Moving Towards the Fire

    You cannot be more loyal to your fears than you are to your futures.

That line is still resonating with me. I heard it at the NCTE conference last week from author Brendan Kiely, when he was discussing his novel he co-authored with Jason Reynolds, All American Boys. I wrote it down immediately, almost as if I knew a blog would resurrect from the line. And somehow it did.

    I think about the fears I have had in my life. Some are fears I no longer experience like watching Michael Jackson's "Thriller" music video when I was a kid and calculus class (Sorry, math teachers. Calculus never clicked with me. It was one of those classes that made me appreciate every paper I wrote in college as an English major, though). Other fears still exist: spiders. (There's irony there considering I am a UR graduate). I fear emojis will make us stop talking entirely and that I will disappoint the people important to me. Every time I hit the "publish" button on this blog, I am afraid--afraid that my words aren't good enough or that no one will read them. I fear dogs (I'm working on that one thanks to the dog walk sponsored by Atlee DECA and Emerging Leaders where I was able to pet over a dozen dogs).

My adult fears also consist of the Dorito shell at Taco Bell, my cell phone taking over my life, and raising kids in today's world. Bigotry, bullying, and racism never being eradicated truly frighten me as well.

     Yet, we can't survive by standing outside of what we fear. We need to move towards the fire. We have to take risks. We have to face what we are most afraid of in life. I'd like to be able to tell you that I did take the Dorito shell at Taco Bell head on and that it wasn't so bad. I'd love to be able to write that somehow I no longer care what other people think, that I don't care if I disappoint others. Yet, these fears are real in my life, extentions of who I am as a person. So what do I do? I start to move towards the fire. I've learned it's okay to be uncomfortable in situations. Sometimes it's better  not to do what is easiest but what feels right even if that is unsettling or fearful.

     This idea really resonated with me about twenty years ago when I was searching for my first teaching job. The summer after I graduated college, I had been on thirteen interviews. Somehow at each interview, I just didn't "fit the part." Frustrated, as it was now one week before school was to begin, I called the director of Human Resources in Henrico County. I had been told to regularly check in with the Human Resources Department so they would know my name. They knew my name. "Ms. Nagle," the director of Human Resources said, "I told you if I had a job for you, I would call you." She seemed exasperated by my call. And I made a choice in that moment. I could have said thank you and hung up the phone, but something told me not to do that. So, this shy, nonconfrontational want-to-be teacher did something brave and completely out of character.

     "I don't think you understand," I said. "This is not a 5 year commitment or something I will leave in the near future. Actually, this is not a job to me; it's a lifetime profession. More than anything in life, I really want to teach."  My hands were shaking and so was my voice. The speech was far from eloquent like that of Atticus Finch when he defended Tom Robinson on the stand in To Kill a Mockingbird, but it was sincere and honest and brave. She curtly said she understood and hung up the phone. About ten minutes later, I received a phone call from Human Resources. They had set up another interview for me. That next day, I landed my first teaching job. I put my future far ahead of my fears that day, and it changed my future and more importantly, my outlook on life.

     I think about what life would have been like had I not said what I did. Would I have given up on finding a teaching job? Think about all of the things I would have missed out on if that happened. I wouldn't have seen you sample 30 new books at our Book Tasting and respond to one another in reading those books.

I witness you stand your ground on a daily basis. To think of all of the intense moments I would have missed out on in my classroom.

One of the best things I witnessed this past month happened in my TOK classes, where you never shy away from making a difference; you collectively brought in 500 cans to feed the hungry this Thanksgiving.

While these might not encompass your fears, they demonstrate the idea of moving towards the fire, of living life in a way that matters. And to think I would have bypassed all of it had I not advocated for myself in that phone call twenty years ago. To think what would have happened had the director of Human Resources not known my name.

      In the country music song "Standing Outside the Fire," Garth Brooks croons, "Life is not tried; it is merely survived if you're standing outside the fire." Somehow that song lyric keeps popping into my head as I write this blog. So this is my challenge to you this month. Find one thing you are afraid of, and look that fear in the eye. Figure out a way of moving towards the fire. Do not let your fears control who you are. Find the words to be brave. And know if you're looking for me this month, I may not be working on conquering that Dorito shell yet, but I will take the first step at grappling with my fears as I move towards the fire and hit the "publish" button on this blog.

Gratitude: Lessons from My Roll-top Desk

I have an old desk in my house with lots of compartments. It is one of those old-fashioned roll-top desks that has all sorts of places for mail and paperclips and pens. When I first married my husband, he brought this piece of furniture into our marriage. I didn't want it; it had chipped paint, looked its age, and didn't really fit with any of our decor. Yet, it was his grandmother's desk. So, it stayed and now serves as a metaphor for my life--how I tend to compartmentalize everything. Everything in my life has a place, a time; each hour is marked with barely a moment to relax. What kind of life is that? you may ask. A life that is filled. A life of gratitude. I am grateful for my life--this crazy life where some days I race in circles, forgetting to defrost the chicken I want to make for dinner and copy the poem I want to teach but one that is filled with people and emotions and splendor.

