaching strategies that prompt higher-ordered, critical thinking skills, they either shut down or lash out—because being he

6:03AM This process is humbling. It forces me to look at areas I have fallen short, despite how popping I am as a teacher in general.  It makes me feel guilty for not doing enough. This morning, I declare and transform guilt into motivation to raise the bar for myself, students, and peers.  Now that I truly understand what it takes to be a model teacher, I want to provide teachers with training to do these things. I feel like I have never  explicitly  been held to the expectations of a model teacher, and if I feel this way, it’s problematic because this means it’s true for many teachers.  I want to help teachers ensure all students are meeting and exceeding at least 5 standards a year, intentionally planning based on individual-student data driven needs and being flexible, attending PLCs that teach them research based strategies for meeting and exceeding standards, and then showing them how to lead their peers from the classroom. This is what I have done, overall, these past 11 years b