Understanding Content, Waking Up

Just before the first day of class each school year, I create my intentions for the year. It’s a bulleted list of 3-5 intentions. It’s strange, though, because I typically don’t look at them again for the rest of the year, yet at any moment I can tell you what they are.

One of my intentions is that students master course content; that’s our most obvious and measurable job as teachers. I enjoy the structuring of lessons and challenges in a way that guides students to build an understanding. Deriving equations and creatively solving problems - these are pieces in the puzzle of student learning that I find deeply satisfying to facilitate. And each lesson I teach is a lesson for me too, greater depths of understanding for even some of the seemingly most basic science concepts.

My other intentions, for myself and my students, tend to go something like this:

• Foster curiosity and appreciation for the universe and its creatures

• Develop a deeper understanding of ourselves and others

• Get in touch with our passions and what we care about

• Grow in our ability to experience ease, enjoyment, and fulfillment

All of these objectives are the challenge I was born to grapple with. I’ve grappled with them for years for myself, and the lessons deepen with each moment of conscious notice and each modicum of insight. And, these goals are tougher to measure.

When I consciously interact with students, I am aware of a few things:

• There is no where I need to “get” my students to.

• My students are as whole and perfect as they’ll ever need to be, and so am I. Mostly, we just need to awaken to it.

• The relationship between us is a sacred dance.

Though each of my students has always been and will forever be deserving of attention and love, it’s still the most generous gift I can give them. When an advisee comes by my desk, or a student hangs around after class to chat longer, there’s nothing more important to me in that moment than engaging with that human.

As I reflected on the draft of this post this morning, I wondered how it fit into the recent themes of my writing the past couple weeks. The suggested two steps to simplify and deepen our relationships, from Where Relationships Exist, connect the dots pretty well:

1. Create an intention for the interaction, perhaps something you’d like to bring to the person you’re with, and then communicate from that place.

2. Get curious about the person actually there in front of you.

We can harness the power and creativity of Thought by setting an intention, either long-term or short-term, and we honor and more authentically connect with others by paying attention to who we're actually engaging with.

A relationship is the engagement between beings, and that engagement can be fun, healing, powerful, and sacred. It's through this engagement, this dance with our students, that we can support them and ourselves to master course content and wake up to greater depths of experience.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

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Where Relationships Exist

Last March, just as the pandemic descended upon us, I went on a short spiritual retreat with a dear friend. During part of the retreat, I got in touch with my desire to be the best partner and husband I can possibly be for my wife, and I thought about the challenges that I (and many of us!) can sometimes experience in these life partnerships. Out of this reflection, a beautiful insight arose.

Relationships don’t exist in my memories, stories, or other thoughts. Relationships exist in the engagement with another.

It’s one of the things that most teachers enjoy and cherish about our jobs: the opportunity to authentically engage with young humans, especially within a mutually shared intention, like learning and growth.

My personal practice, now, is to extend that insight to my colleagues and others.

When we have a conversation with another person, it’s easy to fall into a default engagement that minimizes the value, perhaps even the sanctity, of the exchange. Thought is an infinitely creative, powerful, and magical gift of being human, and sometimes it gets in the way of us fully experiencing our lives and the people in it.

It's in the engagement with people that our relationships exists. What you bring to the interactions and what you accept from them, that becomes the nature of the relationship.

I invite you, whenever you remember and whenever you’re able, to simplify and deepen your engagement with others by taking two steps:

1. Create an intention for the interaction, perhaps something you'd like to bring to the person you're with, and then communicate from that place. Generosity, ease, enjoyment, compassion, vulnerability, attention, love?

2. Get curious about the person actually there in front of you. Chances are, there's much more to the person in front of us than we're immediately aware of.

From this insight last year, I’ve experienced a new level of freedom in my ability to enjoy the people in my life. I often forget it, however, and that sometimes results in my minimizing myself and others.

This post is a reminder to you, and hopefully you’ll remind me back, of the opportunity, joy, satisfaction, and love available when we’re authentically engaging with another person.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

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Thanks for joining me on this exploration/reflection! If you'd like to receive blog updates via email twice weekly, be sure to subscribe here.

What if Icarus Could Swim?

Most of the adults in my personal life are engaged in some type of self-development: reading books, meeting in support groups or masterminds, participating in religious or spiritual rituals and practices, taking weekly or weekend workshops, seminars, or training programs. And there are certain books and workshops that justifiably make the rounds: Atomic Habits, The Inside-Out Revolution, The Landmark Forum, The Miracle Morning, The One Thing.

We are attracted to our favorite teachers for one of the same reasons that we are attracted to good books, good friends, insightful workshops, and significant ceremony: their ability to awaken us or remind us of some part of who we are. Through the engagement with others in these ways, we connect to the true self in others and to the true self within us.

In my last two posts, Encouraging Conditions and Icarus and Jesus, I aimed to point out that growing up includes preparation to succeed and preparation for when we fail. We want our students learning to fly, and this includes identifying and possibly breaking through the limiting mindsets and perceptions that they have of themselves, others, and the world around them.

And, we want our students aware of the important guideposts along the way, the signs pointing out where the fall from flying too high, too fast, or too alone can lead to devastating consequences.

Some boundaries and limits, however, we don’t notice until we’ve already crossed them. This is why we also need to learn to swim: when the wax wings melt and we fall from the sky, we don’t want ourselves or our students to drown. And if we land on solid ground, as mostly we do when we fail, we want to be able to get back up and responsibly move forward again.

Awakening the true self in education includes lessons in flying, falling, landing, swimming, healing, and getting going again. They’re all a part of this life, in small ways or large, and I think we should be actively preparing our students for them.

That’s what we as adults want for ourselves too: opportunities to connect with others and ourselves, grounded in an understanding of when and how we should accelerate and soar higher, when and how we should dial it back a little, and when and how to dust ourselves off and get moving again.

Thanks to my friend, Heat, for pointing out that Icarus could've been taught to swim. :)

Thanks so much for engaging with me ❤️.

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Thanks for joining me on this exploration/reflection! If you'd like to receive blog updates via email twice weekly, be sure to subscribe here.