Tag: gratitude

23 Jan 21 – My Gratefuls

How about a few things I’m grateful for right now?

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1. Instant Pot – I used my moms’ digital pressure cooker while we were home in Illinois over the holidays. Then, I was hooked. Through a compilation of gift cards, mine showed up today. I’ve made applesauce – in 8 minutes!!! – and macaroni and cheese with broccoli. I had to cut the children off. There’s only so much cheese and broccoli a body should consume in one sitting. I’m legitimately excited to keep making things. We’re having orange “chicken” later this week. To not have to monitor the brown rice feels like its own gift.

2. Misfits Market – They take the produce grocery stores won’t stock because of physical imperfections and sell it at a discount. We’re two weekly shipments in and I’m pretty happy. It’s increased our fruits and veg in the house, and it’s diversified them. Kale chips, potato soup, the aforementioned applesauce. Plus, it’s fun to have the kids help me build our box each week. I dare say they’re more willing to try the things they helped pick. Who knew choice and control were important?

3. Running – I mentioned I’d be giving it a go a few posts back. Well, I’ve gotten 5 lunchtime runs totaling 11.5 miles since then. My word has it improved my mood and sense of self. Those 11.5 miles are more than I totaled all of 2020. Here’s to more miles and shedding some of the meat suit I feel like I’ve been wearing.

4. People are reading – I have been pretty constantly surprised and humbled by reactions from folx reading these posts. In the same way running has helped me feel connected to myself, writing and seeing responses has connected me beyond the 9 and 11 year olds I spend most of my time with.

5. Pokémon – Each night, after dinner and before books and bed, the three of us watch one or two episodes of Pokémon. With more than 1,100 episodes, we should be set for a few years. While the bulk of the content is episodic, from time to time, a character or scene from an earlier episode will be the focus of a later episode. Listening to the kids recognize this through line of the plot and characters always makes me smile. They are able to do and remember more about the world every day. They’re letting down the defenses that kept that from being able to do that. Keep ’em coming, Ash.

What are your gratefuls?

22 Jan 21 – I need to write more

Sure, a blog post every day feels like a personal return to form. And, geez, I’m loving it. That last post? I wrote, deleted, and re-wrote it three times before I found what I actually wanted to say. So, yes, I’m very much enjoying a return to writing.

low angle view of spiral staircase
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And yet.

This is only the public writing I’m used to doing. When it went away, it was accompanied by other forms of writing that brought me great joy. In the Before Times, I would make a point each week of writing thank you notes to a few people across the district with whom I’d interacted that week or who were on my mind as being wonderful human with whom to work.

It is the grown-up version of making sure the last thing I did before leaving school was writing one positive note home for at least two students on my rolls. Knowing the last thing I’d done with my day was putting pen to paper to express my joy in teaching my students helped turn some pretty crap days around.

The rub of it is these are exactly the times when I need to be writing more notes to colleagues. When we are necessarily separated and prohibited from running into each other in the halls on the way to meetings, that’s the time to stop at the end of the week and write.

Maybe you want to get in on the action? Maybe there are some colleagues or students who could do with reading your words of encouragement and gratitude? I’ve just added a calendar event for next Friday and every Friday after. It’s 30 minutes and simply called, “Write Notes.”

Who will you write to first?

Remembering ‘The Good Stuff’

 

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Sometimes I think of all the times in this sweet life when I must have missed the affection I was being given. A friend calls this “standing knee-deep in the river and dying of thirst.”

– Robert Fulghum

I started packing for a move today. I hate packing, and I hate moving, so it’s a special kind of day when I get to be thinking about both.

The nice moment, though, is the special kind of reflection I forget is part of moving from one home to another. It’s the process of deciding what piece of the past, what belongings in the old house need to make the transition to the new house so that it might be the new home as well.

For me, in every move since I first became a classroom teacher, there is a manilla folder that gives me pause. It is similar to the memory boxes my mom kept for my sister and me as we were growing up.

It’s not labeled, and it’s outgrown what’s inside long ago. Still, a manilla folder is the right container.

If it had a label, it would simply be “The Good Stuff.”

This is a folder that holds the notes and fragments of teaching. There are letters from parents, drawings from students, notes passed in class. These aren’t all the piece of teaching.

The folder doesn’t hold any perfunctory Christmas cards clearly scribbled at the behest of a doting parent.

Instead, there’s the note from Kyle, whom I got to teach when he was in 8th grade. Toward the end of the year, Kyle and I had a handful of talks about how his group of friends was changing. He talked in the most nascent of ways about who he wanted to be in high school and beyond, and I held my tongue as much as I could because I knew he had to learn these lessons for himself.

Kyle’s note, scribbled in the scratch that belied the haste in which it was written is a simple, heartfelt thank you for simply being there and listening. I knew what it meant to me that Kyle was willing to work through his thinking aloud to me. It was this note, though, that let me know Kyle was also grateful for those conversations.

One card is written out in the experienced hand of a mother. I’d been able to teach her son three of his four years in high school. They had not been uneventful. His graduation was of the sort where those faculty in his orbit had looked at one another as he crossed the stage and traded a glance that said, “We made it.”

This mother’s note simply said she knew things had been trying and she was forever grateful for the time and care I’d shown her son.

The thing I remember most when I leaf through my file is that these notes arrived on my desk or in my mailbox as a result of no superhuman effort, no extraordinary circumstances. These came as a result of me doing my job and those most affected by that work taking the time to let me know they took notice and were grateful.

As much as these notes were a place of support at the end of days of teaching where the temptation was to give it all up to be a turnip farmer, they mean something else now. In my work supporting teachers, leaders, and learners, these notes and the things that led them to being are a reminder of the importance of taking time (just a few moments) to thank the people around me for the time and dedication they show when they do the work we do.

I love my file of good stuff. Even more, I love the idea that something I jot down might make its way into someone else’s good stuff.

130/365 Three Rules I Like for Living

Keep your word to yourself and others…Be trustworthy with yourself.
Whenever you’re offered water, say “yes.” We’re human beings wherever we go…Be who you are, no matter where you are.

I’ve been experimenting with listening to podcasts as I run and commute to work lately. One I’ve subscribed to, which is in the review stage, is Bulletproof Executive Radio. I’m not yet certain if I’m going to keep it in the mix, but the words above from Guest Michael Fishman struck me as good ones this evening as I was finishing up my run.

What would be your three rules for living a better life?

Things I Know 314 of 365: You can find your thank you package here

Why you're great...
It’s important to let people know you see them. It’s best to do this when you see them at their best.

One of the things I loved doing in the classroom was sending positive notes home to parents and students. It didn’t matter. At the end of the day, or on my planning period, I’d sit down and write out a couple of cards explaining all the goodness I saw in a student, and then I’d drop them in the mail.

It was a practice I learned from Hal Urban, and it was a wonderful way to end the day.

Any time I get to talk to a group of teachers, I encourage them to adopt the practice as their own. A few sentences each day to remind your students and yourself why you love the people in your classroom.

I realize getting the supplies together might seem like the biggest obstacle to sending these notes, so I’ve decided to do the leg work.

The PDF of the document I used to make the cards is here.

You can find Staples’s selection of card stock here.

My go-to invitation envelopes are here.

And, if you wanna go crazy, custom design postage from zazzle with your school logo, favorite quote or whatever here.

Having stamps on the envelopes and the cards printed and ready in my desk made all the difference.

Even last semester, as a student, I dropped a few cards in the mail to former students and to people in classes with me when I could tell the going was tough.

We find a million ways to tell people we see the things they’re doing just the wrong side of right. Maybe we could focus on the other side a bit more.