Boys to Men

For the entirety of my life, The Lord has always blessed me by providing incredible males in my life. I have had the fortune of watching some of these boys from my childhood grow into men and I've also been blessed to watch dear friends transition into adulthood. My winter break was spent with a few of these characters. Despite the fact that we may struggle with keeping in touch, spending time together felt like no time had been lost at all (:

2012 please be good to me.

The last half of 2011 has been the hardest six months of my life, and I might go as far to say that I think I will never go through a transition this hard ever again (fingers crossed). I moved to a new city where I knew close to nobody, I've lost important people in my life, I am failing at my job, I do not have a church, and the list could go on and on. For someone who considers themselves relatively jovial, I spent a great deal of the past six months pretty unhappy. I did not think I physically had it in me to feel this way.

This said, the past six months have also showed me that I am loved. I believe that the best time for anyone to see/feel/understand how loved they are is when they're down in the dumps (ironic, i know). I have been blessed with an amazing family and incredible friends. While I may be in a stage of life right now where I go day to day not knowing whether I'll make it through the year, I find comfort in knowing that I can call a plentitude of people in tears and they'll listen (or they'll do a really good job at pretending to listen), and yes this happens frequently.

At the end of the day this is what I know. God has a plan. My prayer for this year is for it to go quickly, very quickly.

Goals for 2012

• Eat lunch every day
• Find a church
• Work smarter not harder

sickdayismysalvation

I started Institute in July and started Teaching right after it ended in August. I've been playing grown up for almost six months and today is my first mental health day. You know you've reached a new low when you are caught crying your eyes out after school by 8 staff members and you just can't stop. Then, I came home and cried some more.

My philly biffle and I often joke that we are both in abusive relationships with all of our students. You go to work every day and invest all you have into your students, but in return you get beaten and abused (I hope you understand this is metaphorical). Then, after an 11 hour day you go home and continue to work and your mind wanders to a place where you tell yourself that tomorrow will definitely be better. But it's not. The worst part about all of this is that you begin to replay the days events looking for things you did wrong, making excuses for the way you have been treated.

So then I ask myself, if I believe everybody should be strong enough to remove themselves from abusive situations, why do I stay? I finally understand, you can't help who you care deeply for, and matters of the heart cannot be nursed.

At 10 pm last night I caved, called my principal, and said I needed a sick day. This day is saving me.

Breathe.

Rome was not built in a day. Remember this.

Being a middle school special education teacher in a turnaround school (one which ranked in the top ten worst elementary schools in the whole state of Pennsylvania last year) in a neighborhood listed as one of the top 25 most dangerous neighborhoods in the country is challenging for a plethora of reasons.

As a brand new adult I have made it a priority to become solutions oriented. Thus, with this mindset, I constantly think about what I can do to fight/combat the forces that have worked and currently work against my students. It has been four months and I am still asking myself this question.

Today, in the midst of a mental and emotional breakdown (as a result of receiving some pretty tragic test scores), a very good friend looks at me and says "breathe. Rome was not built in a day."

thankyou.

Welcome to Holland

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

Written by a parent of a child with special needs.

inadequacy

When I started teaching I had a group of twelve very rambunctious (also referred to as looney) third and fourth graders. Two of these students were twins. We can call them C and C. C and C were by far two of the looniest students in our school, known by name, despite them being identical, by most adults in the building.

These two boys hardly ever came to school

When they did come to school they were running around the building (without permission)

They came to school with clothes that were too small (often dirty)

Both boys are at a kindergarten/pre-kindergarten academic level

Both are victims of abuse

Both were born with fetal alcohol syndrome

and I fell in LOVE with these children.

While I don't teach them, it brings me joy to see them in the hallway and it makes my day when they come visit me up on the fourth floor. In such a short period of time, I have seen them grow an immense amount.

This past weekend, one of the boys got hit by a car, will be hospitalized for eight weeks, and is paralyzed.

Being an inner-city school teacher is rough, but in hearing this news, my heart sank. Every day i leave school feeling like I do not have control of anything- behavior, academic achievement, student investment, and the list could go on. Nothing, NOTHING even the worst of days at work, compares to the inadequacy I felt in hearing that my twins were out, unsupervised, playing on a major road, late at night.

The hardest part about this job is not the work it entails, it is leaving work everyday knowing that THIS can happen to our children.

"It would be so nice if something would make sense for a change" - Alice in Wonderland

A few weeks ago I received a care package. It was the best care package I have ever received, EVER. It was so impactful that as I read the card and looked at its contents, I couldn't help but cry a little. An excerpt:

Life is unexpected and things don't always happen as planned, but it's how you react that defines who you are...

This tidbit of advice has served me well in all facets of my life since coming home to this package.

Yes, I go to work every day and within moments of teaching I end up defeated.

Yes, I have never been so tired in my life.

Yes, I often feel alone

BUT then I think of this and it reminds me that I want to be the type of person that can honestly say that regardless of what life throws at me, I can be flexible and I can figure it out.