The year of "Grace" -- Almost 4 months in!

 I took a bit of a hiatus from writing in my monthly blogs. 2021 has continued the challenges of last year, though hope is upon us with the vaccine. I had my first one nearly a month ago, and this Thursday get my second dose! While I felt the excitement after getting my first, I can't say that I am anywhere near ready to return to the way things were. I am less hopeful now about us learning and progressing from the pandemic sadly and see that we are already slipping into being angry for having to be apart for so long and longing for the way things were traditionally. The conversation at work, which I am happy to be taking a break from this week, is all about learning loss. It's not at all about learning gains in resilience and more important skills than what was taught in a traditional reading, writing and math curriculum. The focus of our instructional leadership team has most recently been about how we get kids to step-up because the teachers feel they have been giving in to too much. The two seem to be more at odds than ever and I am trying very hard to listen and respond with grace to both sides. It's sad to me that it has come to this, after so much loss this past year, our heads are cloudy from the trauma of the pandemic and our constituents are not as easily able to navigate this from their own brain fog. Sheparding the senior class to their graduation and future this year has challenged my own thinking in ways I never thought possible. We have no recovery time with these students, they are off to adulthood before long. We haven't prioritized them or this at all, other than in planning "senior events" because we conversely hear about what a challenge it has been for our freshman to transition to the high school in such a challenging time. I also oversee half the freshman class, and the challenges of the two are not even remotely comparable. Our public school systems responsibility is 13 years (including kindergarten), our freshman have 3 years left after this. Plenty of time for recovery and to have more traditional high school experiences since that seems to be what we are going back to. The portrait of the graduate seems to live in a silo though I know our teachers think they are moving kids towards these ideals, they are having challenges in seeing that some of their traditional practices do not seek to do this and its part of their own trauma of the pandemic. 

Besides work which takes up way too many hours and way too much energy, I have been refocusing on reading and completing as much of the PopSugar 2021 reading challenge as possible to broaden my own horizons and topics that I am interested in. Here is my current chart of where I am with reading. I try and spend some time every Sunday completing reading 50 pages per week. This has been more challenging than one might imagine. I have yet to resume learning French but am happy to share that I have been working on completing meditation lessons in the Headspace app which is free for educators. This practice has been beyond helpful in thinking about "grace" and maintaining my own headspace particularly as training for Wrigley has been a challenge with my work schedule. I have maintained my Crossfit and am undertaking doing the PNoe diet/exercise regimen along with this to get myself back to ground zero after the stressors of this past year. 

With a shadow of a doubt, the largest challenge came already this year when I lost my grandmother. I still cry almost every other day when I think about her no longer being here with us. I miss her, I miss her laughter, tenacity and the way she always persevered. She was a role model for women in a time when women had no say. She and my grandfather had the love that I always promised myself I would settle for nothing less than (hence why I am still single). They respected and loved each other for 75 years of marriage that they celebrated this part September. I was sad that we could not celebrate it with them but it was not safe to do so. I believe that my grandma's spirit lives on in little Wrigley. I named Wrigley for my grandpa who loves the Cubs and for my grandma who loves dogs. He joined our family only shortly before her passing. She never made it to her 90th birthday which I thought in my head is what she was holding on for but she was able to die peacefully in her sleep at home with my grandpa which was very important to her. I miss her, I have not had a loss like this in my life and while I know most would point out how fortunate I am not to have had that up until this point, it doesn't make the pain go away any easier. I want to call her and talk to her about so many things but instead I have gone to visit her gravesite and talk with her. She helps me to continue finding Grace in this challenging time.