Mental Health Day

Today is a day of rest.

I started crying in grad school last night, and I was not the only one.

It's the time of the year when everything is in full swing--progress reports came out on Monday, the longest day of professional development was on Wednesday, and too many grad school projects were due Thursday.

On top of that, all my freshmen met with their counselors during class Monday to plan out their next four years of high school (which is awesome), but it took away from teaching time. Same goes for this coming week--picture day will occur during all English classes, taking away from teaching time.

I'm doing my best. My teaching feels more organized than last year, and students seem to be grasping concepts with more fervor than they did last year--but I still feel like there is too much to cover in the short amount of time I'm being given between now and the end of the quarter.

So, I'm taking the day off. It may seem counterintuitive--leaving my kids with a sub and "read these chapters and answer these questions" lesson plans, but I need to get creative to figure out how they're going to learn what they need to in the next four weeks.

I also seriously need to recharge, and do some grad school homework. If my brain is fried, I don't function well. So here I am, today--taking a mental health day. Letting my brain rest and heal.

It is lovely.

Sabbath

Roadside on the Million Dollar Highway, from Ouray to Silverton, CO.

Long time no post, #amirite?

As you've potentially gathered, I'm a full time teacher and full time graduate student, which means I spend about 80 hours a week doing something English and/or education related.

And, as you hopefully realize, it's exhausting.

The biggest upside of teaching is having summers off, which has given me plenty of opportunities to rest, rejuvenate, and [finally] log back on to this blog.

This post, titled "Sabbath," is a draft lying around from March 2017, and I finally have a moment to sit down and write about that. now is the moment I'm choosing to finally sit and write about this.

If you're unfamiliar with Christianity or Judaism, the concept of "Sabbath" may be slightly foreign to you. It shares a root with "sabbatical," and comes from šāḇaṯ, which means ‘to rest.’ in Hebrew (thanks, Google, for that history.)

Sometime in March, I went on a Saturday climbing trip with a few friends (one of whom is a teacher, the other of whom practices Judaism) and the discussion rotated around to the idea of rest.

All three of us are familiar with the idea of Sabbath as a day of rest, and I started considering when the practice of taking a day of rest went by the wayside.

Initially, the Sabbath was created as a day of rest to reflect how God rested on the seventh day of creation, which is a pretty cool idea. Taking a day to rest, pause and reflect sounds like a great idea in the hustle and bustle world of 2017.

Which is why, in March, I started observing Saturday as my Sabbath. I would wake up, go to yoga, then go home and do everything or anything except grad school homework or grading papers. And, magically, it didn't make it any more difficult to get my work done by the times I needed to have it done.

I pushed all my essay grading to one weekend day, and it made me focus better. I held on to weekday nights for my grad school homework, which wasn't much of an issue when I was able to sit down and do it while eating dinner.

By prioritizing rest and carving out a full day of my week FOR rest, I was able to manage my time and work more efficiently. 

I'm not sure what my Sabbath is going to look like this school year. For one thing, I want to prioritize travel and getting into nature. It's my goal to spend at least two weekends of every month somewhere outside of Phoenix, but in all reality--I'll be happy if I make it out of the city at least one weekend every month.

This year is also different because I now have a boyfriend, and while I want to say that won't affect my Sabbath, it probably will. He's a teacher, and we're going to have to discuss our working habits so we can plan time to work, grade, and do everything else while also finding time to spend together.

Thankfully, he loves Jesus and also seems to be on board with the idea of observing Sabbath as a day of rest, so this should be a great thing for both of us in our busy schedules.

Parallels

Ask anyone I know--I recently got super into rock climbing. 

A month ago, I got back up on a rock wall for the first time since my fall, and I've craved to return ever since.

On a whim, I invested in a pair of shoes, a chalk bag, a bouldering gym membership, and a roll of tape. It's pretty rare for me to jump head-on into something so quickly, but I'm so glad I've invested in this hobby because it's starting to pay off.

When I hit the rock gym, my mind is instantly cleared. I'm no longer focused on student essays, lesson plans for the next week, or how my lesson may have crashed and burned that day. Instead, I'm faced by different issues--how to climb a particular route, how to best bandage a blister, how to catapult myself over a ledge--the list goes on. Rock climbing gives me a physical activity that embodies problem solving, and helps me process along the way.

Granted, not all problems are solved in a quick and clean fashion. Some problems take a few falls or a few fails before being solved, and I've learned to grow comfortable in those times.

I'm learning to grow comfortable when I fail at teaching as well.

Don't get me wrong--I hold myself to a very high standard, but teaching is a try-and-fail setup. If you try an activity and you fail, you try again or you move on to something that may work. If you fail at getting a point across, you stand up, brush yourself off, and come back the next day to try again.

I'm so thankful I found rock climbing in my first year of teaching so I could learn to fall, learn to fail, and practice getting back up time and time again.

Homeward Bound

My sweet time in Tulsa is coming to an end. I'm ready to go home, but I've met a lot of lovely people here and made new friends.

The students I have--my first group of students, aside from the incoming freshmen I taught at ASU's Early Start program two years ago--are amazing. They're humorous, curious, and all doing relatively well in class. My Tulsa kiddos have taught me how to interact and teach many different types of students, and I'm excited to meet my 150 Phoenix kiddos with these 4 weeks of teaching experience under my belt.

My co-teacher (or "collab" in Teach for America terms) is a blessing. His name is Elliott, he has teaching experience, and he's such a calm and loving person. He spent the last 3 years living in Iceland (I know, right?) and has classroom experience as a teacher.

In the past 4 weeks, we've experienced actual tornado warnings where we had to go down to the basement and stay "calm" while our students had to stay "calm" while we were all late for lunch and hungry. We've shared deodorant (I forgot mine one day and our classroom is at least 80 degrees and humid every day), shared life stories, and grown to know each other well.

There's nobody else I would rather share a classroom with, and knowing that Elliott is going to Miami when I go back to Phoenix is rough--but I'm stoked because it means I have someone to go and stay with in Miami!

In addition to my students and Elliott, I was privileged to work with an entire group of fabulous humanities teachers (pictured at the top of this post.)

This was my CTE group, and we're all English, history or geography teachers. We bonded over our tough work and stuck through many hours of lesson planning, classes, and preparation for returning to our corps cities. I feel well equipped thanks to these awesome humans, and led by our fearless Sasha.

I've enjoyed Tulsa, for what it's been, and I'm ready to jump in to teaching in Phoenix.

Unapologetically Me

Sunday morning journaling at 918 Coffee in Tulsa

I've never been homesick before in my life, so naturally it took a while for me to recognize the emotion I'm feeling as homesickness.

The first week of Teach for America training flew by, and it left me spinning in circles Friday night.

Seriously.

I miss my friends and my cat, and the coffee shops and restaurants I'm so used to going to in Phoenix. These emotions, when compounded with all the teaching techniques and social justice information I learned in the past week, have been lot to process--so I've been focusing one thing this weekend:

Being unapologetically myself.

I'm pretty good at this when I'm with people I already know, but whenever I'm thrown in with a group of new people, I have a hard time owning my unique likes and dislikes.

For example, I dislike going out and I really dislike most pop music--but it's hard to make friends and bond with people who are SUPER into these things.

I'd rather sit around and play Cards Against Humanity while drinking wine and listen to Sufjan Stevens or Iron and Wine than go bar hopping.

So I'm working on owning that part of myself and hopefully will find some friends who like the same things as I do.