Category: reflection
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Reflections on the Year
These types of posts usually appear in December and January. For teachers, years last from the end of August to the beginning of June with a few weeks off to recover anything left of our sanity and will to live. Okay, I indulged in a bit of hyperbole there. Since I have spent all but…
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Coming to an End
A week from tomorrow marks the last day of the 2017-2018 school year and the end of a fruitful working partnership with a co-worker who moves on to a new school. Yesterday, American remembered the sacrifice of many thousands of service men and women who gave their lives in service of their country. Two days…
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Persevering Through Adversity
Marathon MOnday always proves a remarkable story. Boston 2018 was no different. Not only did the course oppose the runners but the weather also presented a formidable opponent. Near freezing temperatures, downpour, sometimes torrential, and significant headwinds combined in a perfect storm of suboptimal racing conditions, so suboptimal that 23 elites, men and women, did…
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Permanent Remembrance
Each April 24th, I stop and remember the events of one of the most forgotten and at the same time, most controversial genocides of the 20th century. As an Armenian, even if only a quarter, I grew up with full knowledge of the events, continually astounded as a child by the thought that most people…
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Work/Life Balance
People seek the perfect work/life balance as if it were the fountain of youth. In a profession such as teaching, people long for the ability to come home from work without bringing work home with them, long for something that seems incongruous with doing the best we can for those in our care. If you…
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Perpetually Overwhelmed
Recent weeks have both confirmed my decision to return to teaching and to dive deep while doing so and caused me to question how much I can maintain without collapsing under the pressure. Unlike my first teaching go around, I do not feel like I am drowning with now way to breathe. At the same…
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Procrastination Elimination – Something Has to Change
I started this year knowing that something needs to change if I want to achieve real change and growth. Recently, I identified one of the biggest stumbling blocks in my path, something I always knew I had a propensity for, procrastination, procrastination brought on and aided by distraction. I started weeks looking ahead and seeing…
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Running Deeper – Base Building Week 2 of 6
This week took an unexpected twist and ended up not being deeper in the sense of mileage but definitely deeper in the sense of reflection. Let’s start with the one day that went according to “plan.” Monday 50 minutes regular My calves felt tight, likely due to a strong performance at GHS the Saturday before.…
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The Gun Post
On Wednesday, February 14, Valentine’s Day, once again, another normal school day erupted into tragedy. Seventeen families lost someone they loved. Social media devolved into fractious shouting matches slinging words like hand grenades as they turn away, cover their ears and protect themselves from the fall out. Few stop to mourn. Fewer still pause to…
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What I Have Done With My Life
Recently, one of my cousins, one not yet 21 and married less than a year announced that he and his wife are expecting a baby due in August. This news stirred up turbulent emotions and disconcerting questions. I first thought of my grandmother. She always wanted more babies in her life and a year after…