Life Thoughts * March 2020
“Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”
-Seneca
After quitting full-time teaching in 2015, I am still drawn to substitute teach because I love humans. I love trying to understand the complexities of what makes a certain human act the way they do. I love helping other people understand things about literature and characters' motivations and then essentially about themselves. About three and a half years ago, I found a school that I just LOVED going to. The kids were a little bit rough around the edges, but also sweet...(as sweet as high schoolers can be...haha).
And here I am, still going back for my favorite teachers almost 4 years later. The reason I like this high school and these people is that the teachers seem to have a similar mindset: better the soul and it betters the mind. The number one thing that is important to most of the staff is other people. They are not imprisoned by rubrics and statistics that jail them into thinking they aren't good enough teachers/people because they aren't doing more things that the other teacher. They care about reaching people on a human level. The above quote is what the principal titled the agenda for the day for our "Remote Learning: WTF are we going to do" presentation on the Friday of the week everything shut down in Washington State. The principal essentially prefacing the meeting with, we are all in this together, and we will learn and come out of it stronger people (and it's stressful and unusual as F_CK!). She's a great human and principal.
We are social distancing and cooped up in our homes, but as humans, we want to be connected. We must search for the beauty in each other, in humanity. There is beauty in the different ways that humans relate to one another and beauty results when humans gather together for a common purpose.
I've been listening to the Seattle Symphony re-broadcasts. In listening to music, there's no right or wrong answer. You only have to go, listen, and experience the music. Know that another human created all these moving melodies to fit together all to be played by other people together in harmony. God, I love live music for that reason. All the intricate parts and pieces that come together. You are all doing different things in different ways to come together for the beauty of the whole masterpiece.
-Seneca
After quitting full-time teaching in 2015, I am still drawn to substitute teach because I love humans. I love trying to understand the complexities of what makes a certain human act the way they do. I love helping other people understand things about literature and characters' motivations and then essentially about themselves. About three and a half years ago, I found a school that I just LOVED going to. The kids were a little bit rough around the edges, but also sweet...(as sweet as high schoolers can be...haha).
And here I am, still going back for my favorite teachers almost 4 years later. The reason I like this high school and these people is that the teachers seem to have a similar mindset: better the soul and it betters the mind. The number one thing that is important to most of the staff is other people. They are not imprisoned by rubrics and statistics that jail them into thinking they aren't good enough teachers/people because they aren't doing more things that the other teacher. They care about reaching people on a human level. The above quote is what the principal titled the agenda for the day for our "Remote Learning: WTF are we going to do" presentation on the Friday of the week everything shut down in Washington State. The principal essentially prefacing the meeting with, we are all in this together, and we will learn and come out of it stronger people (and it's stressful and unusual as F_CK!). She's a great human and principal.
We are social distancing and cooped up in our homes, but as humans, we want to be connected. We must search for the beauty in each other, in humanity. There is beauty in the different ways that humans relate to one another and beauty results when humans gather together for a common purpose.
I've been listening to the Seattle Symphony re-broadcasts. In listening to music, there's no right or wrong answer. You only have to go, listen, and experience the music. Know that another human created all these moving melodies to fit together all to be played by other people together in harmony. God, I love live music for that reason. All the intricate parts and pieces that come together. You are all doing different things in different ways to come together for the beauty of the whole masterpiece.
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