Your Style ~ Yourself ~ Your Life
Educator Expectations I have been an educator for more than two decades. This field has evolved around me in ways that I rarely take time to process. But when I pause and reflect, the transformation is mind-blowing. Many of you have been on this journey as long as I have, or much longer. Others of you were students yourselves who… Read More
What about educator wellness? As thousands of schools begin to physically reopen, much has been said about the hoped-for positive effects on the mental health and well-being of our youth. But what about the educators who are preparing to close the school year in a different, but still chaotic, environment from the one in 2020? You may be familiar with… Read More
A pandemic anniversary. I have been at school on some memorable, challenging days. April 20, 1999. The day of the Columbine High School shooting. My first year of teaching. September 11, 2001. My husband was less than a month into his teaching career, a couple of buildings away. He called my classroom to ask if it was real. December 14,… Read More
Like many of you, I have spent much of 2020 grappling with Big Questions. What does it mean to be a person of color? Who and what is most important to me? How do I acknowledge my strengths – and my privilege? And how do I use it to help make the world a better place? I am doing this… Read More
Surviving 2020 Education: It’s Challenging It’s no secret that our current health crisis flung education into a tailspin – unsteadying most of the foundations of our schools as we have known them. As we have separated education from school buildings, we have lost our bearings. But as we find our sea legs in the ocean of distance learning, hybrid schooling,… Read More
How do you beat the winter blues in a tough year? As we careen through the final month of this unprecedented year, we have endured nearly nine months of a global health crisis, much of it in the undesirable position of “leader” in terms of infection rates and deaths. It is clear that this health pandemic has brought into stark… Read More
What are the Lessons from 2020? Life-changing. Unprecedented. Surreal. Those are some of my 2020 words. There are others that are a bit, um, stronger. Some of the most poignant and powerful words of 2020 I’ve read come from Sonia Renee Taylor: We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other we… Read More
Do you need compassion fatigue resources? As we wend our way to the end of 2020, it seems almost laughable that we thought we would be locked down for a “long spring break” in March. Instead of waiting out what has, in the end, overtaken our lives this year, we have learned to live in it and through it –… Read More
Are there 2020 silver linings? It depends on your perspective. It is easy to focus on the challenges – the illness and death, the social inequities, the digital divide highlighted by a nation forced into remote education. But if you look more closely at 2020, there are some silver linings, many of them in education. After more than two decades… Read More