Vacation Blog 1 Dec 2021

 Well, I'm a week late again. I suspect it has to do with my habits. Once it's vacation time, I'm off my normal routine (one of the con's of some vacations for me) and so I forget stuff.

I flew to Fairfield with Suzannah, and it seems that it beat my body up quite a lot. The n 95 mask I wore hurt my nose like a punch to the face after a day of the painful metal band digging into the bridge of my schnoz, and by the end of the day I was curled up in bed with a splitting headache and nausea to the point where I didn't want to move or think because it took all my focus just to... be.

And now it's...two days later, and I still have a mild headache, and slept from around 3-5 when I only planned on taking a half hour nap. I feel bad for my poor body, but I'm not sure what's wrong. It doesn't feel quite like normal sickness symptoms, but I suppose it could be, which would be  pretty sad itself. My vacation degraded by being sick during it.

Regardless, I'm trying to enjoy my time at least, and it has been very nice spending time with friends. Have gotten almost no work done though.

My first free day of break, (which was Monday, as I was doing classes all weekend) I sat down and seriously asked myself about the state of my work life, my purpose, what my next steps were towards having a job I love, that's dharmic, that uses my strengths and the things I love to do and my unique makeup to greatest effect to give what I'm best suited to giving, to the world. Something I can develop a sense of mastery with, get into flow with, something that gives me energy and joy rather than taking it.

I got a little bit of clarity, not a lot, but one thing that was clear was whatever I end up doing next, it's got to at least start out part time. I am hurting from the hours I'm working. 

I've already written more, but it needs to be edited. I'm not sure how much of my nascent thinking about jobs should go out to the world yet. Also, I need to put out another blog post already, so I'll save it for #2

-I Out

T-minus 5….

 The final countdown. That is, one week, 4.5 days, until winter break, a full 2 weeks off from work. 

Yes, I’m looking forward to it.

Though I am also already projecting myself to the last day or two of it, where I’m wishing it was going on for longer and worrying about all the stuff I wanted to get done but didn’t do.

It’s been a while since I’ve written about my journey as a new teacher. Things are slowly improving, emphasis on slowly. I still feel far away from anything resembling mastery. But I do notice I’m getting better at the things I’m doing. Discipline, making sure the kids are working, teaching lessons. In a nutshell, I’d say, “still far away, but improving.”

I was reflecting via a Tom Brown course I was taking this weekend (It’s been a long time since I’ve done any of them and I felt the need to do at least one before the year ended.) on what it is that makes me not look forward to going to work. And the answer I got was that I’m afraid of failing. It’s perhaps the main reason I sometimes fantasize about creating an effective teacher training program. I feel utterly unprepared for my job. It feels like taking a class in college that has no teaching, just tests on lessons you’ve never learned. Like some kind of advanced calculus class, where you don’t know what half the symbols mean. Every day, is test after test, where you’re being judged and are acutely aware that you are failing. 

Unfortunately, this class has no text books, no Wikipedia article. Or more accurately, it has lots of books and articles, but none of them actually show you how to solve the problems. There are various tips about how to solve the problems, but how to actually apply that to the daily testing is unclear, and when you try to, it seldom works at all, and if it does, it is only moderate, and often temporary.

Math is not a good analogy, because we are dealing with human psychology here. It is an ever changing field. There are theory’s but little consensus, and the application of the theory’s is hard to figure out. And in addition to all that, the hours are long and the work is taxing. There is little time and less energy at the end of the day, to try and reflect on how things have gone and how to make them better.

But ultimately, the painful part of that is the feeling that I am a failure, that I am doing a bad job and that is not ok. Or if not truly bad, then deeply mediocre. Nobody wants a life where they spend most of their day being deeply mediocre. It is not a recipe for going to bed satisfied with the day’s work.

Obviously, my psychology is making me miserable. If I was simply totally fine with being mediocre, day in day out, then I would be fine. If I was not worried about failing, then I’d be more playful, experiment more, learn more, etc.

Part of the problem, I think, is not having clear, inspiring goals that I can be working towards. My goals are pretty vague. “Be a good teacher,” “help them grow as human beings.” And even those, I rarely stick my head above water to think about. Usually I’m buried in the minute to minute needs of the children and the classroom, and don’t have the mental space or physical time to pause and reflect on such things.

Time to go. Next post will probably be during my break. Woo!

Internal dialogue

 Should one continue to do a job that you are constantly counting down till the next weekend, break, etc.? My love-hate relationship with teaching continues. I’m glad I have the word ambivalent because that’s what’s going on. Mixed and conflicting feelings.

Voices in my head:

- “most people do jobs they don’t really like, why should you get to be different?

- “most people are unhappy and we are all living in a fairly sick and partially dysfunctional society, so conforming to that is not a sign of health or sanity.”

- “maybe you just need to get better at it and then you’ll come to really love it.”

- “or maybe I’ll find a job where my strengths are desirable and my weaknesses aren’t an issue and then I’ll love it from the outset. But I certainly won’t find that if I keep doing what I have been doing. Also, perhaps it’s not true, but if I extrapolate from my failures and successes with relationships, it’s is much better to find someone you really click with, if not immediately, then pretty shortly after really getting to know and interact with them. It does not take that long to get a feel for that kind of resonance, or the lack thereof with people, it seems reasonable that the same would hold true for jobs.”

- “but you don’t know that for sure. Plus it’s easier to date a bunch informally than to do a bunch of jobs informally.”

- “maybe, maybe not. If I’m willing to work as an unpaid intern for a few weeks or a month, I might have reasonable flexibility.”

- “that seems unfair because so many people don’t have that option.”

- “but that doesn’t mean that I should avoid using whatever tools are at my disposal.”

- “you signed up for a 3 year contract, you should be focusing on how to do your job as well as possible until that contract is up.”

- “what if it’s clear to me that I don’t want to be doing that, before the contract is up, isn’t it reasonable to at least ask if I can stop early?”

- “everything happens for a reason, perhaps you’re being forced to stick with it for so long because the universe knows you’d try and run away from the unpleasantness if that was an option, but on the other side of the unpleasantness is some great learning and the opening of doors to work you do find really satisfying.”

- “seems like there’s no way to know, but my best guess is it’s not gonna do that, it’s just going to be another stressful year with moderate learning and easing of the difficulty without fundamentally changing how I feel about the work.”

- “you could be wrong, and then it’s unlikely you’d get as good an opportunity again any time soon.”

So, there you have a little snippet inside my head, at least on that topic. Others things bouncing around are a friends comment that me writing a book for teachers about all the problems I’m dealing with, and then solutions, could be really valuable, but my thought is, I’m not even a good teacher yet, who in the world am I to give advice to others.

More could be said on more things, but it’s time to wrap up. Two weeks to go till winter break. Then 5-ish months till summer break, then a year till I’m done with my contract. The next thing in my life I am eagerly looking forward to is being able to work part time. Unless I immediately find work I love, that is my plan. I can finally make a dent in all my independent projects that have been building up.

See ya next time

-I Out

A good book

 Perhaps I was being overly negative, last week. And by last week, I mean yesterday because the break was a blur and I did not use my time as efficiently as I had hoped to. Though I shouldn’t be surprised. I had two factors working against me, one, I rarely get a large chunk of time to just play, and two, well, I guess that’s both of them. That fact means I’m kind of pressurized and as soon as the pressure is off it tends to explode, the long-standing restraint muscles being exhausted. Two, because it happens in frequently I’m not practiced in using it well, avoiding those pitfalls.

Anyhoo, on to other thoughts. I’m reading a book that seems to have done some of what I’d wanted, in a teacher training program. The person designing it tried to scientifically study the best teachers and break down what it was that they actually did. And second, they tested the effectiveness of their own programs, until they found ways of teaching those skills that actually, empirically worked.l

The system/program is far far from perfect. It has some fairly specific recommendations that I highly doubt came from a general summary of what the best teachers did well. That specificity means that, because they weren’t designed for a Montessori classroom, some of it doesn’t directly apply. And, even if it wasn’t a Montessori classroom, some of it wouldn’t apply if you are working somewhere with specific rules/regulations that require things be different than the suggestions. Though it does seem pretty well designed for general application to traditional classroom structures.

I appreciate the specificity, but probably need more of the fundamental concepts so I can apply them to whatever my current situation is.

One of the points I felt vindicated on, after reading, was that they did many interviews with the successful teachers, and pretty much universally, the teachers could not really explain what it was they did that made them effective. That was the point that really caught my eye. This was the insight I had that made me want to create a teacher training protocol: the master teachers didn’t know what they were doing and nobody knew how to teach other people how to do it effectively. Or if they did know, they weren’t doing it, for some reason.

So I’m reading through that currently, as fast as I can. Actually practicing and applying it is another matter altogether. First I have to decide what feels right, then adapt it, the find ways to practice it. But there are at least some useful pointers right away. If I can’t change just yet, I can gain awareness, and that is the first step of change.

I Out (because I’m out of time.)

See you next week, take care, be well.

Willpower, Job/Joy, Endure.

As you may have noticed my post is a full week late. Why? Well, I squandered my time, that's why. I'm attempting not to beat myself up too much about it, but it is depressing. I need better willpower. My dear loving wife has said I've got some of the highest willpower of anyone she knows. It warms my heart to hear her belief in me, but I would call that skill at making habits and engineering my environment. I accept that I have decent skill in those things. But the reason I developed skill in those things was because I was sorely lacking in willpower, so I needed a different option. I do believe that good habit formation skills along with good environmental engineering are in general more useful than willpower, as you are relying on them 80-95% of the time, and it would be exceptionally unusual to have someone do that much stuff right every day, day after day, year after year if they had to make the willpower-fueled decision every day for each decision.

