There's Just One Thing to Do

We wrapped up new teacher orientation yesterday at school. There’s a large group of teachers who are new to the school and a few teachers who are new to teaching completely. We all come to the job with our unique backgrounds, our present life circumstances, and our hopes, fears, and insecurities about the future. Somehow, hopefully, we align ourselves with the school mission and ethos and we get the job done.

Not every school does this well. Some schools have highly qualified teachers but no clear and unifying cohesion. Perhaps the school’s mission or ethos isn’t present, isn’t clear, or is simply ignored.

We wrapped up our day yesterday with a final Q&A. “Where’s that room?” “What do I do if…?” “What can I expect from…?”

And it became so crystal clear to me why I’m on this mission to bring to teachers and students transformational self-understanding: when we’re present and engaged with the people we’re with, and when we’re speaking, listening, and acting from relaxed well-being, we’re getting the job done as well as we possibly can.

When we’re coming from relaxed well-being, we’re better able to live from our authentic self and integrity as educators.

Our authentic self, what Parker Palmer calls our identity as an educator, is the source of our honest self-expression, interest, passion, commitment, enjoyment, and insight. It’s that part of us that gets activated in class and we become fully alive and in the zone as educators.

Our integrity is our honest, reflective, trustworthy, and present awareness and action. Integrity means authentically engaging with our whole experience, not just our thinking. Integrity also means honoring and respecting the sacredness of the life within ourselves and each other, as well as the word we’ve given ourselves and others. (3 Steps to Living with Integrity.)

This post is about teachers, but the message is true for all of us: Living with integrity from our authentic self is all we ever need to do. It’s our access to living in the zone, it feels good, and it gets the job done well.

The questions for many of us, though, are What is our authentic self?, How do we access it?, and How do we live with integrity?

Read on through this blog, since that’s what I’m usually writing about, and it’s also the focus of my workshops and coaching.

In the meantime, relax those lovely muscles of yours, bring attention to your breathing and the life within and around you, and foster trust that you’ve got everything you need right now.

There’s no figuring things out when it comes to our authentic self. It’s already there - just quiet the distractions enough to let it come through. And when it comes to integrity, there’s no need to push, but don’t hold back from acting and expressing yourself fully, compassionately, and honestly.

Thanks for reading. ❤️

Village People

I literally freaked out. I couldn’t stop crying “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God…” I was holding our 7-week old in my arms and he was screaming. We had an accident and the poor baby was hurt and confused.

After a couple nights in the pediatric ICU and with a couple fractures, he was back to his normal self. My wife and I, on the other hand, took a little longer to get over it.

When we were in the ICU those couple days, we were immediately humbled and grateful for how easy we had it. We were surrounded by kids in so much worse shape than our baby.

One mother was in with her 11-year-old daughter. They travelled 3 hours each way to this hospital a couple times each month for a multi-day stay due to complications with the girl’s disease. The mother was inspiringly at peace and positive, but she said something that stuck with me: “Parenthood is one guilt trip after another.”

I sometimes judge with regret the father I’ve at times been. I should’ve been better. When my kids act up, it’s probably my fault. As they grow up, they’ll be right to blame me for their problems.

Nearly all of us parents are doing the best we can. We really are. Our parents did the best they could too. After all, we’ve all got chemicals flowing through us (we’re on drugs), we’ve got conditioned ways of being, and we’ve been trained by people in our lives and by culture itself.

Yet, the main job of parents is to keep their kids’ needs met until the kids can meet those needs themselves, and if we’ve made it to adulthood our parents got the job done! So that frustration, pain, sadness, and trauma that some of us experienced at the hands of our parents: we aren’t to blame for it, but neither are our parents. It's on us to now grow up, heal, and let the judgment go.

“You are not responsible for the programming you picked up in childhood. However, as an adult, you are 100% responsible for fixing it.” - Ken Keyes Jr.

