Letting Go

So I run a pretty fab team of ESL teachers at my high school. We have good times, have lunch together frequently, like going to parties, get pretty good work out of the students. We've got routines. We've got team work. We know each other's strengths and weaknesses.

So when one of my best teachers informed me she was going for a job interview, I felt my heart drop into my kidneys... it was not fun.

I felt extremely torn. On the one hand, she's my friend, she'd fabulous and any institution would be lucky to have her; on the other hand, tears of sadness sprung into my eyes at the thought of her leaving, not to mention all of her skill, experience, and expertise - she would be difficult and expensive to replace.

Let's be honest - I could have been a complete jerk. Threatened her with giving a bad reference. I could have refused to let her take off work with pay. I could have done a lot of things. But part of training and mentoring my team members should mean that one day they go off and run teams of their own, right? Doesn't this simply mean I've done my job well?

The other not-so-small twinge of doubt that also sidled into my mind told me that maybe my image of a happy and whole department was an illusion of my own making - maybe my department wasn't happy and I haven't done a very good job at leading and mentoring them. #shock #horror #dunDunDUN!


So how do I broach that potentially very awkward conversation?

The only way I know how to move forward in situations like this is just to be as honest and genuine as I can be, showing both sides of my mind and be open and candid. I didn't want to use manipulative, emotional pleas. I didn't want to be a tool. I didn't want to worry about our department - people have come and go before and we've moved on, yet I also wanted to make sure she knew how valued she was in our department.

While everything worked out - the interviewers and she decided they didn't want each other - and she also let me know before the interview that she was happy on our team (other family concerns prompted the application), I can't pretend that I'll work with the same team forever. I had to let go of many things to do the right thing - trying to control this situation would have spat on a good team member and definitely broken up the team bond we have.

While I don't want to sound like I'm patting myself on the back, I'm glad I had the integrity and heart to be honest and vulnerable, and in a sense, be weak as the situation transpired. Even if it doesn't turn out the same way in the future and I 'lose' a great team member, knowing that I'm doing right for them personally, professionally, not merely thinking of change as a threat, makes me feel as though I've grown as a leader.

It's sometimes a long, lonely road - leading a fairly high-functioning team in a difficult school - but I love the challenge and I love the ladies I face the challenge with. It's as much my responsibility to do right by them than as to do right by our performance tables.

Ok, good talk, guys! 

2013 Year in Review:

Every year I like to look back at all the things I've done, circumstances I've gone through, amazing experiences I've had and all the awesome people God's brought into my life. This is going to be a bit long, but well done for making it to the end in advance! :) 

January: The year started with a bang! I had an awesome NYE in the US with friends (the first in a long time). When I made it back to London work came crashing down with an Ofsted inspection as soon as we started work. A midst the panic we made it through and were given a Good (for those out of the UK teaching system loop, the Grades are: Unsatisfactory, Requires Improvement, Good, Outstanding.) We'd never been good before and it was a huge accomplishment for our school, which had been deemed Unsatisfactory 5 years before. I also celebrated the first anniversary of the reopening of St. Luke's church with an amazing ceilidh (Scottish folk dancing) celebration. 

February: After ALL of January, I needed a break so I took myself to Rome and enjoyed the amazing history and art there. I took a million photos, hung out with nice people in my hostel, stupidly wore converse (not the best walking shoes in the world), and tried as many kinds of pasta as I could. It was amazing to see all the different cultures and religions that have existed in Rome mingling together in all of the art, monuments and culture. It was beautiful. 

March: More than anything else, 2013 has been a time when I wanted to get my health in order. I've never been very sporty, and I signed up for the Tough Mudder in order to MAKE myself train. In March I got serious about going to the gym, especially a power circuits class (think Crossfit) and I started reading too many articles on LiveStrong Blog and my 2 besties convened and had a "Come to Jesus" meeting with me being a bit too obsessed about my "health" aka my body image/food choices... This is the best part about having best friends - when they love you enough to tell you about yourself. The end of March also was when I got very ill, which put a huge damper on my Tough Mudder training and my doctors told me I couldn't train and I was depressed and sick and in general not happy with myself. 

April: Despite being sick for most of April, I took myself to Nice, France, a gorgeous beach area on the Mediterranean and hung out with Abbie, a lovely girl from college that came back into my life when she did grad school in Birmingham. It was lovely getting close with her, and it was lovely running around the beaches and through tangled old cities and trying to speak French. With 2 weeks till the Tough Mudder, I got myself into long runs and lots of adventures at work - like organizing Community Language exams. This sort of forced me to meet some of my neighbors and becoming friends with them has changed me so much and given me a heart for community work. March was lonely and sad, but April was full of new adventures and love. 