But when you are in novel circumstances, when something happens that you didn't plan for, when you slip up, it is willpower that lets you stay on track regardless. Both things are valuable, and I want more of the willpower one. I think it's also related to sense controle. Willpower, sense controle, discipline. I am weak in these. I want to get stronger. I'm working on it.

In other news, I had a quiet prayer/meditation session introspecting and trying to get some wisdom on my job (I mistyped that as "joy" which is very appropriate. "Follow your bliss" Joseph Campbell said, right?) and the fact that every Sunday night and every last few days of vacation, I spend dreading my return to work. That's not a good sign that you're "following your bliss." What's going on? Help!

The insight I had was that many of my methods of discipline and classroom management disgust me. I disliked being permissive, which was my native style, and which I knew intuitively and now experientially, was bad for the kids. Currently it is somewhat authoritarian, which involves harsh looks and words, punishments, and fear, when children aren't behaving appropriately. Don't get the wrong idea, I'm pretty gentle as far as things go, but I do the command voice, I move students, I have them sit out, etc.  It is exhausting to do, and I think it's morally reprehensible. Not all of it, but even doing a facsimile of anger to get what I want... what the heck am I teaching them? Yes, yell to get what you want? Scare people? Punish them if they don't do what you want? I know they need to be corrected when they do something wrong, letting it go is just as bad, maybe worse, but I can't reconcile it with yelling at them. 

I don't have a cohesive philosophy about it, so I'm copying behaviors that seem to work, using the least unpleasant. But it still doesn't feel good. If I stop, then it's chaos, it's even worse. But that doesn't make it good. Sometimes I use other methods that feel better, but they are very time intensive and individualized, and there often just isn't time for that when you're in charge of 40 kids. And often they don't even work, either because I haven't had time to learn how to do them properly, or because they're bupkis.

I need a way of creating a peaceful, hardworking, responsible classroom that doesn't make me exhausted and drained at the end of the day. That actually feels right and good. This is the crux of my discontent with my job. I am ambivalent towards teaching, which doesn't mean wishy-washy like it sounds like, but feeling strongly in more than one direction. I love working with the children, helping them grow, learn, get inspired. But I currently strongly dislike classroom management. Sometimes it's ok, sometimes it's neutral, but often it does not feel good to my heart.

The other crux being how long I work. It is too many hours watching children. There is nothing to be done about it now, but it's on my list for what not to do, next time I have the option of choosing. After a 9.5 hour work day being in charge of a large group of children, I am totally fried. I want time to plan, reflect, practice, grow. That should be part of what I'm getting paid for, not my weekend time. If I were working in a company, it would be part of my work hours. I think it is only because of necessity that it is not that way. Not enough money, not enough people. But it is not right to expect someone to teach even 8 hours a day straight and then go home and have to worry about more work stuff. Teaching is hard enough work as it is. 

There is little I can do about the discipline, since I have little spare energy/time, but I have something I'm going to try, to see if I can at least be putting a few minutes a day towards improving my classroom management skills in a deliberate way, since it's so central to whether I enjoy my work.

Can't do much about the discipline, can't do anything about the hours, so for now my main strategy is "endure."

-I Out

Quick-y

 Hello. It’s almost Thanksgiving break time. Wooooo! I’m out of time today. See ya next week.

;-)

Monday Lunch With Isaac, Nov. 8th

 Perhaps these posts should be called “Monday Lunch with Isaac.” Since that is mostly what they are.

I woke up late yesterday morning and had an awful day, and it made me thing the Cognitive Behavior based sleep therapy has it right. Apparently it’s at least as effective as pills etc. for helping with sleep disorders, but it leans heavily on CBT, cognitive behavior therapy. I like CBT because it has roots in spirituality. I think it make have come from ideas of the stoic philosophers, which were a close off-shoot of Plato and Socrates, but also it shares a lot with Byron Katie’s work, which has an overtly spiritual goal. I also like it because it’s… what do they call it, ‘evidence based,’ meaning there is scientific research to back up it’s effectiveness. I think looking for evidence based things has some limitations, like for instance the fact that… I don’t remember the actual numbers, but something like 50-70% of psychology based research studies have turned out to be bad, meaning not reproducible using stringent standards.

In any case, I think what ruined the day for me more than anything else were my beliefs about waking up late ruining my day. Take those away and the day would have been fine, if not super productive. Nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so, and all that.

It’s gonna be another short one I think. I am very much looking forward to having Thanksgiving off! Two weeks away, the countdown continues. Me and Suzannah are planning on going to the RenFair, which is apparently quite a good one.

I’m continuing to think about how to enjoy my work more and be less worried/anxious about it, more myself, to have more fun doing it.

OK, out of time. See ya next week.

Catchy 80’s Jingles prevent me from coming up with catchy blog titles

 A bit late on my blog this week, perhaps because I was thrown off my schedule due to being out Monday. I got my Covid booster and flu shot Saturday and had a headache and nausea and chills Sunday. I’m still a bit more tired than normal but boy am I grateful for the ability to get a vaccine and subsequent booster, I can only imagine how getting the real thing would be way worse. I try not to be biased but I can’t help but feel extremely grateful for the modern medical miracle vaccines are, one of the most effective interventions modern medicine has created in its history. With some of the highest numbers for lives saved. I’ll try and avoid further soap boxing because there are few things I dislike more than arguing with people about their beliefs and many people seem to have very strong one’s where vaccines are concerned.

In other news, I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving break coming up. Already counting the days. I do feel like I am making progress learning how to be a good teacher, but there is much to go. Perhaps there always will be. One of the things I’m working on now is just being more comfortable, being wherever I am, teaching. It is, as always, the beliefs and thoughts about something that make one feel good or bad about it. For whatever reasons, I’ve got a lot of attachments and judgments about being a good teacher, and how it’s bad when I do poorly at it. Not very helpful. If I can’t be happy being where I am, it’s going to reduce my chances at longevity with the job.

I always hated being a leader, for instance, when we split up into groups for school projects. I didn’t want the responsibility. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I’ve been forced into it now. Something I needed to confront. Responsibilities for others, who are not necessarily safe on their own, doing something where there feels like a lot on the line, if I don’t succeed doing many things I feel naturally bad at…

It’s a good training ground, I suppose. If I can be happy and carefree, work efficiently but without worry or anxiety, in a situation like this, then I can do it in many if not most situations that life throws at me. When you lift weights at the gym, it doesn’t help if you lift styrofoam pretend weights. So to with life, if you’re not given any real challenges you’re unlikely to grow.

However, I have to remember that just because you’re given challenges, doesn’t mean you’re going to grow. What do you do with life’s challenges? Do you jump right in and try you best, then reflect back on what went well, what didn’t, and what you can do next time to improve? If you just complain, play the victim “oh woe is me” and scrape by doing the minimum just to get by, numbing yourself out with distractions, you may not learn all that much. Just like there is a huge difference between naive practice and deliberate practice, in you towards mastery. It’s not just practicing, it’s how. You practice. Your technique, focus, intentionality and intensity.

So, I’m working on practicing, training, well. It’s a little hard, because I have to figure out what that means.

OK, gotta go. My lunch mates are playing catchy add jingles from the 80’s, so I can’t focus on writing anymore either today. See ya next week,

-I

An important game

 This week, my mentor is out because she was exposed to someone else who tested positive for Covid. Nothing to be done about it, and it means it’s just me and the other new teacher running the class for most, perhaps all, of the week.

I could take the victim mindset and say poor me and oh how horrible and I’m worried and stressed. But one of the things I’ve been listening to has been reminding me that victim mindset vs. protagonist mindset is a choice. The second option is a bit harder to name, perhaps because it’s less frequent. But it basically means everything that happens is for my good alone. It also means, how my life feels is my choice. Or, I’m the author of my own story. Though I may not get to choose the events, since it’s non-fiction, I can choose the character choices of my character, and I can choose how I interpret events.

Is this a tragedy, woe is me? Or is this an opportunity to learn, to test myself against a challenge, succeed some, fail some, and learn from he experience, to grow stronger and better. I think the only reason to think the victim point of view is more accurate is if you believe that failure is a bad thing. Which I suppose is a common thing to think. But the growth mindset would say every failure is an opportunity for growth, and all great achievements are made out of failures placed like stepping stones along the path to eventual victory. Take your failure, analyze it, and learn how to not make the same mistake in the future, and viola, the mistake becomes a step towards mastery or success.

A nice framing story for this approach is a baby learning to walk. They try and try and try, and fall and fall and fall. They don’t get upset when they fall, or if so, for a very short period of time. It’s a game, a play. They haven’t yet been taught that falling down is anything wrong. What if we could live that way? A passion, a drive, to learn, but with a sense of play in the learning process, and no emotional baggage attached to ‘falling down.’

It sounds amazing, I’ve had the experience with improv dance and some writing classes with a particularly good poetry teacher, and it was some of the most joyful times of my life. Why not extend that to more of life?

After my Cutting Ties work around time management, it is not seeming like such a gargantuan problem, and I’m thinking that my next big goal might be something along those lines: living my life in that state of passion, curiosity, detachment, engagement, and play that I touched on in those moments with those excellent teachers. There are many obstacles to living this way in all aspect of my life. With my job, with my relationships to others, there is often a heavy-ness to it. What I’m doing seems ‘important’ and failing at it seems… well, like I’m doing something wrong, or bad. That’s the emotional and mental baggage that’s holding me back. But there is no solid and unchangeable reason that I can see, that would make it impossible to play life full out, like it’s a great game I’m trying to win, but also playing for fun, win or lose. It sounds fantastic, and also fantastically practical. I don’t think I’ve ever been more prolific than when I was in those states. It was, just like the toddlers, the optimal state to learn things in.

