handwritten on April 23, 2023
It has been such a very long time since I reflected formally through a journal, and I figure as long as the little one continues her delay, I should use my time wisely! This year has been so very overwhelming in terms of understanding and transformation, reflection and remembering my vocational origin and feeling intense gratitude for who I am, who I have become and who I wish to be as a thirty-year old. I came upon a quote which I found timely and profound and it reads like this: "During your transformation, you might feel like everything is falling apart, but in reality everything is coming together for your higher good. Your authentic life is what is in process of unfolding now."
I do...
handwritten on December 26, 2022
Now that I'm off for a bit of time and have taken a break from curricular writing, I have decided it was about time to write a small blog reflecting on ten years of knowing and developing and just being with Xiao. Might I just say, that it truly is scary just how quickly ten years goes by. Every year I wish for time to slow down just a smidge and every year, it just seems to go by so much faster.
It's hard to believe I have been teaching for 8-9 years (including full time student-teaching) and it is impossible to believe that we met at 20 and 22 and are now 30 and 32 years old. It is also hard to fathom that Xiao is now in his 5th (second to last year) of residency training at Pitt...
handwritten on November 21, 2022
After today I have spent the past hour wondering how many individuals never truly know their impact. And then I wonder how many people (as humans) would know greater happiness or greater truth about their kindness and their talents if we, as humans, were able to experience our self-worth in a tangible, contagious way. If we treated our impact like laughter-heard, spread around, visible, tangible- I can only imagine that perhaps gratitude for human kind as a whole would look differently and gratitude for ourselves would also look differently if we made it seen. Made it known. Walking into a sea of old students- well there simply isn't anything like it. I guess what I am trying to say is, you...
handwritten on November 15, 2022
Well today was my first snow inside my classroom because for eight collective years (including my student teaching) I had no windows until this year. I don't think I have ever felt or seen so much joy then when my students realized there were large, fluffy whimsical flakes falling outside the window. It was pure magic. Cheers to first snows, children who remind you of the miracle of EVERYTHING and a chance to stop and enjoy nature. What a beautiful day today was inside room 22. Certainly one I will never forget. Never take those windows for granted.
handwritten on November 14, 2022
This year has been a year that has allowed me to really give thanks more than any year before. I've been trying to practice gratitude for a while, and I think it is much like a muscle, if you stop for a while, you become winded and once you start again it sometimes takes a while to get back on track. In many ways, leaving a place is almost a whimsical reminder of gratitude because (at least for me) gratitude generally coincides with nostalgia or a remembering of all the beautiful rather than focusing on the difficult. Tonight was a special night for me because I was able to reconnect with a previous student. I was greeted with the upmost hospitality, a dining room table to practice math...
