Antarctica goes North

Feeling a bit like this today. There are times when I feel confident, that I understand a situation, and then there are times when something happens that makes me realize what I understood was not really true at all. Antarctica goes North.

The rest of this post has been edited, on the advice of two educators I respect greatly. Thinking about it this morning, the morning after, I am deciding to take away some details, but leave the meat of what I am experiencing so that the record stands (about how I feel). I am not one to be silent about what matters to me, and nothing I write from here on need be censored after the fact. I will however, think carefully about how I write things. So, some self-censorship will be happening. This doesn’t sit very well with me. Not at all. But Michael and Ken are right, including these details could very well blur the issue and cause greater problems. They were written with anger and a little bit of spite. That doesn’t sit well with me either, so I need to make this right.

So, how do I proceed. It is not like me to be much less than completely honest in my posts, baring all. How do I talk about my feelings of confusion and questioning regarding a recent experience without describing the experience? Another example of Antarctica moving North. Details are important for me, they make the bigger picture make sense. But let’s see if I can focus on the big picture here.

I know that people are hurt. It is not a two-sided issue on that point, we are all feeling touched by a … disagreement that we are having. I feel shifted, where I once felt in congruence with my colleagues I now question that and I think that others are questioning it in themselves as well. It’s good to question things, but sometimes it takes longer to rebound when the questioning is so profound.

It’s good that today is a PED day for us, that I can focus on marking – report cards are due tomorrow morning – and that I can think about my students because they, after all is said and done, are why I teach.

Wait. After having just written that I realize I am wrong. I think that focusing too much on student-need and negating adult-need may be part of a bigger issue here. Teachers support students, many teachers will do almost anything to do so. But, in order to do so we need to work as a team, and we need to support the team and the individuals within it to keep things strong, so that we can support students in the best way possible.

A keynote speaker at a conference I attended years ago talked about teacher care. How we need to take care of ourselves, we need to take care of each other. And only then can we take care of our students with integrity.

I do know that this whole thing has given me a headache, is forcing me to redraw my map.