Oooh, and here’s a fun idea, what if I then learned how to take my students into that state? Sounds pretty great, I think.

Time to go, but first let’s see if I can find a quote from Baba about this that I love:

Life is a game, play it.

Life is a challenge, meet it.

Life is a dream, realize it.

Life is love, enjoy it.

-I Out

Short and Sweet. Less baggage, more comfort, makes travel a pleasure.

 I have approximately 3 minutes for this blog post. I’ve got a newsletter due in a day, and another document that needs to be emailed to a group tonight. Sometimes that’s how it is. I’ve notice there is less drama around time for me now. As always, it’s the meta emotions that really ruin your day. I’m having less of those. It makes it easier to iterate and keep going even when things don’t work out.

I really like the ideal of the scientist mindset, of just being curious. Failures are just data, and you can get curious about why they didn’t work. Data, not drama.

I think this is also a large part of my problems with teaching. There are a lot of meta emotions. I am invested in the outcomes, so when I fail it feels bad, so I avoid taking risks that I should be taking, simple, low stakes experiments that would help me practice and learn. And when I do take those risks, when it doesn’t work out, I feel bad, and it take a while to work up to trying again. Not an effective mindset for learning and growth, let alone enjoyment. I’ve mentioned something like this before, but it’s coming home stronger, as I see first hand again the difference beliefs and mindset make, via how much less stressful the time thing is, without all the baggage (or with less, in any case.)

OK, that’s time, see ya next week.

Love to all my friends and family

-Isaac

Thoughts on Learning and the Future

 OK, we’re at Monday again, except it’s Tuesday, because I got a three day weekend, thank you boss and indigenous people (I’m definitely a fan of that version over Columbus Day, given what I’ve read about the true history of Columbus.)

Anyhoo, hooray for 3 day weekends. It’s interesting to be thinking about what I want to do after my 3 year contract is up. I still don’t know how I’m going to feel at the end of it. Though I can predict where I’ll be if I continue my current trajectory, maybe. I’ll have learned some more about classroom management, but not everything. It will be easier, but still not natural.

I don’t enjoy being in a classroom that’s not settled and respectful like my mentor’s classroom is. It’s draining, exhausting. Which means, once she’s not there, either I need to be able to do that, or I need to know I’ll get there in a reasonable amount of time.

Trying to learn (via practice, of course, no other way) how to be good at classroom management is very difficult for me, in a way that… few? No? Other things have been. I’m not naturally good at it, so it involves a lot of failure. It also is not part of a structured curriculum, so I need to learn it on my own, setting my own goals, looking for my own feedback and mostly creating my own curriculum. And that is in addition to having a very demanding more than full time job. Which means there is very little time to actually actively focus on learning the skill. It’s why I daydream about making a teacher training school that actually works. Because I would really like to have that, for myself. Whether I actually want to make a school like that… unknown.

It seems the main way you find out what kind of work you like and are a good fit with, is by trying things out. It’s very hard to accurately predict that, you need the experience.

Anyways, as I try to glean info for future directions, I’m left with only a few clear things: 1) I don’t want to work as long on teaching. A 10 hour day is too long. 8 hours may be fine.

2) unless we make some really good friends here, I’m don’t think I want to stay in Austin. Friends are important to me. I miss them. Suzannah misses them even more.

Other things that are not as certain but I’m getting clearer on: I do really enjoy teaching people. That is deeply satisfying. I don’t really enjoy disciplining people. But I do want to work with people who are disciplined. That seems unfair to make others do that work though. Perhaps that is the price to pay. I also want to be more creative, and have time for deep focused work. That can’t happen if the whole day I have to keep an eye on some children.

OK, that’s all for today. Love to family and friends,

-I

Dracula, victory, 80% full.

 It’s Monday lunch break, you know what that means (unless I have other work I need to do then).

Blog time! Ever since my lightbulb moment about time management and my emotionally complex feelings around it, things have felt a little lighter. And my perspective has changed a bit. More possibility available to me.

This week’s likely going to be more intense than usual, since I’ll be on my own in the afternoon’s, due to being a little short-staffed. This is a frequent thing with Covid, since there is so much more need for staff. Drop off and pick up requires more staff. Online as well as in person classes requires more staff, keeping late dismissal kids in their separate bubbles requires more staff. So they’ve had to hire a bunch, and I suspect there is a high turnover with new staff.

So, there’s that. I’m trying to make a list of all the things I’m doing, so I can hopefully cut down on some of them. I read a little snippet of an article by Cal Newport about how knowledge workers get burnt out because they are almost always overworked: they don’t start saying no to things until they feel overwhelmed, but by then they’ve already got too much on their plate. He suggests saying no once they’ve got what feels like 80% full plate, because that will end up being totally full. The eating analogy is easy to make at this point, we’re already talking about plates. When you eat it takes a few minutes to register in your stomach the food you’ve eaten, so stopping when your 80% full is usually a good estimate to make sure you don’t feel stuffed and logy (it took me a while to find the right spelling for that. I thought logee or lowgi or something).

I guess I’m getting more comfortable with the idea that managing my time is to a large extent about not doing most things so I have time for the most important things, plus rest. And, even my ability to focus on what’s important and get it done seems improved.

Hopefully this trend continues. I’m also considering using the Fogg habit system to create some tiny habits around time and priority management to turn some basic useful tasks into permanent habits. So, good things on that front.

My other main front for improvement is as a teacher. Working on that, but no huge breakthroughs. Also, had a really cool dream last night, going on an epic adventure to defeat Dracula and his armies from ravaging the land. I don’t have time to go into the details, but it seemed very relevant in it’s metaphor and featured a cameo by my favorite teacher with a little bit of great wisdom. Basically, you can do this yourself, but can you protect your mind and thoughts from the enemy (thoughts). All habits and actions start as thoughts. That’s the lynch pin. Master your thoughts, your mind, master everything.

Gotta go, by for now!

Eureka, I told you so, teaching vs. disciplining.

 I had a rather large "aha" moment the other night. I was talking with Suzannah, about how it was surprising to me, that all this 'not having enough time' or 'not using my time well' stuff was so aggravating to me, when so many other things in my life, I was just chill about. And it struck me that maybe this was an area where I was not listening to common sense.

I had a conversation with some of my friends, earlier in the week, about various other friends. We talked about how we wanted to help them, but kept coming back to the point that they either didn't want to be helped, or felt like they couldn't take the advice. It's easy to fix other people's problems: break up with your boyfriend, get together with this guy who'd be good for you. Quit your job and do this instead. Etc. It is easy and often accurate, to make such suggestions, but those suggestions rarely get to the person, either because they are never spoken, because it's understood that it would offend the person etc., or because even when it is spoken, the person refuses to listen, "it's not that simple" they insist, when in fact it is. It is there emotions and attachments and fears that make it difficult, but everything about the actual situation and advice is sound.

If only they would listen to reason. If only they would just listen and do it, no drama. Or even listen and find their own way to implement it, if our suggestions aren't the best fit for them.

I told my friends, that if they ever saw me doing something like that, or has some kind of insight like that about me, to please tell me, and reference this conversation, because I wanted to be someone who was wise in that way, who did listen to the obvious good advice, ignoring the pointless, self-handicapping emotions and attachments irrational responses.

It struck me, as I was talking last night, that perhaps this 'time thing' was one of those such issues, to which Suzannah laughed and said, "did they tell you that?!" Because apparently that is exactly what she talked about after I left the call, saying that was my blind spot. My friends asked if they should talk to me about it and Suzannah said no, because she had tried and I had apparently not listened.

Let me make this clear to any and all family and friends, if you see something, say something. I want to know if I have blind spots. I want to be the sensible person who actually listens to the good advice. So please do me the favor of pointing it out to me, and please reference this conversation, so I can be in a properly open state of mind.

In any case, though I'm probably the last to know, I now know that this is a blind spot where I'm acting irrationally and in a self-harming way.

Another interesting and kind of miraculous point: I mentioned the Cutting the Ties that Bind method, created by Phyllis Krystal, and I had just been finishing up the second cut in a series on time management. I had just done the culminating cut... one day prior. So as I've said about that method: most powerful tool/system for profound change that I have yet experimented with. (Though I would recommend working with an experienced practitioner to help guide you to get the most out of it.)

The other point that was bothering me was my complex relationship with teaching. Theoretically, I love teaching, and it is a great match for me. But in practice I often find it overwhelmingly exhausting, with many skills needed that I think I am ill suited for, and other mental blocks that make it unpleasant and ineffecting to the point where I question whether I should keep doing it.

I wondered though, if it was more about the implementation than the job as a whole. Perhaps the problems were with the long hours and the tedium of many of the tasks, or my own mental approach to it that sabotage my success, growth and happiness (I'm too attached to succeeding and doing it 'right'). So I thought I'd just take some time to be aware of what elements of the job I enjoyed, if any, and what elements I really didn't. Perhaps from there I could come up with a way to approach the job that was more enjoyable and successful.

The first thing that I realized today, is that I love to teach. I mean that specifically, so let me be very specific: I love to sit down and teach people who are eager to learn, something they're interested in. That totally could get me into a state of flow and be a job I look forward too when I wake up.

