Pressure. Next. Pressure. Next.

I enjoy myself most when I can be very present in a moment. I enjoy myself most when I sit down with a child and teach them something.

I've been told to confess that it's going well.

That's a whole different kind of pressure. If it's going well, then better is...well...even better.

Early in the year I was chanting the mantra, "Everything is not this moment."

Now I find myself wishing I could really be present in all of the moments that are happening in my room.

I learned on Tuesday, during New Teacher Induction, that pain is relative and irrelative at the same time. Relative to the guy I met with 36 kids in a room smaller than mine, 30% of whom don't want to work, I've got it really good. Relative to the really good classrooms, I'm underwater.

“You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”

― Eleanor Roosevelt

First quarter done

I just finished my first quarter teaching. It looked like this.

1st Quarter Data:

• 1.5 12oz bottles of hand sanitizer
• 54 pencils
• 100 sheets of notebook paper
• 5:30 am wake-up time
• Gallons and gallons of water
• at least 1 dozen observations with feedback
• 8 graduate school assignments
• 1/2 a box of copy paper
• 4 different table arrangements

Everything else I lost track of.

Little kids

Teaching middle school, I feel myself wrestling with middle school feelings that I didn't really know about before.

I really believed that I didn't care what people thought of me.

Standing in front of my classroom, I have to squelch the desire to be liked by the cool, powerful kids. I have to quiet my laughter at the awkward kids. I have to come to terms with my need to be cool, myself.

I am surprised by this reality, and humbled by my own humanity.

Automatic for the People

Tonight I'm wondering about the sweet spot between depth and efficiency.


So much to learn, so many to teach at one time. In a learning factory.

At the end of every day I get a pit in my stomach for the moments I didn't give love. For the moments I wasn't gentle with the little and big kinds of broken that I encounter every day.

Give love. Which requires stopping.