I am grateful.

I am grateful I am a mother despite the fact that sometimes I feel like I am an unpaid uber driver for my kids. I take them places--so many places--dance rehearsal, gymnastics, baseball practice, friend’s houses, to Taco Bell (very unwillingly and forever putting up a fight, I might add), to the movies and the library. Yet I am grateful. For every minute I spend with my kids in the car, I’m able to talk to them and listen to their music and glance at them growing up so quickly from the rearview mirror. Just as objects in the rearview mirror might appear closer than they seem, my uber driving brings us closer together.

I am grateful.

I am grateful I am a runner. I run to be alone and hear myself think. I listen to Michael Jackson or the Beatles or sometimes even something mellow like the Eagles or Coldplay. Every step is one closer to mental clarity. Some of my best lesson plans have been developed while I was pounding the pavement at 5:30 a.m. and so have I attempted to solve the problems of the world. I thought of my 1% better idea on a run. Most of my blogs were written in my head as I near mile 3 or 4 of a longer run.  I am grateful--grateful for my sturdy legs and persistence and the time to fill my lungs with air and think.

I am grateful.

I am grateful I am a reader. I get lost in a good book, so lost that I sometimes forget it is past midnight on a school night. In a really good book, the characters become real people to me to the point that I dread having to say goodbye. The same feeling I experience every year when another class graduates.

I am grateful.

I am grateful I am a writer. I’m grateful words come easily to me (most of the time)...grateful that I have a medium to write them, to put them together, to use them to help others see that they matter or are important.

I am grateful.

I am grateful I am a listener. I may not be the best teacher, but people know I can listen. And I do. Always. At 2:43 in the morning or at 5 in the afternoon over a cup of hot tea, I listen to the words of a friend.

I am grateful.

I am grateful I am a laugher. I laugh every day even on the bad days. This weekend in St. Louis we called an Uber to take us to a restaurant for dinner. We stood on a street corner across from our hotel, waiting for the Uber driver to navigate his way to us. He finally did after more minutes than we wanted to wait. By the time the driver showed up, we were impatient, frustrated, and hungry. We got in the car, and somehow, without us even knowing, this restaurant was literally around the corner. I laughed. We ubered (if that is a verb) around the corner. Yet, I am grateful for that moment and all the small moments in my life that might seem idiotic or frutrating but also are ones that give me a chance to laugh.

I am grateful….for my roles in life. For the fact that of all of the compartments intersect somehow in gratitude. Yet there is one role I have not mentioned that I have been in for twenty years.

I am a teacher. I shuffle papers back and forth. I read college essays. I talk to kids about the frustrations in their lives. I try to make sense of a teenager’s language. Honestly, I don’t understand it all. Emojis are foreign to me as is texting language like ttyl and smh. Yet, I am grateful for every day I spend in the classroom. I am grateful to teach with the colleagues I do, whose creativity, compassion, and sense of humor inspire me so much on a daily basis. This year, I have the opportunity to collaborate in my TOK class, something I have been wanting to do for years. I am so grateful for this collaboration I get to do on a regular basis.

And I am grateful for you. My students. You are bright and funny and utterly creative. You think outside of the box, and you are not afraid to tell me how you really feel. You’re honest and truthful and inclusive. You may forget to capitalize the letter “I” and your love of memes far outweighs your love of books, but still I am grateful. I am grateful to spend 90 minutes with you every other day. I am grateful for every moment you make me laugh and even the ones that bring me to tears.

I am grateful.

I am grateful that as I close the lid to cover my roll top desk, my life has so many intricacies, so many compartments, so many roles.

I will always be grateful.

#AtleeStrong: Hug Harder. Live Kinder

     When I coached track at Godwin High School many years ago, the other head coach I worked with used to give out "happy hugs." Whenever a kid on our team was down or frustrated or annoyed, he would look them in the eye and ask, "Do you need a happy hug?" The kid would inevitably roll his eyes, as a smile crept into the corners of his mouth. A hug was never exchanged, but the idea of one simply transformed a bad attitude.