However, 'being a teacher' is about much more than that. You need to be constantly aware of the classroom, and you need to be a disciplinarian and leader who shapes the students and classroom atmosphere so that the students are focusing and working hard and respectful. I do not at all like 'keeping an eye on the class' while I'm teaching, and find it hard to do. I'd rather be absorbed with the group in front of me. I do not like being the disciplinarian, dealing with difficult children, interruptions, kids not focusing on their work. I can do it, to a basic level of success, but it's not a part of the job I enjoy. And If I can't do it well, then the class is constantly moving towards disruption, disrespect, and it is a constant fight to keep them on task. 

Also trying to force then to do things they don't want to do, where it's a constant battle of wills, I very much do not like.

So for me to really look forward to teaching, I at least have to address these issues in some way, though there may be more I haven't yet noted down.

OK, that's all for now. See ya next week.

Burrito, Mac & Cheese, Salad.

 This will likely be another short post, since I have a newsletter to write today, and would like to get started on it during lunch.

Technically I’ve got a few days to write it, but I always like to set my deadlines a little early so I don’t feel rushed if it takes longer than I plan for, which it usually does.

This was weekend one of my bachelor-o-thon. Suzannah is away visiting her parents so I have to cook clean take care of the cats and garden, as well as my normal weekend stuff. I think it’s all possible, but I always find that the first few times you do something new, it’s pretty inefficient. You’re still figuring out your systems, how long things take, etc. So I got only a fraction of what I wanted to get done. I almost have a few meals prepped, but certainly not the whole week’s worth. Today and yesterday were chipotle for lunch, and there’s probably going to be some more of that by the end of the week. Flashbacks to my summers doing my Montessori training, where I didn’t have time (or a kitchen) for making my own meals. It was an airbnb, but I didn’t feel comfortable getting their kitchen messy, so the most I did was make some salads. And lunch was chipotle most days because that was the best vegetarian option. I can live off of it for a while, though it does get monotonous. 

I need to figure out some way to get myself back in gear at the end of the day for more work though, since I’ve got a lot that I want to get done in the evenings. With Suzannah gone, it’s the ideal time to work overtime, but to actually do that I need to manage my energy and emotions well, or nothing is getting done.

Some thoughts bopping around in my head related to that: 

- different work is rest

- heavy meals keep me from getting back up and getting to work right away

- a habit that re-energizes me right when I get home would be very useful. (I’m considering a short nap and/or 15-20 minutes of excercise)

Book recommendation: Tiny Habits by B.J. Fogg

I’m listening to it as an audiobook and it seems like an excellent resource for anyone who wants to create new habits. Which should be anyone who wants to improve themselves and/or their life.

I’m thinking about the upside of being so busy all the time: it’s fertile soil to practice really good time management. I may have had this thought before, but it’s like weight training, where you put on a weighted vest and just go about your day like that, and when you take the vest off, suddenly everything is easy. Hopefully, if I learn how to manage my time well in the current circumstances, anything less will feel easy. Even my current situation feels easier than last year, just because it’s less stressful, now that I’m with my mentor.

I may have allergies. Or I had a quick cold at the start of the weekend. In either case, sneezing and extra fatigue.

OK, definitely time to go now. See ya next week, at which point it will almost be time for Suzannah to come back and make me eat something other than chipotle burritos, Annie’s Mac and cheese, and salad. :D

-I Out

100 Years of Solitude (or two weeks), Teacher training realization.

 OK, yesterday was a shorter than normal lunch, so no time for blogging. My wife is going to be gone for a few weeks, so I’ll be on my own starting tomorrow. I’ve gotten used to being on my own, from most of my life being that way, but that doesn’t mean I enjoyed it. It’s definitely a lower quality of life. Or I should say, being together makes life better. I’ll survive though. Likely I won’t eat as well and I won’t have as much willpower or emotional comfort or support, or as much fun. But I’ll likely talk to her before bed, like I did in the past when I was away for a while. And my life with just generally be more full of work and less of play. That’s my prediction anyways.

Work continues to be good. Certainly more comfortable and encouraging than any previous teaching experience, since I’m working with a seasoned veteran with the same ideals as me.

I still haven’t gotten together a systematized learning plan to make the most of it, but I’m continuing to think and write little notes and goals and such, gathering info and brainstorming. And I frequently get tips and pointers from my mentor, so there continues to be forward momentum and progress.

I’m tired. I’m getting up around 5am, and even going to bed at 9:30 seems to late. I could probably happily go to sleep at 8:30 and not be getting to much rest. I’ve got a bit of wearable tech to measure my sleep quality, and I suspect my tendency to thrash a bit (which I’m guessing might be restless leg syndrome) means I’m usually not getting the best quality of sleep, so I need more of it. I’m trying to experiment a bit to find out ways to get better quality sleep.

I had the realization that part of what I’m learning, and have been for the past many years, is time management. The fact that I am so busy is really the only way to practice time management. I need to have an over-full schedule, so I can learn how to deal with ‘not having enough time.’

I’m also revisiting the idea that all of my life could be approached the way I approached improv dance. With that same openness to imperfection, ‘failure’, and playful sense of experimentation. That unattached but passionate way of acting that was so enjoyable and effective. I think I mentioned that last time as well. I can almost feel what it would be like. It seems nearby, within reach, with a bit of feeling around. That would be quite exciting indeed. With work certainly, but hopefully with life in general.

I also had a brainstorm that I wrote in my document devoted to plans for a teacher education program. At Antioch, there was an emphasis on ‘internships’ and ‘learning by doing.’ But I didn’t feel like my teaching internships prepared me well for teaching much better than the academic learning did. I think that’s because it’s what Anders Ericsson would call ‘naive practice’ as opposed to deliberate practice. Strumming your guitar every day for 20 minutes will NOT get you better at guitar. It takes a special type of practice for that time spent to be moving you forwards.

OK, time to go. Past time. Not title, I guess.

[Update: it’s the next day, I’ve got a moment, so I’ll give it a title]

See ya!

An old sheet of paper, A little sick, A lot of sleep.

 Welp, Labor Day rolled around and then past. I got sick, thus me not posting the previous weeks post even though All I had left was the title. I did a lot of sleeping. I figured it was my main job, since I needed to be back in good shape by the time work started back up on Tuesday. I would have liked to spend more of it doing stuff, but it is what it is. I’m grateful I got the extra day to sleep in some more. Normally I’m up at 5 am, but when I’m sick I sleep as long as my body will let me.

One of my teacher/mentors mentioned reminded me that their’s a difference between being ‘busy’ and being productive, so I’ve been trying to keep that in mind as I work. Trying to be aware of which it is I’m doing. For me, it means doing unimportant work vs. important. There’s lots of little things to do, but only a few things that will make a big difference in my life. And then a bunch of stuff that’s not super important on it’s own, but is general life maintenance stuff that needs to get done, even if it doesn’t feel super important. That’s the stuff that needs to get done, but that you don’t want to end up filling up all your available time, like when you’re writing an essay for class and it ends up taking as long as you’ve got. Those things are best given time restrictions I suppose.

In any case, it’s a slightly different angle on the whole time management thing, akin to what I noticed with prioritization over “time management.”

It was interesting, having a talk with my my mentor, the day before I got sick, about creating teacher (and maybe parent) training programs, and how exciting that was for me. I’ve been thinking about this, and wondering if I might be happier with a mix of teaching and research. I love researching and it seems a shame to not be using that skill and love, which can border on obsession.

I also stumbled upon a paper recording some thoughts and prayers from several years ago… I should re-read it again, but it said some things about elements of my what my ideal job might look/feel like, that still seem pertinent. It should feel good, and right. And the specific thing I identified was just the times I was their for a friend, to listen and support, counsel and hopefully inspire onwards. Maybe I’m not saying it exactly right. But it reminded me of some of my first thoughts that set me on the path I’m currently on. It felt pertinent, and powerful.

OK, that’s it for now, gotta go.

Take care, be well,

-Isaac

Labor Day, Slow Title, Learning to learn

 Approaching Labor-Day weekend. A three day-weekend, yes, but also the start of the class I’m teaching on weekends as a volunteer, and a retreat that may take up much of the long weekend. Time. Time is so precious. As I do more work and experimentation with time management and prioritization, I’m starting to think prioritization is where the real art of it is. You can only shuffle around what you are doing so much. It’s what you’re doing that requires deep thought, and some degree of willpower and good habits, to master. There are so many things I want to do, but there simply isn’t time for all of it. What I choose to actually do has to do with what I value most, along with what I’m capable of doing at any given energy level/emotional state, along with what I need to do for self-care, as well as what I need to do, for any of the other relationships in my life that I value, as well as considerations for compounding or combing effects, where doing two things together gives outsized benefits that one or the other on their own wouldn’t give.

It’s complex. I’m going to have to finish this on another day since I’m out of time today.

I’ve been listening to a book on tape by Cal Newport called “Digital Minimalism,” mostly because of one concept he mentions, where, when removing most of your digital ways of having fun and connecting, you need to replace them with high-quality analogue alternatives. I’d like a nice beefy list of such alternatives, though at this point I’m not sure I’m going to get it. I don’t really need such a list though, I think I can brainstorm enough to get by. But crowd-sourcing ideas for that might come up with a bunch of gems I wouldn’t have thought of on my own. 

Perhaps my experience setting the screen-time limiter on my laptop spurred me on to read more about that kind of thing, as well. I like his approach, because it’s pretty level headed. It’s not saying that technology is bad and you can’t use it, it’s saying that much of what we use technology is for is unhealthy and we should take a much more intentional approach, curating what technologies we use and how we use them, to get the most benefit from them with the least negatives. 

It seems very sensible, but the approach he recommends requires some investment in time, thinking about how to implement it, and I’m already full, in terms of behavior change missions, so I’ll just have to keep doing my ad-hoc method, which is still much better than nothing. My technology sticking points are pretty limited at least in quantity, so it’s feasible to deal with them one at a time, starting with those with the most negative effects and easiest fixes.

