Skipping in the halls

OK, maybe this is just the hippy-dippy touchy-feely new-age crystal-holding incense-sniffing-chakra-aligning spirit-totem-Earth-Mother-worshipping womyn in me talking, but I seriously loooooooove the inner resilience program. It goes like this:

Eat free snack!
Moment of silence
Choose an image and explain why you were drawn to it today
Light a candle
Read something meaningful and talk about it
Meditate
Journal
Talk to someone for two minutes/listen to someone for two minutes
Write a letter to yourself
Blow out a candle
Eat free dinner!
Pack up leftover free dinner in take-out containers to become following day's free lunch!

It basically makes me feel like a better person and also want to be a better person. And it makes me appreciate the people in my life who already DO make me a better person, like Corky who let me spontaneously sleep over at her apartment last night to make sure my report card comments got done even though it was late and I was tired, and then dressed me and bought me breakfast for no reason at all... Or my roommates, I'll call them Harmony and Rose, who heroically cleaned the fridge today since it needed to be done, and who make me eat more kale.


A welcome transformation happens when I go to inner resilience... I feel capable of appreciating more and griping less. I feel confident, capable, balanced. I can focus on accomplishments and not aggravations. I become a different person. A better one? A mindful one?

At school, I spent the afternoon walking around with a knot in my stomach... too much time scrutinizing the data of deficiency, I suppose; a case of the Mondays coupled with anxiety over Math Topics Yet to be Covered...

And by the way, if you were wondering if testing is a disease and whether or not it fucks with your head, it is and it does. Because when the wonderful and benevolent and kind Ms. A, the school librarian, called to notify me that we had library (and as usual, it had slipped my mind) my response wasn't delight at this unexpected windfall of precious unstructured, joyful book-worship. My initial response was more expletive in nature, calculating ways I could make up for the math pages that would now be undone, and lamenting the empty boxes besmirhcing my spreadsheet for small group instruction.

And something about that just ain't right.

So leaving school wasn't easy while feeling the grains in the hourglass sliding by just a little too briskly as this week's Big To Do built up a head of steam. Cutting out early from Inquiry Planning felt like skulking away into the shadows, shirking my duties, disappointing my fans.

But I sometimes think of my life as a pie chart, with my time split among all my various roles as teacher and student and sister and daughter and colleague and friend and occassional athlete and wanna-be writer (and everything else that I wish I could be, and certainly would if I just had More Time... )And sometimes I have to elbow the other pie pieces out of the way in order to gather up a little more real estate for the slice designated... well, Inner Life Liver (hah, liver!), I guess, or Caretake of Myself or Seeker of Peace or something silly like that...But yeah, whatever it's called, this piece of the pie is special. Maybe it should be marked only with a symbol like the Artist Formerly Known as Prince...

Anyway, Inner Resilience Workshop is for that slice of me that doesn't really want to be named.

It is so great because it is a place and a time when I can stop self-censoring, monitoring my speech and my actions, stop searching for the most Appropriate Response, stop measuring and doling out emotions and ideas in easily digestible bite-sized tidbits, reduced and refined for ease of consumption.

It is a space that exists for Me and My Needs, and I can talk a lot or a little. Or I can choose not to speak, or to take a few extra minutes to finish something and not worry about how I will make up for them later on. I can lie down or sit or stand or walk or not. Fast or slow, loud or soft, off or on...it's all good. I don't have to worry about whether I am running off schedule, or whether I am correctly following the Architecture of the Mini-lesson or veering away from the acceptable protocol for one-on-one vs Small Group communication.

There, I am not right or wrong. I am not pedagocially sound and I don't have to be. Nor must I be efficient or effective or organized or responsible or even sensical. I am allowed to feel what I feel, say what I want, be what I am in that moment. I am speaking for myself, as myself, to others who understand me and do not wish me to be other than I am.

And finally, there also do I learn of tantalizing job openings in Manhattan schools where conference notes and massive assessment binders do not darken the desks; where sutainable agriculture can be a unit of study; and where students are allowed to skip (not run) in the halls...