Holiday traditions change because we change. Some of those changes are within our control and others are changes we have to learn to accept as changes that have nothing to do with us. While some of those changes can hurt us, when we find a way through those changes, we can continue to make the holidays are own, celebrations that capture where we are in a given moment, even if those moments are painful.
Do We Really Need All the Stuff?
years of a pandemic, after two years of so much talk about what was and was not working for us before we even heard of coronavirus, after two years of asking what a “new normal” could look like, can we possibly start talking about a paradigm shift away from this materialistic way of looking at our “needs” and the economy?
Full Circle to the Circle City
ng in me never stopped longing for Indianapolis. Every time I saw a Colts game and the city skyline behind Lucas Oil Stadium. Every time we watched a sporting event that presented a shot of Monument Circle. Every time a former student or a friend or my sister posted pictures of places all over the city. Every time I turned on HGTV and it was showing Good Bones. Every time I saw any of it – I felt a little pang from knowing that we were so far away and the place that we had thought would be our forever home would never be home again.
Whatever Happened to Curiosity?
Curiosity takes a significant amount of vulnerability because we’re always taking a chance that we might have been wrong. We’re allowing ourselves to learn something new that may turn everything else upside down. It takes a lot of mental, emotional, and psychological work to process all that we discover along the way. And it requires humility both when we discover we need to change our perspective and when we receive confirmation that we were right all along, a level of humility that very few of us possess in large quantities.
Hello There Fall, I Missed You
Because there is something truly magnificent about real Fall. Since the beginning of September, we have experienced the slow transition to winter, enjoying warm days and shorts-wearing and then throwing on our hoodies for night walks with just a slight chill. We have woken up to cool mornings at the perfect temperature for running and then thrown our windows open to let in the warm breeze. Last weekend my daughter and I hiked through a local state park, the 60-degree temps perfect for a two-mile hike through woods while we enjoyed the smell of fall and the crunch of leaves under our feet.
How Education in America Is Like Finding the Right Pair of Running Shoes
Comparing my profession to finding the right pair of running shoes is fraught with all kinds of potential inaccuracies and legitimate criticisms, but the fact remains that education is in trouble because we aren’t listening to the experts, we aren’t helping teachers find the right fit, and we aren’t spending the money where we need to spend it and providing the resources necessary to do the most effective work. And the refusal to do so is pushing teachers out of the classroom at an unsustainable rate and leaving children without education experts with the knowledge and skills to teach them at every level.