In any case, I started another book, after trying to find a good way to implement time-blocking (something Cal is a big fan of.) An acquaintance of his that he partnered with on a project wrote a book called “Ultralearning” and in spite of the flashy title, I thought it might have some reasonable info on best practices for self-learning. And my two main goals these days are time/prioritization, and teaching. I was thinking of the ultra-learning practices mainly for teaching. I don’t think there is much learning left to do with the time management/prioritization, I think it’s mostly practice and refinement. But for teaching, it is very necessary. I don’t have a clear pathway, though I do have an excellent mentor and environment for learning, so it makes it urgent that I get a pathway and plan set up, to make use of this singular opportunity.

The problem, again, is time. Everything takes time. Planning and troubleshooting takes time. Figuring out what to prioritize, what to spend time on, takes time. Mapping out best practices for my learning as a teacher takes time.

This is why time management/prioritization is sharing top priority with learning to be a good teacher. It is the leverage point, the choke point, the key to everything else I want to do, due to how limited my time is.

Speaking of which, it’s time to go back to work. Bye for now! :-)

I Out

Whoops, not quite yet, need to think up a title….

…And almost a week later, finally finishing it. Whoops.

A thorn to remove a thorn, wish fulfillment, teacher evaluation.

 A short post perhaps, since I’ve been working on other things durning lunch. My job teaching is less stressful and more satisfying than it has every been before, under the wing of my mentor. This is both nice in itself,  and vindicating, in that it is what I suspected from the day or two I got to first observe her class. She also seems to be really good at the training/mentoring process. The wait, the year, all worth it. I have not found any other situation that would come close to giving me this level of support as a new teacher. I think I can say without exaggeration that I am a pretty good judge of character, and specifically, teaching ability. I’m good at picking good teachers. Of identifying them. Perhaps this would be a boon to my idea of finding basic commonalities of good teachers.

In other news, I got fed up with staying up late on my computer, so in a nuclear approach, I turned on the parental controls for my laptop set the lock-out time to 7:30 pm, and had Suzannah input the password so I don’t know it. I’ve never been happier or felt free-er, in regards to my technology use. I never wanted to go to bed late, I just found myself doing so, mainly because of my laptop. With that taken out of my hands, my bed time has gotten instantly better, and I’ve gotten more wind-down time without blue lights or over stimulation, for longer before that bed time. Also, I’ve gotten more quality time with Suzannah, and more exercise, going for evening walks. Hooray, cool brain Isaac’s triumph over hot brain Isaac, using the thorn of technology to neutralize itself. I’m considering how I might want to extend this approach to more elements of my digital life that end up getting me to do things I don’t really want to do.

- I out

No time for a title

 It’s Monday. It’s lunch time. Let’s do this.

Hello, what have I got to share today. Slowly but surely, I am working through the various beliefs and patterns around time management that have been a thorn in my side for a while. I’ve been focusing on it, and making. Well, I won’t say steady progress. Life’s been crazy the last… how long has it been? Year and a half? And longer. So I’ve had some learning streaks, and some times when I was just focusing on keeping my head above water. Working with my mentor now though, I feel like I am far enough out of the basic survival mode that I can put some energy back into improving a few aspects of my life. Though I’m trying to keep it narrow. I’ve heard and experienced that if you try and take on too many new habits, it hurts your success chances with all of them. Better to focus down on just a few manageable things, then expand when they are comfortably installed as habits.

Right now, my marching orders are clear: learning as much as I can from my mentor, and working on getting more…effective, with my time. I’ve got a little journal that I’ve used, first for trying to figure out what kind of organization system I want, then for trying to deal with the feeling of burnout and hopelessness I was feeling last year. I’d write thoughts and observations and findings I had, as I went through the process of fixing that element of my life. And eventually they were fixed to the point I wasn’t focusing on them. They were good enough. Now I add a third tab to that journal, “time management and prioritization.” The “prioritization” part is important. We all have limited time. We all have the same time, frankly.  24 hours per day. We can’t buy more of that. So how exactly do we “managed our time” more effectively?

As I put awareness on this, I’m noticing that a large part of what I’m doing wrong has to do with stuff I shouldn’t be doing. I remember someone saying we should have a “stop doing” list along with a “to do” list, and the idea makes sense, kind of. There are a lot of things I say yes to, that I should be saying no to. I’ve mentioned the idea of kon-Mari-ing my activities before, I think, but the point is really being driven home as I get more aware about how my time is being  used. I’m not using it that badly. But it’s a matter of do I do something waaaaay down on my priority list, or do I do something that makes a real difference towards the goals and dreams and things that matter the most to me. The business term is stuff that ‘moves the needle.’ We’re talking about change, and creation. Is what you are doing moving you towards the changes and creations you value most? Often, it’s not. It’s stuff that is satisfying to do, but doesn’t really change anything. It gets done because it’s easier, or more pleasant, or quicker (or all of the above) than the actions that do/will move the needle. 

Having the discipline, habits, tools, environment, to stay focused on those important things, at least most of the time, is where it’s at. There will always be chores, life-upkeep, etc., that requires some of your time, regularly, but I think the idea is to give that the time it deserves, but not more. And to work those around the often larger chunks of time you need to do the heavy lifting stuff that moves your dreams forwards.

That’s where I’m headed. I’ve finally gotten fed up with my number one enemy of meaningful work, my laptop. I’m working on how to implement some programs that will protect me from myself, via locking me out of certain distracting things, at the right times. I’ve already implemented a nightly 7:30 forced lock-out of basically everything on my laptop, and I love it. It feels freeing, rather than punishing, and I’m enjoying the additional time I get with my wife, and the fact that I’m not hyped up right before bed.

So, the experimenting continues.

My next item on the agenda, after I’ve worked with time some more, is to spend some time with self compassion, self confidence, and related things. Though I’ve gotten much better, I’m still sometimes prone to being hard on myself, and I own it to myself and everyone else who interacts with me, to be more self-compassionate. It makes me more effective in changing myself, and makes others happier to see me happier. And I my main spiritual teacher has said that happiness is one of the gates to self-realization, so it’s necessary. (How kind of the universe  to design itself that way.)

Whoops, it’s time to go!

See ya next week!

I-o

Mysterious Lump, Adorable creatures, wut is"put"?

 Thinking about my mentor/role model: She has many skills, not just classroom discipline. She is excellent at choosing work that will be interesting for the children. She has excellent predictive abilities, about how the class will respond to certain things, work, structures, etc. She is fun: she mixes it up, keeps things from getting boring, gives the kids time of and such, for fun, when they are doing well, with their academics. She has a plan: she has several fun, challenging, time-intensive, independent activities the youngest children can do, for the first several weeks. This gives her time to get the rest of the children acclimated and chugging along with plenty of work of their own to do, before coming back to the new arrivals and spending more time, getting them familiar with the routine of working hard and with focus every day, and all the various specific habits and routines of class. She went hard and exhaustively on the general classroom expectations, and enforced them with extreme consistency, right from day one, but also has been making sure they get activities to do, materials that they can do on their own, every day, to get them progressing with reading comprehension, mathematics, etc.

It's basically what I was struck with, when I first saw her in action. All the theory I had read and heard about, in my masters program, she was doing. My masters program was not Montessori, it was a standard 1-6 education degree, from a fairly integrated, experience and science based perspective. But all this start of the year stuff, that's exactly what my teachers were talking about when having us read, "the first 6 weeks of school." As one example among many. Or else, she was surpassing the theory I was being taught, achieving results that were beyond what was being taught. Many of her students, I think perhaps most, who make it to the upper grade levels, are one or two grade levels above where their age would put them.

What my teachers did not teach, was her discipline methods. I suspect this is because teaching that is much more difficult. Which is not a good reason for not teaching it, but is understandable. They were not given the time necessary to do so. What she is doing... even she is not really sure about, in terms of mechanics she could dissect and give to me, or teach to me. It makes me think doing so would make for a genuinely useful contribution to educational science, and education practice, via teacher education.

Regardless of understanding it, by being around it, I think I am beginning to osmose it a little. Hopefully if I can get it, even if it's still kind of tacit and not really understood, I can then take the time to unpack it in a way that is more quickly teachable. What she does is not any of the nice discipline models that I've read about in books, with their steps and structures. But it's something that, like salt or sugar, would enhance whatever practices are being used. It ends up making the children more respectful, responsible, and generally integrous.

A final short note on my learning to teach process, is she is ramping up the real, meaty learning, very quickly. Within this first week, within the first few days, the kids were working on very serious intellectual concepts. This "press for learning" as some of the education research calls it, characterizes her teaching style and is likely one of the reasons her children are so advanced. Very few worksheets before the actual work is getting started, and it is work she has carefully chosen to be actually useful, not just busy work, and stuff the children can do without teacher intervention, so not giving her more work to do. This is one of the things you need to do with Montessori; give the kids stuff they can work on, practice, on their own. And just as importantly, systems of accountability and an atmosphere and expectation, and awareness to back up those expectations, that children are focusing on and doing the work seriously.

Onto other things. The word "put" when you look at it closely, seems very odd, like it is a child's failed attempt to spell it. You'd think it should be pronounced like "putt" from the spelling.