May: May brought the Tough Mudder and it was very challenging, but I'm so glad I did it and I will one day get back to training that hard again. May was the month that I finally felt confirmation in my heart to apply for Grad school - Masters of Education at Greenwich University. So after a few years of waiting and planning, I actually applied - the biggest career/personal development I'd done in a long time. 

June: In June I turned 29 and it was a lot of fun - I hung out with my neighbors a lot, got into community at St. Lukes, made it out of exams alive with all my students, and just enjoyed life. It was the best month for me to realize how many people God's blessed me with, people in my life and who love me. 

July: July was full of joy and sadness; I got accepted into grad school and a lot of my mind was preoccupied with financial and administrative preparations for that. My awesome friend Sarah came to visit and we got to go to Edinburgh together, and I had to say goodbye to someone special as I prepared to visit my family for the summer. #alloftheemotions 

August: August was full. Very full. My mom and I road tripped to Maine to see her best friend after an epic family and friends BBQ. I connected and reconnected with a lot of friends and many walks were ambled and much coffee was drunk as we shared our hearts. 

September: Just when you've worked somewhere for 5-6 years and you know how everything should go, everything is different. This summer, our school got a new network and we lost some amazing people to voluntary redundancies, and so September was the month of not knowing how to do anything anymore like print things, photocopy, or even, turn on your computer... By the time we got ourselves sorted... it was October. 

October: The first week of October Ofsted came back again with a new framework and slightly dismal inspectors and after a lot of freaking out and 5am get-ups, we scrounged a "Requires Improvement"... right as I was beginning my first MA class... and life has been a challenge since then. After a quick regrouping, lots of meetings, and data analyses, I decided I needed a mini-break and took myself to Canterbury, where the seat of a lot of British history, and the Church of England inspired me with tales of the saints and the beauty of a very historical city.  

November: I worked and worked and, um, worked in November. A lot of the work that needed to happen from Ofsted happened during November and also the majority of my Grad school class. When I wasn't working, I was reminiscing on my year, processing where I am and where I think I'm going. One of the biggest things for me this year was letting go of a lot of the stuff I was doing and hoping, just hoping, that people would love me anyway, if I wasn't serving them all the time. Come to find out, people do love me, and stepping back and focusing on my MA has allowed a lot of beautiful people in my life to reach out to me and love on me and invest in me and it's been beautiful, even if locking myself in the library and reading education articles till my eyes can't focus isn't always the height of fun. 

December: December is always a kind of culmination - and after a year of learning how to do sound engineering at church I helped lead a team of people who ran our Carols Service - doing sound for an orchestra, choir, and band was insane, but amazing. Part of me still can't believe that I did it! I also took time to appreciate my team at work - the wonderful ladies I work with have been working diligently and part of my mentoring them has included telling them to rest and take breaks - and also trying to take my own advice. Graduate school while working has been a big sacrifice in my life - financially, socially, with my time and energy - I've had to set aside those assets that I used in other ways for this sacrifice that I'm excited to pursue. God, in his abundance, has provided friendship, love, and time for me to do everything I need to do. More than anything, He's been counselling me and helping me prioritize things, hopefully so that as I grow, I have more wisdom and discernment for my work, my education, and my personal life. I know he's trying to train me in loving people, in being wise, in what it means to belong. 

Overwhelmingly this year God has kept telling me that I have enough time... every deadline, every time I worry that my life isn't yet what it should be, He's there reminding me how far I've come, and that He's giving me time to get there. I just have to keep moving forward. I'm excited to see what new challenges and blessing I'll face in 2014 and the friends and family he'll bless me with along the journey. 

The Hidden Curriculum

"Was not Jesus an extremist for love?... The question is not whether we will be an extremist, but what kind of extremist we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?" ~ Martin Luther King Jr. "Letter from Birmingham Jail" 

Today was a bad day in the classroom... Not behaviour. Not lack of work. Not even poor uniform choices... It was lack of PASSION.

Sometimes I think that my students are like wind up toys that have been stuck in a box for a few decades. Like they are big kids at the edge of the diving pool, but then turn around and jump in the paddling pool...

Now I'm all for some lazy river action, but there are times I want the crazy tornado water slides...

Oh no, not these kids... it's like they can't see outside of their very limited twitter feeds.

Today I'd had enough. I don't think I yelled, but I was indignant. The thing is... I care about them waaaaayyyyy too much. They have suuuuuuucccchhhh potential and they just can't seem to grasp basics like time organisation or how to prioritise assignments or how to stop checking their facebook on their iphones in my lesson. One day... it's gonna happen in my classroom...

