Reflections on Q1

        I don't remember any other quarter in a school being so tough.   We are understaffed, exhausted, and all meeting'd out.  We are trying our best as human beings stretched thin, caring for our own families and our school family.  This is the prime place for students to begin to have some ownership over their school, and where leadership can begin, but it also feels like we're always on the precipice of disaster.  Adults are in reactive mode instead of thoughtfully planning longterm, myself included, and I think what we need to do is quietly reflect and sharpen our craft, instead of create the turmoil of change, again.   

     Everyone wanted to return to school so badly, myself included.  We also knew, and planned for, the trauma and pain that students would be carrying when we returned, but it is a deluge more powerful than I have the words for.  I can't talk about resilience when there's still so many funerals, some for COVID, but many for the gun violence that our community is experiencing, daily.  We are hardest hit by multiple pandemics, and many students don't know how to navigate it all.  Adults don't either.   

    In week 4 of the quarter, we had a circle in the media center where a young person spit the truest game I have heard in 14 years of teaching.  She laid out a play-by-play narrative of why students don't engage in school and what they're actually dealing with during the rest of their day.  I will think about her often throughout my life, and her challenge to educators to build lasting relationships and actually be there for students in a meaningful way.  The rawness of her grief allowed me to share my own and to remind myself of why I'm here.  I placed myself here for a reason. 

     All I know how to do is to keep showing up everyday, and keep trying to build relationships, to show that I care, to check-in and be consistent.  All that I know how to do is infuse power into the young people I am blessed to be in front of, and I weigh this quarter as successful if they see that within themselves.  Maybe they won't yet, but I'm confident that we have planted seeds that they will sow later.  More than anything, I hope that they remember ACCE as a place where we tried to take care of their whole selves, while healing ourselves.   There is so much more work to do, but many hands make light work.