Ume, our less social, more streetwise, more svelte cat, has a scab on her back and is acting weird, and now has a lump near the scab. I hope we can take her into a vet and figure out what's going on. I would be quite sad if anything happened to our dear cats. Which is a new kind of feeling for me in regards to pets, but they are really great people, so maybe it's just like with children: at first I didn't really get attached to them, but then I met some really sweet, respectful ones, and realized it was just when they were being bratty or disrespectful that I felt no strong attachment to them. Kids get no points for "cuteness" in my book. I will treat them kindly and with respect, but if they want me to miss them when they're gone, they're going to have to display some positive character traits like kindness, truthfulness, responsibility, etc.

Kind of like how you might choose your friends or company. To bring it around to the original topic, that's one of the things I love about my mentor's teaching and thus classroom, is in creates changes in the children, towards those more positive, and thus more enjoyable to be around, characteristics. She's mentioned that she sees those qualities in the children, all of them, and I've heard similar things from my teachers in my masters program. To see those positive qualities is half of the work of cultivating them. (But the other half is not being permissive when they don't live up to that potential you see in them, constantly pushing them to live up to what they are capable of, not just academically, but as human beings.

OK, I Out, finishing on Sunday morning. Hopefully that's a sign that my time management and prioritization learning is progressing.

Love and Law. Underlying Patterns. Analyzing, Synthesizing.

 OK! It’s Tuesday instead of Monday, but otherwise back to our regularly scheduled programming. First day of school! I mean, it’s only been a few days since the summer session ended, but it feels different. There’s going to be a lot more academic rigor. And I mean a lot. In John Hattie’s “Visible Learning” book where he summarizes education research meta-studies, one of the more potent effects was with something he called “press for learning” which is about what it sounds like. How much the teacher is pushing the children to push themselves, not settling for ho-hum work when the students can do better, if they really try. My mentor is particularly passionate about this, and it shows in her results, where she frequently puts out students who are several grade levels above their peers, when they leave her school. I’m looking forward to learning how that works.

And also really looking forward to seeing her in action, as I did this morning. I feel like the first few days, and even the first day especially, of school with really great teachers, are the most useful for study. Once the teachers have had a few months with the kids, the routines are already laid down, they have already gotten into good habits, the boundaries have been tested and, in the case of really good teachers, shown to be firm. An observer might get the mistaken impression, visiting a class like that, that teaching is easy, or their students are easy. Whereas, when you see the first day, first week, you see the head butting happening, how conflicts are managed, how the teacher establishes her “street cred” and reputation, how she sets up the rules and expectations, and how she implements and enforces them.

It was also surprisingly useful to see my mentor in action at the staff meeting last week. She has said this before, that she is pretty much the same with kids of all ages and adults. She’s not putting on a persona. That’s not to say she is insensitive to context and developmental differences, but, given a clear understanding of them, she adjusts appropriately, while remaining basically the same. Though there is a significant difference how she interacts with a group of people compared to how she interacts one on one. I’ve mostly seen her interact one on one with adults and in a group with children. I’ve seen some interactions where a child has stepped over a line and she’s one on one or small group with them, but that’s pretty similar to when they step over the line and are in a group. I don’t think I’ve seen much of her interacting one on one with children when they aren’t in trouble, but I now assume it’s a bit more like with adult individuals, plus the filter of developmental appropriateness and the specific kind of relationship she has with them. Teacher student vs. peers vs. employer kind of thing.

In any case, it made it a bit more clear, how much of how she interacts is her personality. I don’t want to copy her personality, though in the same way that artists do master copies, I may try copying what she does to see what is required to do that, and understand what thinking and feeling is behind that. But I want to understand the principals behind what she does that makes them work. Seeing her in different situations, with different kinds of people, helps me piece together the mosaic of the underlying patterns.

Well, running out of time again. Things I’m noticing: she is a good orator. She varies it more for children, because that works with them, but my acting teacher would approve of her work. She uses variation in inflection, humor, changing up the sound and pace to keep the audience listening.

She is also choosing her words very carefully. How she explains rules, the why behind them. She’s also good at having good boundaries and high expectations, and catching and calling kids out when they go over any lines, without it feeling angry. She herself has said she is full of love when she’s giving her serious-faced corrections, and I wonder if that feeling perhaps both enhances the potency of the correction while avoiding the feeling of resentment or reactance that often occurs when rules and expectations are enforced.

If this is the case, it’s one of the things that cannot be learned as easily as others, because that love cannot be faked. I doubt you would get a positive effect if it was faked, either for the students or for how you internally would feel. The challenge then is learning to hold those very different qualities: deep unconditional love, and rigorously enforced high expectations for behavior. Especially when giving what you might call a ‘dressing down.’ To someone. Though when analyzing the words used, they are not violent or angry or put-downs. It’s really only the tone that makes it feel like that, the words are serious, but respectful. And I think perhaps having the love underlying that makes the process of what words to use more automatic, rather than something that needs to be thought about and planned out. 

Nothing wrong with planning, but if you don’t want canned responses, you need to know the internal state that then organizes the specific words coming out. Kind of like knowing the story, and then saying it in your own words, or describing something you’ve seen, in your own words. You are referring to an internal model, so you don’t need to refer to a memorized script. Also helpful when you are faced with novel situations and would have to go ‘off script.”

It’s easy to fall back into a more passive role, and I notice that tendency. If I want to make best use of my situation though, I need much more action, practice, getting my hands in on things. So I’ll need some plan to counteract that tendency of mine.

OK, it’s Wednesday now, I ran out of time yesterday. Goodbye for now, see you next time.

<3

Isaac

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

 I’m re-listening to “Peak” by Anders Ericsson (spelling may be off on that name) which is why I’m late to my Monday blogging. As with the article/book I’m reading on acquiring deep smarts from experts, this is part of my dive into how to get the most out of my apprenticeship/mentoring this year. School proper starts up next week.

If you haven’t already read it, I highly recommend the book, if you are interested in mastery or even optimal learning, in any field. Ericsson has done a lot of groundbreaking research and this is his gift to the general public, a more comprehensible and quicker way to access the findings that he’s come across than cracking open an academic volume or paper. It’s very engaging reading too, I’d say.

I realize that I have, since I was very young, had a great fascination with masters, mastery. I always wanted to have some kind of mastery myself, but I didn’t know what I should devote that kind of time and energy too, and I didn’t know how to focus and discipline and motivate myself to do it. So this is a book I craved before I knew it existed.

I suppose when I decided to become a teacher, that was my answer to the question. Unfortunately, unlike sports or music, teaching is not something you can easily get a coach for. The gold standard for mastery is something Anders calls “deliberate practice.” Which involves a well established field of mastery, following a skilled coach who knows the steps necessary to achieve mastery. This exists for sports and music and dance and such, but not for most other fields. I wonder why. Perhaps it is more difficult to come up with objective measures of skill, like with sports, but they seem to have done so with music. Perhaps there isn’t enough competition and interest, for thousands of people to have tried their hands at being the very best. Teaching is not an Olympic sport. There are no world tours.

Perhaps deciding on the criteria to measure is more fraught with politics and opinion. Sports is clear: follow the rules, win or loose, score or miss. Music is less clear, but still much clearer: hit the notes at the right time or not. Though there is also an artistic element to it. Is it played with feeling, does it move you? 

Various people have tried to come up with measures of success for teaching, and some seem pretty clear as well: how do the students perform on tests, on academics? Though some of the most important measures have been ignored, perhaps because they take more work to follow and measure: are the children happy? Do they go on to lead fulfilling lives? Are they successful, professionally, personally, ethically, spiritually?

Another element of fields where mastery is achieved is the practice required to get there involves immediate or very quick feedback. We need to know how we’re doing. If you only get that years later, when you see the children as adults, it’s too far away to be useful for your practice. Instead of improving day by day, it would be decade by decade.

Yet, there are master teachers. Teachers that get better results than others, teachers who’s classes are peaceful and focused. Teachers that students remember, that change the course of lives. Maybe not everybody’s life, but many.

I’m running out of time, so I’ll go to the point that is echoing loudest in my head from my reading (listening, technically, though I’m planning on going back through the book in physical form so I can notate it for later use, allowing me to get back to the most pragmatic or important morsels.)

Deliberate practice, or it’s next best cousin, purposeful practice, requires a few key elements, and one of them is going a bit outside your comfort zone, when you practice. This is one of the keys to why some people practice for years and never improve. This is key. In any field, physical, mental, spiritual, if you want improvement, you must continually go a bit outside your comfort zone, pushing yourself. That is the only way to stimulate adaptation and change, which is what is required to get better at something. If you keep jogging every day, the same amount, the same intensity, you will stay at the same level. Perhaps there will be an initial change, but then it will level off. If you stay in your comfort zone, you will stay where you are. You can’t improve past the initial quick gains, if that’s all your doing.

There are other important elements: you need feedback, on how your doing, regularly and quickly after doing it. Preferably immediately. You need specific goals. Large skills like playing tennis, are broken down into a bunch of micro skills: how to hold the racket, how to serve, how to anticipate and counter, how to put top spin on. And each of these needs to be looked at individually and worked on, when a weak point is identified.

If you want to be a master at something, you can. You really can. But it’s not going to be easy, and it’s not going to be fast. And you need to make sure  you’re practicing in a way that is actually effective.

Given that, what would you like to master? A fun question.

OK, my time is up.

Isaac  Out

Walking treadmill/standing desk. Current goals. Love and self-discipline. Happiness for others sake.

I'm currently on a walking treadmill, typing this at my standing desk. I'm quite pleased with this for two reasons. One, I'm finally using the equipment, which for months was functioning as nothing more than a normal desk with an inconvenient slab beneath it making me sit several inches higher. I didn't want it to get dusty, when I wasn't using it, so I put a sheet over it, but that made it too much of a bother to take the sheet off and start using it, so it just never got used. One of the problems with things that are expensive: you worry about breaking it so much that it never gets used at all.