But besides phones and ipods and whatever else... I want these kids to feel something in their day to day lives. To be passionate about something. To "live deliberately" as H.D. Thoreau put it... To care about things and people and not just lived blinded by their own bubble. I want my students not just to care, though, if we're being really honest. I want them to be warriors. To be brave enough to go out into the unjust world and try to make it a better place, even if they fail, even if they are laughed at, even if it's soul-crushingly difficult. I want them, as MLK Jr. put it, to be "extremists for love".

I got home from work, made a sandwich, and slumped down on the couch, where I've had a copy of Jonathan Kozol's On Being a Teacher sitting untouched for a while. While I thought his book would be a memoir on his teaching experience, and I suppose you could say it is, it's basically a bomb to blow up the machine that is the public school system. He ravages against the mediocrity of "professionalism" that teachers have to adhere to and the "indoctrination" of children through "the system". It's pure genius! I'm glad I'm not the only teacher who feels like she has to hide her rebel soul in the staff room and recant data and information "on message" to inspectors and colleagues. I'm glad that he's been angry about this since 1981, technically before I was born, and that people have felt a deep dissatisfaction with the "traditions" of public schools since then.

Teachers seem to be people who want and expect more out of people... We will pour our guts out for you if you come along with us and improve. We will tirelessly improve ourselves in order to inspire you: "seldom rewarded in any way at all except perhaps in the one and only way that decent teacher ever find reward: in the gratification of a difficult job well done and in a very basic kind of dignity courageously upheld."

No, I don't think teachers crave fame and fortune, but we are miniature dictators in our own rights. If I think everyone should share, by God, they share in my room. If I hate your nail polish, off it comes. If I see your phone, it's mine, mine, mine (at least till the end of the lesson). But, to be honest, those aren't really the things I care about... I live for the moments when we discuss music on youtube, and debate current affairs ("Is Bin Laden really dead?"). I want them to prove me wrong about Percy Jackson by their intelligent comments on the text, and see that look in their eyes when they realise they've mastered a skill they couldn't do last year, or last week, or hell , yesterday ("Can anyone remember how to conjugate the present perfect tense? How about adjectival phrases to make complex sentences? Well done! They can also be called appositives!") I want to see them surprise themselves with the extent of their imagination and the skill of their rhetoric. I want to see them connect to characters and feel with them, writing passionately in their defence (even if I disagree). I want to see kids who never thought they could, try and try and try, even if they still don't succeed. I want them to grow into passionate, intelligent people of integrity and conviction.

The most valuable thing I learned in teacher training was that if I wanted to see something in my classroom, I had to teach it...

"The hidden curriculum... is the teacher's own integrity and lived conviction. The most memorable lesson is not what is written by the student...; nor is it the clumsy sentence published (and "illustrated") in the standard and official text. It is the message which is written in the teacher's eyes throughout the course of his or her career. It is the lesson which endures a lifetime." ~ Jonathan Kozol 

Here's hoping...

When Will My Life Begin...

Shakespeare said "To thine own self be true"... good old fatherly advice from Polonius to Laertes, as he's telling his son to run away (irony was definitely Shakespeare's strong suit). And I try to be, true to myself, usually. But lately, I keep feeling like there are so many awesome things out there to do, that I don't know what to do. Hence, I end up doing nothing, inundated by all of these choices, I just read and take a nap. 

Which is fine. 

Cause I work hard and naps are definitely due to me. 

But it's almost like there's this buzzing in my veins, and not just because it's winter and I'm getting cabin fever and want to run around in the sunshine. 

I want to DO something. Something awesome. I just can't decide what that is. 

This is more than having a bucket list. It's more than wanting to be famous or popular (which I actually don't want). 

I feel like I spend more time reading about the awesome things that others are doing than actually doing anything. But my hesitancy isn't wanting to do something even better, it's not comparison, it's almost like, I'm trying to find myself, so when I go off to do something, it's authentic and real, not just copying or grasping for attention or legitimacy. 

I spent a lot of my life wanting to be better than other people. I wanted to be smarter and for everyone to know it. I wanted to be different as a rule. I thought about people as posers and sheep and ignorant. 

I don't like that that is who I was, but I know I'm not that person any more. 

Yet, just because I'm not a hater any more, doesn't mean I want to be a joiner--a yes man-- who goes along just to be friendly and be part of the crowd. 

I want to figure out me, and do intentional things, genuine things--things I really care about, things that are important to me. 

Then again, I'm 28, and so many people didn't really start their careers till their 30s... Jesus, Joseph, most of Austen's writing was in her 30s, etc. So I guess I shouldn't have to wait a few more years, but at the same time, I have time... 

I hope I'll get some clarity as the spring awakens... clarity would be nice.