As adults, coming from an awareness of our whole, self-healing, and never-broken fundamental nature, we now and forever have the capability to heal, grow, and live our best lives.

Part of being an adult is understanding that whether we signed up for it or not, whether we like the idea of it or not, and whether we think we’re ready for it or not, we are all part of the village raising the next generation and each other.

We have an inevitable and palpable impact on the people in our lives - good or bad, ugly or beautiful. We also have a say in how we allow the people in our lives to impact us. We really are the village for our kids and each other.

Each of us can live as examples of the full potential and possibility of capable, thriving adults. We can be models for our kids, we can be models for others’ kids, and we can be models for each other.

Here are four questions for you to ponder:

1. What kind of impact are you having on the people in your life?

2. What kind of impact would you like to have?

3. What kind of impact do others have on you?

4. What kind of positive impact are you willing to allow others to have on you?

3 Steps to Living with Integrity might be helpful to you in engaging with your village from created intentions.

Thanks so much for reading for my work. ❤️

In a New Job

With experience comes the opportunity to have honed our craft. But experience and honing aren't necessary to have a profoundly positive impact on the people in our lives. Especially for teachers and other "helper" professionals.

This fall, whether we are completely new to a profession or new to a particular community, we never need to prove ourselves and we never need to hold ourselves back. Those we’re with want us to play full out, to bring ourselves fully to the court, to engage in this game here and now.

In some ways, beginners have an advantage: their vision is broader, heightened, and less clouded by the illusion of already "knowing."

My younger son’s advisor this year is new to his school. I asked my son to make sure that he’s welcoming and helpful to this new teacher. Most of us are nervous when we join a new community, and teachers are no exception.

There’s so much newness in a new job - people, buildings, routines, and unknown expectations - that it can be very challenging to join a new community at all. Let alone a school community, where adults are there to train kids in skeptical thinking, where adolescents in their desire for fun can sometimes be cruel. And wherever we go, especially in a school, most people are busy enough to forget what it was like to be new.

On top of these new relationships and the acclimation to a new culture, the job still needs to get done. For teachers, it’s new faculty and school cultures, planning lessons, setting up the classroom space, and hitting the ground running from day 1 while standing on stage in a spotlight.

None of this is inherently a problem, of course. In fact, it can be an exciting and thrilling adventure. By nature of our humanity, we needn’t live at the effect of our environments, circumstances, or challenges, and we all have the capacity to thrive in exploration and presence of mind. Furthermore, we all have an inherent wisdom, wholeness, and unbreakable nature, and this can be applied in any situation. Even for new teachers.

However, most of us haven’t had much training in how to stay grounded despite the occasional storms and apparent insecurity of life. We live in a symptom-focused society where the absence of obvious disease means health, and we’re expected to figure things out on our own until then. For teachers and other “helper” professions, we’re also expected to continue to have a positive impact on others without anyone checking in on how we’re doing.

Nearly all of us are doing our best for ourselves and others, yet too much we live in a mildly desperate hope that our colleagues, our students, and ourselves can hold it together well enough to function sufficiently. It's not even about thriving as much as it is about surviving and "making it." But without training and understanding, it's a game of craps.

We have an untapped capacity for satisfaction, enjoyment, and effectiveness. And while most of us haven’t developed an understanding of how to access it, one thing is certain: our environments can help. The more at ease we are in our environments and communities, the more at ease we can be in life. While lasting ease comes from the inside-out, the people in our environment and communities can certainly have a positive impact on us.

This is why I want my son to let his teacher know she’s welcomed, she’s cared about, and there are people in this community who know she can thrive.

He said to me that parents usually tell their kids to be friendly to the new students, but I’m talking about the teachers. “It’s just that important,” I told him. And it would be good if he’s friendly to the new students too.

Because of our broad impact, teachers and other professionals who mentor, guide, teach, and/or support must be healthy and well. Their families depend on it. Our kids depend on it. And our society and future depend on it.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️