It's interesting how a simple thing like that can lead to the adoption or non-adoption of a much bigger habit. The simple act of reducing the resistance to flipping on the treadmill, reducing it just a tiny bit, was enough to trigger the habit of walking, often for up to an hour, while doing what would be otherwise sedentary computer related tasks.

People think little inconveniences like that are not a big deal, and ignore them, but the truth is those little resistances can make or break good (and bad) habits. I often find myself unable to explain the importance of little things I want to do or change, to other people. They think, "why can't you just use the old X thing, or way of doing things." and I know that if I I don't change it, the habit won't get adopted at all, but I can't explain it to them because they haven't paid enough attention to habit formation to understand that it actually will very possibly make or break the habit.

I sat down and thought for a little bit and wrote out a priority card for myself. I wanted an easy way to remind myself of the top few things I was focusing on these days, to try and help myself let go of other potential projects. If you try and do too many things, you don't have the time/energy to do any of them well.

Here's my current list:

Main areas of focus:

Transformation:

- Time/priority management

-Becoming an excellent, inspiring, transformation-creating teacher/guide

-Enlightenment (this one is the perineal one, always on the list, so I need sub-goals to be focusing on:)

   -Sense controle/sacrifice

   -Happiness

   -(which together I'm calling Love and Law, a principal someone mentioned as how to deal with children and discipline, which is also part of point 2 with becoming an excellent teacher. These points are all interconnected and interrelated.)

Maintenance:

-Relationship

-Job

That's it, and that needs to be it, because I don't have time for more. "Maintenance" is just as much energy as transformation, possibly more. If something is not growing it's decaying. But I make the distinction in that with transformation, I'm trying to learn stuff that I don't feel like I've got a good grip on yet. Maintenance is stuff that, if I put the energy in, is going well. (though job is related to the teaching goal, but I'm doing a sufficiently good job at work that I'm not going to get fired or reprimanded. I'll need to be growing as a teacher for my job too, but the teaching goal goes well beyond that,. They want the kids safe and learning, and recognize that as a new-ish teacher, I still need help making sure the kids are making sufficient progress. I need to make sure they're not hurting each other or themselves, and doing their school work. I want to learn the competencies of a master teacher, how to create a thriving community of enthusiastic inspired learners, and internally motivated moral, happy, loving, service-minded, self-confident humans. Something they are certainly not expecting, though I'm sure they'd be happy if it happened.

The Love/Law, Sense-controle/happiness dichotomy is another, perhaps lesser challenge. I just need to figure out the... not sure what to call it, or what exactly it is... the way of thinking, that allows for vigorous sense-controle, and happiness. I can't just refuse myself the second dessert, I have to be happy about it too. Which means I need to practice the mindset that doing what feels right is always what is for my own best interest as well, in the long run. That way, giving up certain unhealthy pleasures doesn't feel like a contracting, embittering sacrifice, but a greatful, courageous, uplifting one. 

It's interesting, happiness, my main motivation for seeking it is external at this point. I'm seeking happiness because people in my life who care about me, want me to be happy. I suppose I should be very grateful that is what they want from me, rather than, say, becoming a high-paid, long-hours doctor, or something.

OK, time to move on to some of the other tasks I wanted to do tonight. Love to you all (as I now know it really is just friends and family who read these :D )

-Isaac

Critical Knowledge Transfer, Watering Seed-Habits, Lazing About

 OK, these may be some of the last posts before the old email service stops working... Actually, it may already have stopped working. I think I had to stop it, to allow the new service to work.

I'm currently back home from my trip. Something about vacation where I'm just lazing about, puts me in a lazing about mindset, and when I get back and it's time to work, like now, it takes some time to get back into the working mindset. I like the working mindset. It's not about unpleasant work, it's just about getting things done. If I'm doing it right, it's about getting the things done that are important to me. So far I've done some cleaning, tidying, putting stuff away in it's home, finding homes for things, and ordering some essentials. bandaids, air purifier filters, stuff that's been on my list for a while, but I haven't had the time to sit down and plow through. Finally got most of it done now, except for a list of Ikea stuff that I want to get.

Most of the stuff I like getting at Ikea is about space, not stuff. I like nice shelves and containers. I just want things to look tidy and have a tidy home I can put them in. You wouldn't know it, if you looked at my desk, which is plastered in sticky-notes and crumpled papers with chicken-scratch on them. But thats... The papers are there because I look there, and the papers that are there are important. I want them to be seen. If I don't leave them right in the front of my desk, the chance that I glance at them and am reminded of them goes down significantly. If I want to change that I need to be better in my habit at looking at my planner. Which I'm reasonable at... well, ok, kind of bad at, especially the calendar. Just haven't' gotten into the habit of it... but I need a whole separate section, where I just write stuff that would otherwise end up on my desk. One more good idea in need of the time/energy/focus necessary to take it from a seed into a sprout and then a mighty tree. I have many of those good ideas, but only 24 hours in which to allocate my attention water. That being the case, pruning becomes more important than planting. Or thinning the seedlings, to follow the analogy better.

Not the best analogy really, you can broadcast plant seeds and water all of them at the same time, but if you want to water new habits, you can only do that one at a time. Generally speaking, you shouldn't try and adopt more than 3 at a time, max, for best results. Or even just one, if it's a particularly hard one.

School starts up again tomorrow, and I'll be without my mentor teacher, so the class is bound to be a bit more rowdy. My current reading is "Critical Knowledge Transfer." The book that the Harvard Business Review article was based on. I want the details, the specifics of how to do this. It's written for managers, and I'm trying to use it on myself, so not a perfect match, but it's what I should be focusing on now. the next 6 months are a unique opportunity to gain expertise from an expert that I effectively paid for with maybe 2 years of my time, so I'd better make careful and thorough use of the resource I've now got, or I'll be wasting those years.

I think that's enough for one post. I've got to do two to make up for missing this last week (I suppose being on vacation is my excuse?)

See you in a few minutes

-IO

Imaginary People

 This week with Isaac: Technical stuff! And a much longer-to-make than normal post.

You see, the widgit (gadget? whatever they call it) that I've been using to send you emails of my blog posts if you sign up, is now dead. It stopped working. Google stopped supporting it. Wasn't making them enough money I guess? So I had to find a new service. So, you will see a very similar widgit on the right hand side of the screen (or I don't know where, if you're viewing this on a phone) but it is a totally different service. Accordingly, though I was able to transfer over the active emails (interesting story on that in a moment) you may have to re-confirm that you want to be getting these emails, and there may be a little self-plug from the company I'm now using. They're called "follow.it" so if you see that, don't be alarmed.

Now for the funny thing I discovered (with pictures!) as I was spending the.. hour and a half I believe? To find and then transfer things over. I had always been surprised by how many people seemed to be following my blog, when I looked at feedburners numbers (for email subscribers.) I chose to ignore it and pretend I was just writing to the few people I know personally who read my blog.

Rather than the apparently 1,170 who were getting emails of my blog posts each time I posted 😯

I looked to see who these people were, but I didn't recognize any of them. Rando's who stumbled on me somehow via facebook?

But then as I looked at the downloaded .csv of all the email addresses, I saw the pattern clearly:

Clearly these were some kind of bot. Most of them were grouped in easy to see patterns, with the same first few letters the same followed by a string of other stuff, spread throughout the alphabet. Computer programs assigned to randomly create email addresses and sign up for things, for some unknown but probably nefarious purpose. Curiously, the email addresses were all outlook. Microsoft, being lax with it's email security, I assume.

In any case, I combed through the list and took out only the people I knew, who conveniently were none of them outlook users, so it was easy to spot. And the number of subscribers went down to a much more likely number, 9. I would say I was humbled and brought low, but I already thought something was off about that number so it simply confirmed what my common sense had assumed.

I'd love to talk more about my thoughts on my mentor, where my current analysis of what she is doing is at, my upcoming (tomorrow) wedding anniversary, and such, but I already have spent close to two hours on this, and I really need to be getting on to some other things for the week. So I'll make it quick:

Three day weekend because of independance day, woo! Final week of vacation coming up, during which I will get on a plane for the first time in a year and a half and visit my parents and have a wedding reception for all the east-coasters (and anyone else interested in making the trek) who weren't able to attend in person (because we were having a super small in-person guest list, due to covid). Less of a vacation really. I think of vacation as time to rest and recuperate and catch up on chores and errands and work that I don't have time for during a normal work week, but this will be travel, which is tiring, and spending time with family, which is important and good, but does not catch me up on todo's. And my nieces will be there, which is certainly not restful, if I'm going to play with them. (But still important and good.)

When I get back, my mentor will be gone for a week, and then I think it's only one more week before school proper starts up again. Time continues to flow so quickly. At least I feel good about what I'm doing and learning now, in that fast flow of time.

Until next time, you 9 people who read this ;-)

-I Out.

Brevity

 I got 5 minutes, because I was composing another message earlier this lunch. I continue to be really happy with my mentoring. However, I’m also aware of how precious this time-opportunity is, so I’m feeling the time crunch to get my mastery-acquiring habits up and running pronto. I’ve been going through the article slowly, taking notes, and still haven’t made it all the way through the... probably only 4 pages or so. I’m fine with that. Slow and steady wins the race and all that. But also not too slow.

OK, that’s it. You know the disclaimer. Mama said their’d be days like this (lyric from a song? Or old commercial?) e.g. I said sometimes I only have time for a sentence or two. That’s how I keep the ‘ol habit running strong. Some day, when I’ve got more disposable time, perhaps I’ll make up for the brevity, writing as I used to, super long posts. Or very well edited ones. Anyhoo, bye!