      I am a hugger. I always have been affectionate in that way. I imagine a good hug--one that lasts longer than a second and does not feel obligatory--is similar to the way other people feel about handshakes. A firm handshake conveys confidence and someone who is certain of the world around him. A strong hug demonstrates kindness, compassion, and is a way to show people they matter. This past week, I've given out a lot of hugs. Some were tight embraces where the other person didn't want to let go. So I kept holding on until they did. Some were awkward, as I am much shorter than most people and had to stand on my tiptoes. Some were given because I didn't know what to say. A hug just seemed like the right thing at the moment. One young man turned to his mom after I hugged him and said, "She knows how to give a good hug!" Yes, I'm good for something. I promise. Each  hug was my way of saying to others that they mattered. Yet, each hug also told me that I mattered.

     We don't take enough time out of our day to tell other people this. For most of my teaching career, I know I didn't tell the students sitting in front of me those words. I thought I showed them that through my passion for teaching or my desire to listen to what was going on in their world, but how many times have I honestly sat down and told someone in my life they matter to me? How many times have I told them they were important? While I may think as a teacher I am showing this to my students through my actions, I don't think I always have had the courage to say those two words: YOU MATTER.

    It can be nervewracking to tell someone they matter to you. What if you look foolish? What if they laugh? What if they are not ready to be serious at that moment? What if they don't feel the same way about you? So imagine what it is like to tell 30 students they matter. Last year was the first year I recall saying those specific words; afterwards, my class embraced me with a very claustrophobic group hug, yet it changed things between me and my students for the better.

     Quite often I find it is easier to talk about someone else than to speak directly to them. Our world is becoming more and more about screen time--communicating with others through texts and tweets instead of face to face contact. No hug can be conveyed through a text message, though. Even a hug emoji doesn't provide the same feeling. We've become so concerned with the number of followers and rewtweets and likes we garner, yet what is most important is the person behind those likes and retweets. We need to show others they matter, and we need to do this through our kindness. Kindness is not a knee jerk reaction; it is an everyday reaction. I grew up knowing that kindness was just something you did like brushing your teeth and looking both ways when you cross the street. It was not an option. You weren't kind for any bonus points or rewards or recognition. It didn't even matter if no one caught you in the middle of your kind act. For, sometimes the best acts of kindness are the quiet acts that no one knows about.

     I know I try to use this blog to write about what we are doing in room 211, but this month, that is going to have to take a back seat; instead, I want to show you the kindness I've seen around Atlee High School and emphasize the need to continue to show others they matter through kindness.

      Last month I wrote about my junior Theory of Knowledge students painting inspirational rocks and hiding them at Cool Spring Elementary School. The seniors were inspired by such an activity and took a field trip on a weekend to Pearson's Corner Elementary School just to hide their kindness rocks they made.

       Inspired by Lee Davis High School teacher, Brandon Farrar, I also encouraged my senior TOK class to thank two people for something small in their lives. We called this a lollipop moment based on the TED talk by Drew Dudley called "Everyday Leadership." I noticed some of my students were a bit apprehensive about this assignment, so the next day in class I gave them 24 lollipop moments, thanking each individual student. Many reflected later that this was one of the most beneficial assignments they had received.

     Kindness existed in small things like a student writing me a letter this past week and another bringing me an unsweet iced tea from McDonald's because she knew that I needed the caffeine to finish my grading. (She was 100% correct).

     I've witnessed kindness in CAS (Creativity, Activity, Service) service projects of many of my students. One student raised over $500 for the Wounded Warrior Project through a benefit tennis tournament. Another collected several boxes of books for Memorial Regional Hospital's patients. Two other students spent the past two months coaching my son and his teammates at Atlee Little League. All acts of kindness are ones that demonstrated to others that they are important, that they matter.

      This week, kindness existed in Sepp Shirey asking me to wear his jersey to the last home football game (one of the greatest honors I have received as an educator) and then watching him score his 80 yard touchdown as the Varina players cheered him on. I watched that moment live with tears running down my face because I knew what an accomplishment that was for Sepp. Yet, what I didn't realize until I watched the video that has been played all over social media including the Today Show and Inside Edition, that the Varina players clapped their hands as they led Sepp to his touchdown. It was their idea to lead Sepp to victory.They chose to cheer him on. The ultimate example of kindness.

     And I have seen the Raider Nation come together this week in response to tragedy. I watched as people seemed to be a little more kind and compassionate. People seemed to check in on one another. Students looked me in the eye and asked me how I was doing. I sat in the library to talk to students I didn't even know, as they told me about marching band and being new to Atlee and how much they disliked To Kill a Mockingbird (That last one I still don't understand, but I'll be kind and let it go). Students walked in my room just for a hug, not needing any words, which probably was a good thing because I didn't have the right words to say.

     Ultimately, I've learned this week to love longer. Live kinder. Hug harder. Tell others they matter. You Matter. All 148 of you that I teach this year. All of those I taught last year and the year before that. All of those who I have ever taught. You will always matter. Don't be afraid to tell one another how you feel. Hug Harder. Live kinder. #AtleeStrong #WeAreAtlee