Game Time, Grit, Harvard Business Review.

 Back in the winter of 2019, I bought a Harvard Business Review Special Issue on “How to learn faster and better.” Mainly because of one article in it, about how to acquire “deep smarts.” Or, in other words, how to gain the expertise of experts/masters. I bought it specifically because I wanted to use it with my mentor teacher. I thought it would be useful for a lot of things, but I had her in mind. I may have bought it in the airport while traveling to do my practice teaching with her. I tried to apply it then, I think, but as I recall, it wasn’t very effective. I was just observing, and there wasn’t time for much else.

Well, now my time has begun. Last week, I started teaching in her classroom, and she immediately started moving responsibilities on to me, bit by bit. Beginning the training process. It was exactly what I wanted and hoped for and expected from her. Very thoughtful mentoring and support and role-modeling. It also was what I thought it would be, in terms of the difficulty of trying to parse what it was she was doing that made the classroom work so well.

I’d been meaning to start keeping a “learning to teach” journal, but now more than every I really need to prioritize that. I need to be recording my progress, what is working for successfully transferring her skills, and trying to capture and parse what those skills are, and how she does them. The article it to help me ask the right questions, look for the right things.

It is game time. Now, perhaps more so than any other time that I’m here during my contract, I need to be doing everything I can to learn, absorb, capture, what this awesome teacher does. And to try and learn how to do it myself. It’s kind of a second job, in addition to the main job, but it’s super important to me. First, so I can learn to be the kind of teacher, do the kind of teaching, that feels worthwhile to do. Second, so I can hopefully, maybe, learn how to become that kind of teacher, so I can help other people like me who are interested in becoming something like that, but don’t know how.

I’m watching the survival show “Alone” with Suzannah, and it is reminding me fondly of my time with the Tracker School. And inspiring me: there are a lot of hardcore, dedicated, gritty people on the show, and seeing them be gritty inspires me to be that way too. It’s a truism that’s scientifically validated, that you become like the kind of people  you associate with the most. I may not have a ready supply of super gritty, passionate, ultra successful people, or totally dedicated spiritual aspirants (especially during COVID) but I can always get that company through books and other media, if nothing else.

I’m going to end this earlier than I need to, because I want to spend as much time as I can, in my learning to teach journal. I’ve already missed a week, and that first week had so much happening. Even the first day, my mentor really set the tone and expectations. I wonder if I should finish reading the article first?

Anyhoo, that’s it for today. Take care!

-IO

Alone, unsettling bald patches, activation energy.

The previous blog post was for last week. This is for this week. 

I'm about to go back to work. The 'Sunday night blues' that I often get, when the weekend is almost over, seems to be intensified relative to the amount of time off that I get, so it is more than usual this time, as I've been off for 2 weeks. Yay for then! But now I am back, and with it comes the crushing weight of all the stuff I want to do and don't have time for, and won't have time for, and the feeling of being unprepared, always rushed and behind, with never enough time to catch my breath and plan strategically in a way that would eventually pull me out of this hole.

I'll figure it out eventually like I always do, but it might just involve eventually switching to a part time job, rather that the internal changing and healing of negative beliefs, which is what I'm working on now, because it's the main thing I can clearly do something about. Or who knows, maybe I'll figure it out and be feeling good about my time and productivity just from that internal work.

---

Let's see, other representative tidbits...

One of the cats has unsettling bald patches on her ears and nose. It happens every summer but is particularly evident this time. Is it a disease? getting into fights only during the summer? hair loss from it getting warmer? I don't know, but she's very dear to me, so I do worry.

---

The garden is beautiful. If I had a lot of spare time, I'd take some pictures of it. Full of flowers and veggies ^_^

And some hornworms, which can get gigantic. 

---

I wonder what the summer session at work is going to look like, feel like? Will I be with my mentor, or another assistant? Will I know what to do, or be thrown in, sink or swim? I'll find out tomorrow!

---

I discovered that the History Channel show "Alone" currently has one of my instructors from Tom Brown's school, as a contestant. I can't wait to find out how he did, and what he did. His name is Matt, if your looking.

---

My vacation was very nice. I got to see and play with or walk and chat with some of my favorite friends and mentors. And I got to spend a few days at the beach, (somewhere South Texas) just having fun with Suzannah. Very nice. Though it was hard not to get heat stroke, with the intense humidity and sun.

The last three days have mostly been working furiously, trying to get current with my obligation tracking system and inboxes, and just today trying to get some of the things on my to do list, done.

I think a lot of the problem with the system I'm using is that, when it has enough time put into it, it works great, saves time, and increases creativity, and reduces stress. But especially at first, it requires a lot of time put into it. I don't have a lot of time, and so it's a bit like trying to get paper burning by putting it in the oven and setting it to 350 degrees. You need... what was the book called, fahrenheit 451, to get paper burning. I think it's called activation energy in chemistry. Anything less, and not much happens. I don't think that's quite true here, I think it's better than nothing, but not that much better. The paper is smouldering at least.

---

OK, back to work, though I really want to watch more of that "Alone" show since I looked at it. :D

-I Out

More From the Vault

Going through my accumulated voice memos (backlog dates back to 2015) here are some bits meant for my blog:

---

"Ah, the weighty smell of knowledge. Wait, maybe that's just mold. Nope, no, definitely knowledge." (Said upon entering a library)

---

I was just reflecting back how at some point around 2005-2010 I realized we were not in the present time period, we were in the future. Obviously we're always in the present, but sci-fi was written about a time when we had all sorts of futuristic gadgets and such. And I realized that much of the sci-fi that had been written, especially the golden age of sci-fi, had elements that had already come true. We don't have airplanes going to the moon, but we do have the computer tablets from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was written in 1968. AI, all sorts of things, so it no longer felt like the present where I was born. I'm not sure we could have the same sci-fi that we used to, since we're now living in that age, that was being imagined.

In the same way, I've realized now (2019) that the life I'm living is supernatural. I've realized that my past self would look at my current self and not be able to believe that my life was true. It would sound like fantasy. Really good fantasy, but I was really morose so that would make it even harder to believe. And That's just astounding. 

Not astounding to live in, since the change was gradual. There were some bumps of cognitive dissonance, as miracles have happened, things that I never thought could happen. And I'm happy and confident in a way I never could have imagined being years ago. I thought I would always just be a scared thirteen year old in an adult body, with my same problems and fears and insecurities. And I do not feel that way, I feel an almost mad certainty and trust in the universe and God, intelligence, and through that, in myself. And for other reasons, in my self; my own ability to set my mind to something and accomplish it like a rabid pitbull grabbing onto somebody's pant until it was done. That's how I seem to be, with objectives I have. And in addition to that, the universe--(I feel like that's just a PC way of saying God, I suppose when I talk to the general public, I don't want to shove God in their face, but, your listening to me, that's my life, God's everywhere. Can't avoid him. 

It's nice to be able to step out of myself and the gradual temperature change of my life, and take the perspective of me as a young man, and notice how ridiculous my life is now. Objectively it's a mix, some great, some normal, some below average, but the internal experience, and amount of change, are amazing.

Objectively it's not... well, objectively there are parts of it that are amazing, but there are also parts that are normal or below average. But the internal experience and change are amazing. And some of the objective things as well.

My girlfriend is beautiful and really sweet, genuinely kind, and funny, and really fun to be around, it feels like hanging out with one of my best friends, and there are no negatives, and the positives just keep building on each other. The fact that it's so nice just makes it even nicer.

My job... my current job is kind of stressful, but also kind of not. It's a small school, I'm working with friends, I'm getting a lot of freedom to experiment and learn, and I get to be in a small town doing things with friends that I love.

I've already had more than enough miracles to convince me of miracles and God, but one more to add to the pile for falling on my face in gratitude, is getting offered my dream job, everything I ever wanted, pretty shortly after asking for it. I wouldn't have thought to ask for such an ideal situation. Working with the most inspiring teacher I've seen in action, in the school created by her, working in her classroom. Something I'd pay for, but no, I'm getting paid for it. What can I say, my life has become unbelievable, literally, I would tell my future self who time traveled back to tell him about it, that they were making it up, or just deep down wouldn't be able to believe it.

And yet, objectively, I'm driving to Chicago at the beginning of the Corona virus epidemic, --um, I assume it's going to be an epidemic, some people are already calling it that-- probably just to turn around and drive right back in another six hours because the schools are going to be shut down, and you know what? I don't care. I have a mad certainty that exactly what is happening is exactly what should be happening and I have no qualms against it, just gratitude for it, even though I can't see why it's happening exactly, I trust, that it is overwhelmingly, totally for my benefit, not for my detriment.

[Interesting to listen to this, over a year later, moved to a different state, married, on the other side of the pandemic. Not having gotten to work with the teacher I was hoping for, everything still crazy and stressful because of the pandemic (not just epidemic, as people were saying when I was driving up I-80 to Chicago that day) Working longer days than I ever wanted to, again thrust into a teaching situation I was not trained for, perhaps even more stressful a situation than before. And yet that is irrelevant to my faith. My faith is not remotely based on things only going well for me. I have seen too much. As I said earlier, my life has entered the realm of fantasy. Even if it appears to leave that genera for a while, I haven't forgotten that Christ-like miracles are possible. That God has answered my prayers time and time again, in ways that have startled me and overwhelmed me in gratitude. Nothing can shake that trust, especially since my most trusted sources of wisdom have made clear repeatedly that the times of trials and testing are some of the most important steps towards our final goal. I am not so poor a student as to forget that. Or to forget the times in my own life I have seen that wisdom proven absolutely, deeply true.]